Erna Lendvai-Dircksen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erna Lendvai-Dircksen (born May 30, 1883 in Wetterburg , Hessen-Nassau , † May 8, 1962 in Coburg ) was a German photographer .

Life

From 1903 to 1905 Erna Lendvai-Dircksen studied painting at the Kassel Art Academy , and from 1910 to 1911 she studied photography at the Lette-Verein's school . From 1906 to 1911 she was married to Adolf Göschel and from 1913 to 1924 with the Hungarian composer Erwin Lendvai .

Since 1913 she ran a photographic workshop in Hellerau near Dresden . From 1916 to 1943 she ran a portrait studio in Berlin. It was initially located on Viktoria-Luise-Platz and from 1928 on Hardenbergstraße. Among other things, portraits of Ricarda Huch , Käthe Kollwitz and Mary Wigman were created here and published in the magazine Die Frau .

In 1917 Lendvai-Dircksen began her long-term work on the photographic representation of the “German people's face”. Numerous landscape photographs were also taken. Lendvai-Dircksen also worked on cinematography and made several films with recordings of children, such as children playing , Mariechen and Brigitte in 1930, and Mariechen was visited in 1931.

In 1924 she was appointed to the Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner. In 1925 she toured East and South Germany and exhibited in 1926 at the German Photographic Exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. For this she received the State Prize of Reich President Paul Hindenburg .

Her book Das Deutsche Volksgesicht was published for the first time in 1932. Her stylization of mostly blonde, “ Aryan ”, traditionally dressed people fit into the thinking of National Socialism ; however, their role in Nazi culture and propaganda has not been clearly established. Lendvai-Dircksen published racist illustrated books such as the series Das Deutsche Volksgesicht as well as 5 volumes in high editions in Gauverlag, Bayreuth, with the titles Schleswig-Holstein (1939, 1942), Lower Saxony (1942), Tyrol and Vorarlberg (1941, 1943), Mecklenburg and Pomerania (1940, 1942) and Kurhessen (1943). The same publisher published her two volumes on the topic Das Germanisches Volksgesicht : Flandern (1942, 1943, 1944), Norway (1942, 1944).

After the destruction of her archive in 1943 she moved to Upper Silesia and in 1946 to Coburg , where she took up old topics again. The volume Norway was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone .

She was awarded the David Octavius ​​Hill Medal of the "Society of German Photographers" in 1958. After that it was long forgotten and it was not until the 1970s that her work met with greater interest again. The lack of distance to the racial doctrine of National Socialism earned her the nickname "the brown Erna".

Awards

Exhibitions (selection)

Publications (excerpt)

  • Mariechen and Brigitte: a children's film by Erna Lendvai-Dircksen (speech transcript), in: Sonderberichte des Reveta . Berlin 1930, p. 16, pp. 59-60
  • Contemporary - untimely (speech transcript), in: REVETA . Berlin 1931, pp. 191–197
  • On the psychology of seeing, in: Das deutsche Lichtbild . Berlin 1932
  • Our German children . Berlin 1932
  • The German people's face . Berlin 1932
  • The face of the German east . Berlin 1935
  • People of the clod . Berlin 1936
  • Reichsautobahn, people and work . Berlin 1937
  • North Sea people . Munich, 1937
  • Mountain people . Munich 1937
  • Shifting dunes . Bayreuth 1941
  • The German people's face: Mecklenburg u. Pomerania . Bayreuth 1941
  • The German people's face: Lower Saxony . Bayreuth 1942
  • The German people's face: Schleswig-Holstein . Bayreuth 1942
  • In the face of the mountains . Bayreuth 1943
  • The Germanic people's face: Denmark . Bayreuth 1943
  • The Germanic people's face: Norway . Bayreuth 1944
  • Original form in chalk and granite . Essen 1960
  • A German image of man: Face d. People . Frankfurt a. M. 1961

literature

  • Claudia Gabriele Philipp [= Gabriele Betancourt Nuñez]: Erna Lendvai-Dircksen (1883–1962). Different ways to receive a photographer . In: Photo History 3 (1983), Issue 7, pp. 39–56.
  • Jörg Krichbaum: Lexicon of Photographers. Fischer, Frankfurt 1981. ISBN 3-596-26418-9
  • Hans-Michael Koetzle: The Lexicon of Photographers 1900 to Today. Knaur, Munich 2002. ISBN 3-426-66479-8
  • Reinhold Misselbeck (Ed.): Prestel-Lexicon of Photography. From the beginning in 1839 to the present . Prestel, Munich 2002. ISBN 3-7913-2529-9
  • Photographs 1916-1960 Erna Lendvai-Dircksen . Edited by Ute Eskildsen; edit by Franziska Schmidt. Göttingen 2006
  • Matthias Weiß: Measuring - photographic 'human inventories' before and from the time of National Socialism . In: Ingeborg Reichle, Steffen Siegel (Hrsg.): Massless pictures. Visuelle Ästhetik der Transgression , Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2009, pp. 359–377. ISBN 978-3-7705-4801-9 ; Digitized version (PDF, 654 kB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sometimes Erna Lendvai-Dirksen wrote
  2. ↑ The technical assistant. Berlin, 1928, issue 4, p. 92
  3. ↑ Reveta special reports in 1930, S. 16, pp 59-60; REVETA, 1931, p. 26
  4. ↑ See: Claudia Schmölders: The face of "blood and soil". Erna Lendvai-Dircksen's art geography. In: Paula Diehl (Ed.), Body in National Socialism. Pictures and practices. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2006, pp. 51-78. ISBN 3-7705-4256-8 ; Digital copy (Word file, 91 kB)
  5. ^ List of literature to be discarded. Dr. Olaf Simons, accessed December 7, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Lendvai-Dircksen, Erna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Wetterburg , Hessen-Nassau
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1962
Place of death Coburg