Siegmund Lubin
| Siegmund Lubin | |
|---|---|
Siegmund Lubin in 1913
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| Born |
Zygmunt Lubszyński April 20, 1851 Breslau or Poznań |
| Died | September 11, 1923 (aged 72) Ventnor, New Jersey |
| Nationality | German, US |
| Other names | Siegmund Lubszynski "Pop" Lubin |
| Occupation | Optometrist, inventor, film-maker, industrialist |
| Spouse(s) | Annie Abrams (m. 1882–1923) |
Siegmund Lubin (born Zygmunt Lubszyński, April 20, 1851 – September 11, 1923) was a German-American motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia.
Siegmund Lubin was born as Zygmunt Lubszyński, a son of Samuel Lubszyński and Rebeka Lubszyńska, Polish Jews, in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) or in Poznań on April 20, 1851. His father was a successful ophthalmologist. Lubszyński familly moved to Berlin soon after Zygmunt birth for economical reasons. Young Zygmunt changed his first name to Siegmund and graduated from University of Heidelberg. In 1876 he emigrated to the United States, where he also worked as an optometrist in Philadelphia. Around 1881, he changed his surname from Lubszyński to Lubin.
He soon progressed to making his own camera and projector combination, which he sold. In 1896 he began distributing films for Thomas Edison. In 1897 he started making films and in 1902 formed the Lubin Manufacturing Company, incorporating it in 1909. His company also sold illegally copied prints of many films by other directors, notably those of Georges Méliès, making Lubin one of the foremost early practitioners of film piracy.
By 1910 his company had built a film studio, "Lubinville", in Philadelphia, at Twentieth Avenue and Indiana Street.
A fire at its studio in June 1914 destroyed the negatives for his unreleased new films. When World War I broke out in Europe in September of that year, Lubin Studios, and other American filmmakers, lost foreign sales. After making more than a thousand motion pictures, on September 1, 1917, the Lubin Film Company went out of business.
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