The New International Encyclopædia/Hanfstängl, Franz

HANFSTÄNGL, hänf'stĕng'l, Franz (1804-77). A German lithographer and photographer, born in Bayernrain. He studied lithography under Mitterer at Munich, and spent six years in the Munich Academy (1819-25). He went to Dresden in the following year and began his great work, completed in 1852, of copying in lithograph the canvases of the Dresden Gallery. In 1844 he returned to Munich, leaving his establishment at Dresden to his brothers Max and Hans. From 1848 to 1853 he gave up lithography for galvanography, and then devoted himself almost entirely to photography and later to photogravure and heliogravure. His son Edgar Hanfstängl (1842—) succeeded to the business in 1868. The most important publications of the house are the periodical Die Kunst unserer Zeit, first published in 1890, and fine collections of carbon-print reproductions, including the contents of the principal European galleries, and the Galerie moderner Meister.