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In the streets of Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Tyskland (Berlin) (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Decorated streets in Berlin, Labour Day (May 1st)/Berlin's 700th anniversary. Flags and banners with swastika, cars with banners. Driver leaning towards a car.streets of Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Decorated streets in Berlin, Labour Day (May 1st)/Berlin's 700th anniversary. Large crowd, flags with swastika, maypole (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom). Decorated streets in Berlin, Labour Day (May 1st)/Berlin's 700th anniversary. Large crowd, flags with swastika, maypole (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Berlin Cathedral (Berliner Dom). Decorated streets in Berlin, Labour Day (May 1st)/Berlin's 700th anniversary. Large crowd, flags with swastika, maypole (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Decorated streets in Berlin, Labour Day (May 1st). Flags with swastika (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Large crowds and decorated streets with Nazi banners, Labour Day (May 1st) in Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Viewer comment (Mohammed H.), 2012: Woooaaah
Large crowds and decorated streets with Nazi banners, Labour Day (May 1st) in Berlin (camera: Leica / film: Agfa Color Neu): photo by Thomas Neumann, 1937 (National Archives of Norway)
Viewer comment (Tibor Kodal), 2012: What a great capture. And a very intimidating sight as well...
Colour photography was made accessible to a greater audience in the last half of the 1930s. The companies Kodak (USA) and Agfa (Germany) competed in becoming the first to launch a method that would make colour photography with slides easy and cheap to use.
Kodak was first with their Kodachrome in 1935, and Agfa also patented their version in the same year, but the processing was very complicated. Agfa continued to work on their method, and in 1936 patented a colour film that was so easy to process that it could be made accessible to a large audience.
This new film was marketed as Agfacolor Neu and was accessible in the German stores from late 1936. Agfacolor Neu was thereby the first commercially successful colour film, and when the patent was released after World War II, the method was used by other producers. Kodak, on the other hand, had developed their own technical solution in 1937.
These photos are the first colour slides taken by an amateur photographer that we are aware of. In the spring and summer of 1937 the Norwegian engineer Thomas Neumann was an eager photographer of different motifs in Germany and Norway. The film he used was the first of its kind.
(National Archives of Norway)