Göteborg’s Fire of 1792 — An Aron Jonason Photograph of the Annotated Plan

The 1792 Fire

A plan made to record one of Göteborg’s defining urban disasters.

The fire began during the night of 2–3 March 1792 and destroyed a large section of the fortified city. Contemporary reporting recorded approximately 110 houses lost and more than a thousand inhabitants affected. The disaster formed part of the sequence of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century fires that transformed Göteborg from a predominantly timber-built city into one increasingly rebuilt in stone.

The photographed plan is especially valuable because it is not simply a general street map: the darker shading and numbered key were designed to show the damaged zone and identify the important buildings within and around it.

A. Jonason

Historical cartography reproduced by one of Göteborg’s leading photographers.

Aron Jonason (1838–1914) was a photographer, journalist and prominent figure in Göteborg cultural life. He established a photographic studio in the city in 1864, resumed professional photography in 1879 and was appointed royal court photographer in 1887. The Swedish Biographical Lexicon records his reputation for technical skill and his extensive photographic activity in Göteborg and Marstrand; Göteborgs Stadsmuseum describes him as one of the city’s — and Sweden’s — foremost photographers of his period.

The studio attribution gives the object an additional layer of interest: it documents the late-nineteenth-century use of photography to preserve and circulate much older cartographic and archival material. Jonason’s studio name continued after his retirement, which is why the dating is given as a range rather than as a single year.

Lundgren Provenance Note

The mount records where the original map was then held.

A handwritten note states “Originalet tillhör antikvitetsbokhandl. Lundgren” — “the original belongs to antiquarian bookseller Lundgren.” Göteborg address directories document C. A. Lundgren as operating a lending library and antiquarian bookshop, with a shop at Södra Hamngatan 21; a later history of the Scandinavian book trade records Lundgren’s antiquarian business as established in 1859.

The inscription is important but should be read precisely: it refers to ownership of the original 1792 map reproduced photographically, not to institutional ownership of this mounted photographic copy. No museum or archive ownership is asserted for the present object.

Manuscript Commentary

A working local-history document rather than a decorative reproduction.

The manuscript commentary extends well beyond a simple caption. It identifies numbered sites and buildings on the 1792 plan, gives later street names and locations, and compares the city shown on the map with subsequent urban development. Among the subjects noted are gates, churches, public buildings, wells, military and commercial structures and renamed streets.

This combination of photographic reproduction, antiquarian provenance and extensive handwritten interpretation makes the object a compact record of how Göteborg’s eighteenth-century topography was studied and explained around the turn of the twentieth century.

Dating & Rarity

Late nineteenth / early twentieth century; no identical example located in current searches.

The embossed “Kgl. Hoffotograf” title places the studio production after Jonason’s appointment as royal court photographer in 1887. Jonason himself remained active until his retirement in 1912, after which the firm continued under his name; the catalogue therefore uses the cautious range c.1887–1916.

Current searches of museum databases, Swedish historical collections and the antiquarian market located other Jonason photographs and several historical Göteborg fire plans, but no second mounted Jonason photographic reproduction with this same extensive manuscript apparatus. This is a market and catalogue observation, not a claim that the object is unique.

Svensk sammanfattning

Göteborgsbranden 1792 · historisk karta · Aron Jonason.

Historiskt Göteborgsmaterial: en monterad fotografisk reproduktion av en karta över Göteborg efter stadsbranden 1792, utförd av A. Jonasons ateljé i Göteborg. Objektet bär ateljémärket “A. Jonason · Kgl. Hoffotograf · Göteborg”, omfattande handskrivna svenska anteckningar och en proveniensnotering som hänvisar till antikvariatsbokhandlare Lundgren. Relevant för samlare och forskare inom Göteborgs historia, gamla Göteborgskartor, svensk fotografihistoria, lokalhistoria och historiska dokument från Sverige.