Yukon who is who

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Max W. Kollm (b. 1854)
	
Max Kollm was born in Germany and studied art under Alexander Wagner. In 1871, he volunteered for service in the Prussian army and fought at Gravelotte. He immigrated to the United States in 1872 and he and his wife, Anna Sophia, came north during the Klondike gold rush. He was active in the Arctic Brotherhood in Skagway and designed the group’s official membership certificate.((Michael Gates, “An old photo prompts an adventure of discovery.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 22 March 2013.))

In 1904 in Dawson, his birch bark sketches and burnt leather Klondike scenes were highly prized and he did commission work for European clients. He illustrated theatrical scenes and his large “Circus Maximus” backdrop for the Arctic Brotherhood Hall/Diamond Tooth Gerties Casino was in place in the Dawson theatre until the early 1980s. He visited Europe twice, in 1900 and 1904, and painted the complex Allegory of the Arts on the curtain of the Columbia Theatre in Boise, Idaho around 1906.((Michael Gates, “An old photo prompts an adventure of discovery.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 22 March 2013.))

He and Anna left Fairbanks in 1908, painted a mural in Seattle in the summer of 1909, and then travelled to Dawson to fill some orders for art. He created a large honorary Arctic Brotherhood membership certificate for the Governor General of Canada, Early Gray, who was visiting the north. The full-size caribou skin was displayed in Dawson before being shipped to Ottawa.((Michael Gates, “An old photo prompts an adventure of discovery.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 22 March 2013.)) 

The couple left Dawson for the last time in 1909, and they were in and out of Fairbanks until 1912 when the Fairbanks Arctic Brotherhood presented him with an engraved gold watch prior to his departure for the southern states. In 1923 he returned to Skagway to present President Warren Harding with one his original Arctic brotherhood memberships. In 1930 Kollm was living in Mill Valley, California. Anna died in San Francisco in 1955.((Michael Gates, “An old photo prompts an adventure of discovery.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 22 March 2013.))

Max Kollm is known for his pyrographic art on caribou skin.((Traditional and Fold Art Hall, 2024 website:http://pyromuse.org/mwkollm_2.html))