Karl Kengelbacher (1895 -1981)
Family name : Kengelbacher
Given name : Karl
Date of birth : 1895
Place of birth : St. Gallen-Bruggen, Switzerland
Date of death : 1981
Place of death : California, United States
Biography : Karl Kengelbacher was born in Saint Gallen-Bruggen in Switzerland in 1895. He was the third of the four sons (Fritz, August, Karl and Emil) born to Fritz Kengelbacher-Müller. All four sons emigrated to different parts of the world: August to China, then Japan (1917-1946); Karl to Shanghai (1921) where his older brother Fritz joined him one year later. The younger brother, Emil, went to America. Karl Kalgenbacher worked for a pharmaceutical firm. He married a Portuguese lady who gave birth to one son, Charles. In 1949, Karl moved to Hong Kong with his family and from there to America in 1956. He passed away in 1981 in California. The pictures he took during the months of fighting in 1937 remained with his son. Charles Kengelbacher entrusted these photographs to his cousin, Peter Kengelbacher, who digitized them and publicized them on the Internet in 1998 (http://www.japan-guide.com/a/shanghai/). In 2002, Peter Kengelbacher entrusted Prof. Xiong Yuezhi, director of the Institute of History of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, to bring them back to Shanghai and deposit them in the collections of the library of the institute.
Sources: "Curriculum Vitae of August Kengelbacher", private document provided by Peter Kengelbacher; Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之, "Shang wang si nian, yuan zuo 'huan xiang'" 上网四年，原作还乡(Four years on line, the original 'came back home'), Dushu zhoubao 读书周报(Reading Weekly), no. 912, 16 August 2002.
Acknowledgements: The complete set of 101 photographs by Karl Kengelbacher appears on Virtual Shanghai by courtesy of Peter Kengelbacher who accepted to make them available for research. All documents came in high resolution for the use of researchers. On line images are in low resolution. The editor of Virtual Shanghai expresses his gratitude to Peter Kengelbacher for sharing this unique collection of wartime images of Shanghai.
