I must, at the outset, disclose my partiality for Geo Fürst, the German camera artist and painter who made Malta his home in the inter-war years and who raised photography to unprecedented heights. I published a book about him and his work, and I cherish his personal album in which he pasted a copy of every postcard he marketed. Or thought he did – I found a few he missed placing in it.

Fürst (1888-1964) came to Malta to work as secretary in the German consulate and married a Maltese lady. During World War I, the British interned him as an enemy alien and he picked up painting and photography in the Verdala prisoner-of-war camps. After the hostilities, he came back to Malta as a professional photographer, artist and postcard publisher, until the eve of WWII, when he was denied permission to return to the island.

In photography, he widened his interests, though the sea remained his consuming love.

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As an artist, he mostly painted sailing ships – clippers, cutters, galleons, schooners. In photography, he widened his interests, though the sea remained his consuming love. Fürst scoured the harbours, shooting sailing vessels and warships with his Agfa camera, to the point that he raised alarming suspicion of being a Nazi spy. Though he admired Hitler openly, it is unlikely he worked for German espionage – after the war, Lord Mountbatten warmly encouraged his return to Malta.

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Fürst’s affinity to sails translated into a vast output of postcards in which sailing vessels strike a lyrical note. I have, very randomly, chosen a few from the many. No other camera artist, before or after him, had captured the wedding of the winds and the waters with such poetry as Fürst did in the 1930s.

All postcards from the author’s collection.

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