Every year since 2017, the Capa Center has launched an open call for participation in FUTURES – European Photography Platform. Supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, the initiative aims to spotlight talented emerging photographers from across Europe. The first Hungarian residency of the project took place in 2025. As a grantee of the scholarship, Swiss photographer Tim Rod spent a month in Budapest in April. During his stay he was able to deepen his research for an ongoing project that explores the life and legacy of his great-great-grandfather, Hungarian-born philosopher Ludwig Stein.
Tim Rod (1992) is a Swiss artist based in Bern, Switzerland. He studied photography at CEPV – Vevey School of Photography (ES diploma, 2021) and holds a Master in Contemporary Arts Practice HKB – Bern University of the Arts. His work explores issues of exclusion and residence, rootlessness and rootedness, as well as memory, identity, belonging and travel. His own roots and family history are central elements of his research and practice, alongside collective visual culture. For instance, his photo series Don’t forget the Knifish, reflects on his complicated and fragmented relationship with his father. He harnessed photography equally as a means of protection and a way to mediate his emotional responses, and as a tool to make sense of his experiences and craft a narrative reclaiming and reconstructing his memory and his own history.
During his Budapest residency — as part of his ongoing project Prophetic Futures — Tim explores the tension between the idea of progress and the real challenges of the present. Based on the work of his great-great-grandfather, Tim engages with Ludwig Steins’ philosophical theory of Evolutionary Optimism from a contemporary perspective.
Ludwig Stein was born in 1859 in Erdőbénye, a small village in the Tokaj wine region, where his grandparents owned vineyards. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Tokaj, where he spent a significant part of his early childhood. As a boy, he was sent to study in Zwolle, in the Netherlands, where he learned English and got his first taste of European diversity. This period proved to be decisive in shaping his worldview and his future career. Then he moved to Berlin, where he studied philosophy, theology and Oriental languages. He earned his doctorate in Halle, focusing on logic, ethics and critical thinking, and this is where his academic career was starting to take shape. In 1886, he began teaching at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He delivered lectures, produced writings, and became acquainted with circles of liberal intellectuals. In 1890 he became the head of the philosophy department at the University of Berlin and remained there until 1909. He became quite popular; his works were translated into many languages, and prominent figures like Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxembourg and Lenin were attending his lectures. This was his most stable and productive period; he edited a major journal on philosophy and became a public intellectual. He often travelled to Vienna, where he met politicians, scholars and journalists, playing an important role in connecting German, Swiss and Hungarian thought. Though he left Hungary as a child, he often returned to Budapest. Later he moved to Berlin permanently and there he became a journalist writing about democracy, nationalism and the importance of reason. In 1930, Stein travelled to Gastein, Austria to recover from illness. He was hoping to finish his memoir, but his health declined quickly. He died on 13 July 1930 in Salzburg. His autobiography remained unfinished, but his thoughts and ideals have endured.
On 24 April, as part of the Capa Center’s CAPA VISA event series, Rod delivered a public presentation titled On Ludwig Stein, elaborating on the project he started this year, as well as its motivations: “I carry a connection not just to his name, but also to his movement between places, between disciplines, between times. I was born in Bern, the city where he talked and wrote some of his most important work and where a big part of my family still lives today. As it is with a lot of families of Jewish origin that emigrated to other countries, the past was something that was not talked about too much, especially during and after the Second World War. My great-grandfather Arthur Stein wanted to leave his past behind, and so did my grandfather Peter Stein. My mother Bettina was in her 20s when she found out more about our family and our Jewish origin. Still, she was not really aware of the role Ludwig played in European philosophy and politics. She just knew some rumours and from time to time she dropped facts about him without further detail. So, this got me interested in starting the research by myself and when I heard about the open call for this residency in Capa Center I thought that would be the ideal chance to start this project.”
At the talk held at the end of April, Tim Rod was joined by Balázs Som, staff member of the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives. As the institution’s archivist, he assisted Rod with his work during the residency program. Som holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Debrecen, specializing in Hungarian thinkers from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He noted that there were two sides to Stein’s life. He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family, which brought him already very close to Judaism, and he continued the tradition by becoming a rabbi at some point. Meanwhile, he never really touched on the shift in his perspective after becoming a philosopher — while also practicing as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi — because those things are hardly in the same brackets. The approach to certain problems is fundamentally different from the Orthodox religious viewpoint, and from that of the philosopher who’s always questioning himself and his understanding of the world. According to Som, this duality is what makes Stein such an intriguing figure. Throughout his career his approach was characterized by an interdisciplinary blend of philosophy and sociology, at times involving elements of Marxism — which is not at all surprising given that figures like Leon Trotsky showed interest in his thought. Stein also borrowed from the fields of mathematics and statistics; he was in contact with József Kőrösy, who is regarded to be the father of statistics in Hungary. Through statistics Kőrösy attempted to capture the day-to-day realities of contemporary Hungarian society, which was a huge leap forward, and Stein utilized his mathematical formulas and understanding of society in his philosophical works. As Som put it, Stein’s approach was “a strange mixture of sociology and philosophy as a way of understanding life.”
