The Kaiser-Panorama was a Victorian precursor to the View-Master stereoscopic slide viewer that millions, like myself, owned and revered as children. Whereas the painted panoramas-of which there were at least two in imperial Berlin-enveloped their audiences and projected their image inwards, the Kaiser-Panorama inverted the spatial relationship between the viewer and the image, storing its pictures within itself, and projecting them outwards to the spectators gathered around its exterior. The Kaiser-Panorama was not a panorama in the true sense of the term. The longevity and charm of the Kaiser-Panorama was attested by the fact that, while the fortunes of many of Berlin’s commercial amusements dwindled over time, inevitably caught up and overwhelmed in the relentless tide of invention that characterised the modern era, it continued to attract visitors right up until 1939. Three years later in 1883, Fuhrmann set up one of his devices in Berlin, housed in a large room above the shops and cafés of the recently opened Kaiser-Passage on Friedrichstraße. The device was the brainchild of the German physicist August Fuhrmann, and was first exhibited to the public in Breslau in 1880. Of all imperial Berlin’s many public attractions, the Kaiser-Panorama arguably had the most enduring appeal for the city’s inhabitants. The Grandmother sidles through the curtain with Josef, entering into an almost completely dark room… Grandmother gives her a silver coin and receives from the powdered lady in return two red tickets, and a nickel and some coppers in change. Before a table, on which the cash desk stands, sits a powdered girl. They first encounter a small vestibule, partitioned off from the Panorama by a heavy curtain. The Grandmother presses the handle down and they are already inside.
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