FRED ERISMANN ON WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Thanks to the support of Wikimedia CH and the work of Léa Lacroix and Nicolas Vigneron, the SAPA Foundation has been able to import around one thousand images by the Swiss photographer Fred Erismann (1891-1979) into Wikimedia Commons.

The collection documents the productions of the Stadttheater Bern from 1933 to 1968. All images come from the Fred Erismann archival fonds. This fonds comprises around 40 000 negatives, distributed across more than 750 production dossiers. For the project, a selection of one thousand representative images from individual productions was made and subsequently digitised. Further information on the preservation project can be found in the article on the Stadttheater Bern collection.

The import into Wikimedia Commons was supplemented by an update of the corresponding Wikidata entries for the theatre productions, with links to the images added. The Wikidata entries had already been created as part of an earlier import. This project forms part of a SAPA Foundatin programme   aimed at making data on the performing arts in Switzerland more visible.