cher in Swiss photography of his era. Besides Hans
Finsler, it was Max Burchartz at the Folkwang
school in Essen who had, more or less by chance,
introduced photography into his curriculum and
practice, and two of his students at the end of the
1920s, Anton Stankowski and Klaus Wittkugel,
were to gain fame in the 1950s as graphic designers
using photography.
When Walter Peterhans was called for the Bau-
haus, he left behind a small advertising studio to
two of his private students, Grete Stern and Ellen
Auerbach. Under their nicknames ‘‘ringlþpit,’’
Stern and Auerbach made this studio well known
among advertising agencies and designers of the
late 1920s. Although only in their mid-1920s,
Stern and Auerbach attained immediate success
with their application of modernist principles to
advertising, fashion, and object (still life) photogra-
phy. A number of their competitors at the time were
also receiving recognition with their work: Ilse Bing
in Frankfurt on the Main started a career in theater
and dance photography while studying art history;
Gise`le Freund used her camera to document politi-
cal demonstrations in the same town where she was
studing sociology; and Lotte Jacobi, who had taken
over her father’s photographic workshop, created
journalistic portraits of prominent and everyday
people. She not only published her photographs in
various illustrated newspapers but also accompa-
nied the famous writer Egon Erwin Kisch through-
out the Soviet Union and Central Asia.
Lotte Jacobi’s work was in the new field of photo
journalism. She especially dealt with the political
aspects of the field by cooperating with the large
commercial papers as well as with communist party
activists like the photo-monteurJohn Heartfield
(Helmut Herzfelde), for whom she set the protago-
nists of his posters into the scene. The introduction
of photographic journalism into Germany had
been delayed, which proved an advantage when it
arrived as a force in the late 1920s. The large print-
ing companies not only introduced autotype print-
ing of photographs in 1925 in German tabloids and
magazines, but they also devoted considerable
space to photographic reproductions, allowing a
new generation of young illustrators and photogra-
phers to create innovative lay-out and design
schemes. In the highly competitive market of Ger-
man-illustrated newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s,
editors welcomed such innovation and counted on
the name recognition of the emerging ‘‘star’’ photo-
graphers to sell their publications. A star system
had soon emerged.
The first ‘‘star’’ of photojournalism was, without
doubt, Erich Salomon. After studies in jurispru-
dence, he served the Ullstein publishing house in
legal affairs. During a court case, he took candid
photographs. Although such activities were strictly
forbidden, the resulting images were so respectful
to both the court and the litigants that Salomon
was thereafter greatly sought out to document the
important events of the day. There was no impor-
tant conference without Salomon present up to the
mid-1930s, yet even his distinguished reputation
did not prevent his being murdered by the Nazis
at Auschwitz in 1944. Other photojournalists of the
late 1920s, such as Felix H. Man, followed Erich
Salomon’s precedent; others, such as the brothers
George and N. Tim Gidal, found their themes in
everyday life. Austrian press photographers like
Lothar Ruebelt concentrated on sports very early,
whereas Harald Lechenperg pursued a career as a
traveling journalist with long trips to Central Asia
and Africa. But most journalistic photographs were
provided by press agencies, which gave a number of
very young practitioners the chance to introduce
themselves into the field. The left-leaning maga-
zines had to rely on a well-organized amateur move-
ment calledArbeiterfotografiefor the majority of
their images. Photographers like Walter Ballhause,
Erich Rinka, John Graudenz, Ernst Thormann,
Richard Peter senior, and Toni Tripp emerged out
of this movement. Among theArbeiterfotocorre-
spondents who survived the Nazi persecution and
received positions in the newly founded German
Democratic Republic (GDR), Walter Ballhause is
the most prominent.
Most journalists in the 1920s treated the Nazi
party movement with a mixture of oppression and
neglect, and subsequently they were among the first
who feared for their lives after the National Socia-
list party came to power in January, 1933. Erich
Salomon did not return from a conference in Den
Haag; N. Tim Gidal used the occasion of another
conference to flee to Switzerland; Felix H. Man
followed his editor Stephan Lorant to the United
Kingdom; Gise`le Freund had to emigrate to France
in order to finish her doctoral thesis. Ilse Bing had
moved to Paris just prior to these political develop-
ments, and Hans Finsler was appointed lecturer of
photography at the Zurich school of arts and crafts
in 1932. What was left to German photojournalism
after this severe loss can be viewed as a level of
mediocracy as well as a chance for very young
amateurs, who seized the opportunity for careers.
These photographers include: Wolfgang Weber,
Hilmar Pabel, Bernd Lohse, Wolf Strache, Werner
Cohnitz, Max Ehlert, and Erich Stempka, just to
name a few. But even these men produced material
of a higher quality than the photo-journalismGERMANY AND AUSTRIA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN