Leica's 'Flying over China' exhibition opens in Berlin

Visitors view the Shanghai panoramas[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The China Cultural Center in Berlin is hosting Leica’s "Flying over China" exhibition which opened last week, with nearly 200 Germans from all walks of life attending the opening ceremony. The exhibition is on display until July, 5.

In the 1930s, during the first European flight over China, Lufthansa aviation pioneer Wulf-Diether Graf zu Castell-Rudenhausen was struck by China's beauty.

As a result, he took nearly 1,500 aerial photos on his Leica camera which captured an unprecedented number of renowned sights, such as the snow-covered Himalayan peaks, the vast expanse of the Gobi Desert, and the magnificent Forbidden City.

In 1938, Castell-Rudenhausen compiled his photos into a book and donated his films to the Munich Museum in Germany.

Eighty years after German architectural photographer Hans-Georg Esch created 20 colored panoramic photos of China, Castell-Rudenhausen’s rare images can take on a new life, featured as 46 black and white photographs shedding light on China’s past and present.

Leica and the China Culture Center took six grueling months to prepare the exhibition’s opening. The center stressing how important the display is for Sino-German relations and cultural exchange.

On opening day, a major newspaper in Germany published a report about the exhibition and since then visitors have flocked to view it , granting the exhibition rave reviews.