Wilhelm Feuerzeug’s Broadway Photo Studio
Posted: August 19th, 2022 | 1 Comment »Below the stamp for the Broadway Photo Studio, owned and operated by Wilhelm Feuerzeug, a Jewish refugee in Shanghai. The studio was on Broadway East (now Daming Road East). There is a whole and detailed biography of Feuerzeug here, though it seems to miss his Shanghai experience noting he left Trieste (as did the liners for Shanghai) and eventuially reached America. However, in the 1940s it seems he was operating the Broadway Photo Studio.
By the way, the Cafe Corso was also a 1940s establishment – oftren listed as being at 1098 Tungtaming, the post-1943 name for Broadway East.
Wilhelm was my great uncle (his brother was my grandfather). Wilhelm, my grandfather Norbert, and their brother Walter were all photographers in Vienna before the Nazi “annexation” of Austria by the Nazis in March 1938. Their father, Aaron Feuerzeug, was also a photographer.
Wilhelm was able to flee with his wife their son, Egon, and Egon’s wife with about 20,000 other Viennese Jews to Shanghai. They brought some of their photography equipment with them and opened up Broadway Photo Studio there.
In 1949 or 1950 they left Shanghai for Cochabamba, Bolivia (another random haven for European refugees) where they opened up a studio there called Foto Broadway. They left after two years and sold the business to a Jewish refugee family from Germany who ran it for about 50 years.
Wilhelm and family then went to Vancouver before settling in San Francisco and changing their last name to Fireside (and Wilhelm to William). The photo and camera studio that they founded, Fireside Photo, is still in operation, although it was sold to the employees after the family retired.
One of their sons, Harry Fireside, became a noted jewelry designer who specialized in making jewelry using jade and infusing Chinese themes into his work.