Henry B. Goodwin

Who was Henry B. Goodwin?

Henry Buergel Goodwin was a German-born Swedish photographer and linguist.

Goodwin was born in Munich, Germany, as Heinrich Karl Hugo Bürgel. His father Hugo Bürgel was a landscape painter. He studied Nordic languages at the University of Leipzig, graduating in 1903 with a Ph.D. thesis on the Icelandic manuscript Konungsannáll. Annales Islandorum Regii. While in Leipzig, he also learned to photograph in the studio of Nicola Perscheid.

In 1903, he married Hildegard Gassner, and the following year, they moved to Uppsala in Sweden, where Goodwin held a position as lecturer in German at Uppsala University from 1906 until 1909. With his move to Sweden, where he was naturalized in 1908, he also began to anglicize his name: he first added the "Goodwin" surname and omitted the Umlaut, changing "Bürgel" to "Buergel", and in 1907, he changed "Heinrich" to "Henry" and henceforth went by the name "Henry B. Goodwin". In 1909, he was divorced from Hildegard, who would move back to Germany with their three children three years later. Only a short time later, Goodwin wed Ida Helander, née Engelke, a teacher from Stockholm.