Lahntal, Bad Ems

Views of the Rhineland-Palatinate health resort. Barnack filmed the spa garden and the left bank development with water tower and the legendary hotel Balmoral, where Richard Wagner resided. In the background you can see the Kaiserbrücke, on the right the Kurhaus. Spa guests drink from the springs. The film was probably shot before the outbreak of World War I (August 1914), likely in the early summer of 1914. A photograph of the filming taken with the first Leica exists. It shows Barnack with his film camera on a hill above Bad Ems.

Since the 1910s, Oskar Barnack, the inventor of the Leica, has captured events around Wetzlar on film with his self-constructed film camera. He documented flood disasters, city festivals, medical experiments, sporting events and the company where he was employed as chief designer: the Optical Works Ernst Leitz in Wetzlar. His films form the basis of a film archive in which local history has the same place as the effects of great historical events.