Friedrich Carl Peetz Photograph Album

The Friedrich Carl Peetz photographs collection consists of 127 black-and-white photographs (several are hand tinted; most are 4.5 x 6 in.) mounted on 22 boards in a photograph album. The album probably belonged to Friedrich Carl Peetz, most likely an officer in the German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) and crew member of the S.M.S. Hertha during the Boxer Rebellion. The images were mostly taken in Tsingtao (Qingdao), Chefoo (Yantai), Hong Kong, Peking (Beijing), and Shanhaiguan during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The photographs document the German involvement in the Rebellion and primarily depict damage to the Taku Forts, German ships (most are identified) and crew, and temples and other historic buildings visited by the Germans in Beijing and other locales in China.

Each page of the photograph album typically contains between two and four individual images with German captions. The digital collection includes images of each photograph album page (with captions) as well as images of each individual photograph on those pages. Therefore, the same image will appear twice in the digital collection—once as part of the photograph album page and once as a standalone image.

Most of the original German captions are written in pencil and many are illegible. In a few cases the image titles in the digital collection were transcribed directly from the German captions, but in most cases the image titles were supplied by library staff after examining the German captions and conducting some additional background research.