Aenne Biermann

Self-portrait, 1931

Aenne Biermann (born 3. March 1898 in Goch on the Lower Rhine as Anna Sibylla Sternefeld ; died 14. January 1933 in Gera ) was a German photographer of the New Objectivity .

Career

Anna Sibylla Sternefeld was born as the third child of a Jewish factory owner family. In 1920 she married Herbert Biermann, a son of the also Jewish department store owner Max Biermann (1856–1922) and moved to live with him in Gera. The couple had two children.

Piano strings of a grand piano, 1928

Cover of her book 60 Photos , published during her lifetime , Klinkhardt & Biermann 1930

As an autodidact, she came to photography in the early 1920s. First she photographed her children in a family setting, then plants and everyday things like the piano at home; The Gera geologist Rudolf Hundt finally asked them to take sharp and detailed photos of the rocks he had collected. In the course of a few years she professionalized her work more and more, committing herself to the style of New Seeing and New Objectivity . Her work includes material shots as well as portraits, landscapes and still life subjects.

She developed a new perspective on architecture like its neighboring buildings, fixed landscapes in tense picture compositions and portrayed people from under or overhead as well as with unusual image details. She experimented with multiple exposures, collages, and reflections.

In 1928 Biermann had her first exhibition with large-format plant photographs in Günther Franke's Graphisches Kabinett in Munich and shortly afterwards published pioneering works in the Kunstblatt . In 1930 the first major exhibition of her works took place in Jena . Macro shots of people and objects are characteristic of her work. Like Lucia Moholy , Florence Henri and Germaine Krull , Biermann was represented at international photo exhibitions in the early 1930s. Between 1929 and 1931 she expanded her photographic spectrum, the photos of boulevards in Paris and her nude photos with strong light contrasts and extreme image cuts still look modern today.

With 34 years Aenne Biermann died in January 1933 - a few days before the seizure of power by the National Socialists - from a liver disease. She did not live to see the National Socialist persecution and expropriation of her relatives. Her husband and children were able to emigrate to Palestine. Their archive, comprising around 3,000 negatives, was confiscated in Trieste, sent back to Germany and has been largely lost since then.

Appreciation

The Geraer Museum für Angewandte Kunst , which Aenne Biermann dedicates a separate room to its permanent exhibition, has been awarding the Aenne Biermann Prize for German contemporary photography every two years since 1992 . In the Lusan district , a regular school - now closed - was named after her. On December 5, 2009, the Gera Adult Education Center was given the name "Aenne Biermann". A Gera tram locomotive has been carrying her name since 2008 .

Exhibitions with works by Aenne Biermann took place in 2002 in the Deutsches Museum in Munich and in 2003 and 2007 in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. A collection of 24 works, 11 negatives and 17 small-format archive prints as well as other archive material is held by the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and was shown in full for the first time in an exhibition in 2018. A comprehensive presentation with around 100 photographs and extensive archive material mainly from the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation was shown from July 12 to October 13, 2019 in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

The Biermann family's villa in Gera- Untermhaus was auctioned in 2019 and is to be demolished. The city of Gera is not involved.

literature

• Aenne Biermann. 60 photos . With an introduction by Franz Roh , design: Jan Tschichold , Klinkhardt & Biermann , Leipzig 1930
  • reprinted 2019 (with a comment by the photo historian Hans-Michael Koetzle), Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-94361-659-0
• Ute Eskildsen (Ed.): Aenne Biermann. Photographs 1925-33 (= Folkwang series ), Berlin: Nishen, 1987, ISBN 978-3-88940-019-2 and ISBN 3-88940-019-1
• Ute Eskildsen : Biermann, Aenne , in: Jutta Dick / Marina Sassenberg (eds.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, ISBN 3-499-16344-6 , pp. 67-70
• Kai Uwe Schierz (Ed.): Miracles over miracles. Wonderful and wonderful things in faith, in nature and in art , November 18, 2007 to January 13, 2008, Kunsthalle Erfurt , Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-86678-115-3

Web links

Commons : Aenne Biermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Aenne Biermann in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: "I'm so cool". Retrieved December 14, 2019 . 
2. ↑ AENNE BIERMANN. FAMILIARITY WITH THINGS | THE PINAKOTHEKEN. Retrieved December 14, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Hans-Peter Jakobson: Fascinated by the life of things. On the 75th anniversary of the death of Gera photographer Aenne Biermann . In: Ostthüringer Zeitung , January 12, 2008.
4. ^ Sylvia Eigenrauch: Adult Education Center Gera is called Aenne Biermann . In: Ostthüringer Zeitung , December 7, 2009.
5. ↑ Aenne Biermann on kunstaspekte.de
6. ^ Name of the photographer: Aenne Biermann. In: ludwig.museenkoeln.de. Museum Ludwig, June 13, 2018, accessed June 13, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Aenne Biermann. Familiarity with things. The Pinakotheken, accessed on July 11, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Stefan Trinks: Photo villa in danger. faz.net, September 26, 2019, accessed on September 27, 2019 .