View of Long Bridge

Artists depicting the Szczecin harbour used several well-known shots. One of them was the quays around the Long Bridge (Lange Brücke). It was situated over the Western Oder, the bridge connected part of the city on the river island of Łasztownia (Lastadie) with its centre on the left bank. The view of the wooden Long Bridge together with the buildings of both quays on the Oder River was depicted on a coloured lithograph by Gustav Frank. The German draughtsman and lithographer was artistically active between 1850 and 1875 and was originally associated with Oldenburg, where he drew vedutas of German cities. He was the author of several panoramas of Szczecin from across the Long Bridge, published in the 1860s and 1870s. At that time, the artist was working for a lithographic workshop in Berlin. Together with Carl Stumpf, another lithographer and painter connected with Berlin and from 1855 also with Szczecin, he prepared the album Ansichten von stettin und Umgebung including 12 sheets with interesting buildings and views of Szczecin and its surroundings, published around 1855 by the Szczecin workshop of Ferdinand Müller. Among the illustrations, there was a lithograph with the Long Bridge from the Łasztownia side. However, in the precisely made graphic work individual buildings do not correspond to their actual state at that time, while the ordered quays show an idealised, model view of the port.

Małgorzata Peszko