Oblong Quarto album ca. 19x25,5 cm (7 ½ x 10 in). 24 card stock leaves (8 blank). With 110 mounted gelatin silver photos, from ca. 10x13,5 cm (4 x 5 ¼ in) to ca. 4x4 cm (1 ½ x 1 ¾ in). Over 90 photos with period white or black ink captions on the mounts (several captions relate to all photos on a page); two manuscript ink half-titles: “Afrika, 1911/12” and “Belgien, 1914.” With two loosely inserted gelatin silver photos: a large one, ca. 16,5x23 cm (6 ¼ x 9 in; later manuscript ink caption on verso) and a document photo ca. 3,5x5 cm (1 ½ x 2 in, Arndt’s name on verso). With loosely inserted Arndt’s printed business card and a printed list of passengers of “Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo,” featuring Arndt, ca. 21x34 cm (8 ¼ x 13 ¼ in). Period black half sheep album with green cloth boards; spine with gilt-lettered ornaments. Binding neatly repaired on the hinges, one photo with a tear and minor loss on the upper margin, a few photos mildly faded or with mild silvering, but overall a very good album of interesting photos.

Historically significant, well-annotated collection of 110 original gelatin silver photos taken and collected by a German engineer, Max E. Arndt, including 87 images, illustrating his work in Elisabethville, Belgian Congo (modern-day Lubumbashi, Haut-Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1911-1912. Lubumbashi is the second-largest city in the DRC and the main mining and industrial centre in the country’s mineral-rich Katanga region. Most likely, Arndt worked for the Belgian “Compagnie de Chemin de Fer du Katanga,” which built a railway from Elisabethville to the port of Bukama on the navigable section of the Lualaba River, thus providing a next step in the completion of the multinational project of “Cape to Cairo Railway.”

The album contains several photos of railway construction in Elisabethville and Katanga province, showing native workers moving and raising large poles (“mastmontage,” “mastaufrichten”), posing next to a completed railway track, transporting a large wooden box, &c. There are also very early interesting views of Elisabethville (founded just a year before, in 1910): railway station, radio station, Governor’s house (still under construction), “my house” (“meine Wohnhaus”), “Bucherie, W. Ulmann,” “Carlton Hotel” (with a visible sign), &c. Other interesting images show the entrance to a “Depot des Bicyclettes. Cycle & Motor Engineer,” countryside estates, bicycle excursions to the Etoile du Congo copper mines (belonged to “Union Minière du Haut-Katanga”), “Belgian military chapel,” &c. There are also portraits of Arndt and other European residents of Elisabethville, including “M. Yakobs” (Victor Jakobs, 1881-1953, a legal advisor to “Union Minière du Haut-Katanga”), “Mr. Wolf,” “Girardeau,” Congolese workers, a barber in his shop, &c. Several photos show Cape Town and its environs (coastal views with Table Mountain, harbour and piers, British naval cruiser, Parliament building, the compiler posing on the road during his “excursion to Cape Town, 1911”) and Transvaal (house of Cecil Rhodes, oxen drivers).

The loosely inserted materials include a large portrait of Arndt, captioned “Dr. Max Arndt baut eine Funkstation in Afrika;” his small document-sized photo; a business card, presenting him as “Docteur en sciences, Directeur Technique de la Mission de T[erre]. S[ans]. F[rontieres]. au Congo;” and a large printed list of passengers of the ocean liner “Elisabethville” of “Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo,” listing Arndt as a first-class passenger. Built in 1921, SS “Elisabethville” served the Antwerp-Matadi route in Belgian Congo until 1940 (and then briefly in 1946 until it was renamed).

The second part of the album, with 23 photos, documents Arndt’s work on the repair and construction of infrastructure in Germany-occupied Belgium in 1914. The images show Arndt raising a [radio?] tower in Liege (Lüttich), repairing a bridge in Dinant (including a portrait with “Major Kuhlwein, Verhehroff. v. Lüttich” standing at a repaired bridge), streets and sites of Brussels, Leuven, Mechelen, Antwerp, a ruined street of Liege, &c. The last photo shows a memorial to German soldiers erected in Gistel in 1915. Overall an important visual source on the early history of railway construction and mining industry in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.