Photography, Mobility and Transatlantic Migration around 1900:

Weil’s Photo Studio in Germany and New Jersey

Abstract

The steam vessel Bohemia left the Port of Hamburg on August 7, 1887. On board this emigrant ship was the 28-year-old photographer Anton Weil. The passage on the Hamburg American Line took about two weeks. Right after his arrival in New York, he married a young widow of German origin. They settled down in Jersey City Heights, where they founded a photography studio. The family lived and operated their business there for about a decade. After their return to Germany, they ran studios in different places in Altona, near Hamburg, left the city and decided to establish themselves in the same trade in the rural town of Hagenow, Mecklenburg.