Köllner, Augustus Theodore Frederick (A. Kollner)

Augustus Theodore Frederick Köllner (1812 - December 10, 1906) was an artist, engraver, and lithographer based in Philadelphia. Born in Wurttemberg, Germany, Köllner began his career in Germany, working as a book illustrator in Stuttgart and Paris in the late 1820s and 1830s before immigrating to the United States in 1839. After settling in Washington, D.C., Köllner worked as a lithographer for the Haas firm, working on advertisements, bank notes, and city views. He moved to Philadelphia in 1840 and tried unsuccessfully to establish himself as a portrait painter. After this misstep, Köllner became the second chief artist of P.S. Duval and William Huddy's 'U.S. Military Magazine' (1839 - 1842). Throughout the 1840s, Köllner worked as a lithographer for many different Philadelphia based lithographic firms, including Duval, J.T. Bowen, Frederick Kuhl, Thomas Sinclair, and Wagner and McGuigan. Between 1847 and 1848, Köllner began working for the lithographic firm Brechemin and Camp, for whom he designed all genres of lithographs and advertised his own lithographic views based on his annual summer sketching trips along the East Coast. His work also began to be published in the seminal series 'View of American Cities', published between 1848 and 1851 by Goupil, Vibert, and Company. While working for Brechemin and Camp, Köllner was responsible for creating the multi-foot Dripp's map of New York City. Kollner established his own firm in 1851 and worked on a wide range of projects, including advertisements, labels, city and landscape views, and maps. During the Civil War, Köllner enlisted in the cavalry in 1863 and later sold photographic reproductions of the etchings he did as a soldier. He produced his last series of landscape lithographs entitled 'Bits of Nature' in 1878, but focused mostly on his watercolor work during the late 1870s. Köllner retired in the early 1880s, but continued to make sketching trips around the Philadelphia area. Köllner married Mary Sheek (c. 1821 - 1899) in 1843, and they had several children, three of which survived infancy: William, Clara, and Josephine. Köllner died on December 10, 1906.