Stein can be characterized as a follower of Baruch Spinoza, while Gottfied Wilhelm Leibniz — and his iconic statement of this world being “the best of all possible worlds” — also played an important role in shaping his worldview. Stein‘s most significant philosophical contribution was his theory of social optimism and progress. These concepts can be critically examined today, especially in the tension between technological development, social justice, and ecological challenges. While the idea of messianic progress remains present in many societal narratives (e.g., the notion of technological utopia or infinite growth), we are simultaneously experiencing crises that call this belief in progress into question: climate change, social inequalities, and political instability.
Stein’s correspondence — which can in part be found in the archives of the Hungarian Jewish Museum — provides a broader context for examining his life and work. As Balázs Som explained, the letters in the archive were sent by, and sent to very different people from the same era who represented the duality of the life of the Ludwig Stein we know. Some of the letters were sent to Simon Hevesi, who was Chief Rabbi of Hungary, but the most interesting thing is how he retained his Hungarian identity in Berlin. Former classmates like Gyula Andrássy and Kálmán Tisza were helping him find the means to publish his work in Hungary, thus making new connections, and eventually becoming a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which is quite remarkable given that he wasn’t living in Hungary at that time. Another letter from the period testifies that Hungarian philosopher Samu Szemere tried helping Stein publish his poetry in Hungary, while in return he facilitated the publication of Szemere’s German-language writings in journals of the time. According to Som, Stein’s connection to Hungary is multilayered, and it is hard to discover all its branches, but it is apparent that his Jewish identity remained a significant factor throughout his life. He used his connections to support the Jewish community of Hungary by all means he could and remained connected to his friends; for instance, it is attested by the letters of the archive that he was discussing details of his personal life with Chief Rabbi Hevesi. Ludwig Stein exchanged many letters with another prominent thinker of the era, Bernát Alexander — the professor of Samu Szemere — who himself was in many respects like Stein, as he was a well-known figure with connections to international groups of philosophers and researchers. “That’s how close the connection to Hungary was for him, at least through philosophy and his Jewish identity, which kind of escorted him all his life up until the end” — concluded Balázs Som.
During his time in Hungary, Tim Rod had the opportunity to spend a weekend in Erdőbénye, the birthplace of Stein, where he came across valuable family records, and he meticulously documented everything he observed during the trip. Photographer Lili Nyíri and her family helped him find his way around the village and organize accommodation. He recounted his experiences as follows: “I really felt welcome there. It is nice to have people show me around and help me translate and also give me further connections. (…) In the end, I couldn’t find out where the actual house or vineyard of my ancestors was, but I somehow could imagine how it looked. Also, I got in contact with Marianne Frank, who is the project director at the synagogue in Mád. With her help, I hope to find out more about the location of the vineyards and the family house of my ancestors. (…) The photos I made in the village are more like symbolic pictures that I was kind of trying to figure out how I could visualize this whole project.”
At the end of his presentation Rod stressed that Prophetic Futures is not a linear project, but more of a constellation, and the goal is not to reconstruct Stein’s life, but to reimagine the spaces where memory, philosophy and place intersect. Tim plans to continue his research in Sweden, where he currently lives. He will visit the university archives and the house where Stein lived to see how the academic institutions remember him. He also plans on travelling to Berlin to conduct further investigations into Stein’s editorial work, political writings and his correspondence during his final decades. Rod aims to travel to Vienna as well, where Ludwig Stein’s name appeared in the context of political negotiations. He hopes to find further traces of his influence in the National Library, and among archived Austro-Hungarian diplomatic documents. And ultimately, he seeks to follow threads of family connections, exploring not only where Stein was present, but also where he was absent from.
Finally, Tim drew attention to a panoramic landscape photograph he had taken in Erdőbénye, which was also displayed in print at the entrance of the auditorium. The photo shows a disused quarry – he was particularly interested in the story behind the site. Locals told him that the workers had once dug so deep that water began to rise from the ground, eventually filling the entire area within two days. As a result, they were forced to leave some of their equipment behind, which now lies hidden beneath the surface. “For me, this photo is a bit like a symbolic image of information that is still under the surface and that I hope to dig up in the next weeks and months” — said the photographer.
Images © Tim Rod
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