5. The Secret of Ed(o)uard Baldus - revealed
And although the winding road from Grünebach to Paris endet in poverty –
what a life! More exactly: How many lives! Soldier, counterfeiter,
emigrant, painter, husband and father, photographer, printer, publisher –
and again and again inventor, especially of himself.
That his photographs
are traded at high prices today is a triple ironic note for Eduard, the
‘Guardian of treasure’, the escaping money counterfeiter and photographer
dying bankrupt, whose work and real treasures his home region still has to
discover.
Peter Lindlein, 2010
P.S. It is also some kind of irony, that just that photo - which called my attention for Baldus and his birthplace, and which later let me discover the warrant for apprehension for the counterfeiter Baldus - although was published in an album of Baldus, today is attributed to another photographer. This was just the start of a long list of wrong references leading to the truth – or to that what we consider as such. And as Baldus was not a purist in his photographic work, retouching, adding and combining, I took the liberty to present a collage earlier, to complete finally his self-portrait of 1853 in the year 2010.