Photographer Franz Xaver Koroschetz

Period photographs and their stories

Radio România Internațional, 09.11.2024, 14:00

Romanian towns had their photographers. One such photographer was Franz Xaver Koroschtz. He was the photographer of the town of Focsani, the county seat of Vrancea, a county lying on the Carpathians’ Curvature. An Austrian-Hungarian citizen, in 1895 Koroschetz settled in Romania, in Focsani. From 1899 to 1934, the year of his death, he took pictures of the town.

Documents about this photographer, unfortunately, are scarce, while the year and his place of birth are not mentioned in those documents. Koroschetz was the photographer of the local elite and of the middle class of Vrancea. The pictures were taken in his studio, located in the city centre of Focsani.
Journalist and collector Sorin Tudose was born in Focsani.

He is the author of an illustrated album dedicated to Franz Koroschetz, to commemorate 90 years since the death of the artist photographer.
As part of the public event occasioned by the launch of the album, Sorin Tudose made mention of a personal discovery.

”I made a stunning discovery at the Romanian Academy, specifically, I discovered the most luxurious photographic product Franz Koroschetz ever made in his 35-year-long career. The story goes like this: in 1904, the royal family took a train trip on the Sinaia-Iași route, with stopovers in the main railway stations along the route and where, of course, the event was immortalized.

With us, in Focsani, seven pictures were taken in the railway station. To the right-hand side as part of one of the photographs there is a bloke sitting with a hand of his knee. He was none other than the county prefect, Nicușor Săveanu, who, being a politician and being aware the royal family was soon to arrive, he commissioned an album to Franz Koroschetz, with pictures from Putna County, as today’s Vrancea county was then known.

There were 14 pictures from the northern part of the county, and this album, once completed, was in the possession of this kid at the center of the picture, he is Radu Saveanu, the future mayor of Focsani and the son of Nicușor Săveanu. This man Radu Săveanu offered it as a gift to none other than Carol, later King Carol II. There was only one single mention of the album in the press of that time and, from 1904 to 2024, no one knew absolutely anything about it.

It came into possession of the royal family, Carol, Ferdinand leafed through it, as well as the entire royal elite, it was in the possession of the royal family and subsequently it was appropriated by the Academy Library. Until 2024, nobody was aware of its existence, until I discovered it. “

They say a photograph speaks through itself. Yet Sorin Tudose’s work and passion turned the stories behind some of the photographs into complete stories, when they appear in other sources as well:
Track: Here we have two photographs, it’s about what the research behind the photographs meant. Neither of the two photographs had something written on them.

“It is about two pictures taken by Koroschetz, belonging to the Rainu-Neguț family and, in the album, I would have liked the pictures to have Photo Koroschetz as a caption in the album. My conclusion was that the pictures were taken around 1910. Yet, being passionate about it, I read a lot in the press of that time and at one point, absolutely accidentally, I came across an article.

It was written in there that in the house of Negut Family 25 years of their wedding had been celebrated, the silver wedding. And there, I discovered, in the atmosphere of the event, who the personalities were, who participated in the event, but also the fact that the mayor called in at their place and renewed their vows.

I took a closer look at the article and I discovered it was written in 1908. And that’s how I succeeded to realize what the context was, when the two pictures were taken. Also, I succeeded to identify all the faces. Which, apart from the intrinsic values of the photographs, the fact that they come with their stories, that brings added value: it tells us who these people are, on what occasion they met, which somehow humanizes, to a greater extent, these otherwise special photographs. “

Unfortunately, Koroschetz’s Focsani disappeared today almost completely, it only exists in Sorin Tudose’s book. Here he is once again, telling us the story of its disappearance:

”Beginning with the 1970s, demolition never ceased to be perpetrated. This, for example, is a church in Focsani, the town’s only church the communists brought down. What you can see in this picture is the princely church, but nothing exists any more. The picture was taken by Koroschetz in 1930 or thereabouts. Comrades didn’t like it, so they demolished it. They didn’t like this very special building either, known as the Economia Bank, they brought that down too.

I somehow wanted to symbolize, through a drawing, what happened in my native town, Focsani. So I contacted a friend, a woman architect, telling her to symbolize what happened to our town, how it was demolished. And she asked me how I could imagine that, graphically? I gave her two major buildings in Focsani, the Economia Bank and the Princely Church. And I asked her to conceive how a couple of bulldozers were rolling, replacing their arms with a sickle and a hammer. “

The album authored by Sorin Tudose has more than 250 photographs authored by Franz Xaver Koroschetz. The photographs capture the town and its inhabitants, in their day-to-day life or at special events.