CARL AND OTTO GIERS

BY RIDLEY WILLS II

Carl Giers was a German-American who had a photograph studio in Nashville. He was born April 28, 1828 in Bonn, Germany, came to the United States in 1845 and made Nashville his home in 1852.

Three years later, Carl began his career as a photographer. During the Civil War, he photographed soldiers around Nashville, first Confederate and, after February 1862 when Nashville fell to the Union army, Union soldiers. In 1876, Carl put together Tennessee's exhibition at the United States Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

In 1870, Carl and his wife Pauline, who were childless, adopted two children of deceased friends, Peter and Barbara Burkhardt-Otto Burkhardt, then 12, and his little sister, Katie, then 6. When Otto was older, he and Carl were both members of the Knights Templar. Otto was 19 when his step-father died.

In 1883, at age 25, Otto decided to try his hand as a photographer. He and some other German-American friends living in Nashville formed Thuss, Koellein, and Giers, Photographers and late the next year Otto began a remarkable series of documentary photographs of Nashville’s streets, schools, churches, homes and government buildings.

In 1999 and 2000, Jim Hoobler published two volumes of paperbacks entitled Nashville from the Collection of Carl and Otto Giers, which are available today at Randy Elder’s Bookstore on White Bridge Road.

Otto Giers lived at 1619 Eighteenth Avenue South, next door to Nashville author and educator, Alfred Leland Crabb, who served as one of his pallbearers.Today, my wife, Irene, and I live in a penthouse condominium earlier owned by Sarah Hunter Hicks Green Marks, Otto’s granddaughter, who made available to Hoobler the photographs in his two-volume paperback.