Anja Niedringhaus

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Anja Niedringhaus (born October 12, 1965 in Höxter ; † April 4, 2014 in Banda Khel ) was a German photojournalist who told complex stories in individual photos from war zones in Yugoslavia , Palestine , Afghanistan , Kuwait , Libya and Iraq . She received the Pulitzer Prize and other awards. In 2014 she was shot dead the day before the presidential election in Afghanistan .

Life

Anja Niedringhaus grew up with two siblings. At the age of 17 she began to work for the local editorial office of the Neue Westfälische Zeitung in her hometown of Höxter. After graduating from the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium Höxter in 1986 , she went to India for Kindernothilfe . From 1986 she studied German, philosophy and journalism at the University of Göttingen and wrote and photographed for the Göttinger Tageblatt . She last lived with her sister's family on a farm in Kaufungen and had another apartment in Geneva.

Her photos of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 gave her a job at the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA), which she hired as the first female photographer. After two years of sports and social photography, she was sent to the war in Yugoslavia that had just started in 1992 . During her first deployment in Sarajevo she was caught and hit by snipers ; she survived thanks to a bulletproof vest . In 1997, she suffered multiple foot fractures in an accident with a police vehicle in Belgrade . In Kosovo in 1998, her car was hit by a shell and she was injured by shrapnel. In 1999 she and a group of journalists were mistakenly bombed by NATO aircraft at a border crossing between Albania and Kosovo .

In 2001, Niedringhaus photographed the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th in New York. Shortly afterwards she worked for the first time in Afghanistan, where she spent three months reporting on the overthrow of the radical Islamic Taliban in Mazar-e Sharif and Kabul . From 2002 she worked for the American news agency Associated Press (AP), also as a photojournalist and war correspondent .

In 2003/2004 she was one of the approx. 600 war reporters who were " embedded " (within the US Army) at the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq . She was there on the first wave of attacks; Sixty percent of the soldiers in the unit that accompanied them fell. Her best-known photo in this series shows the then US President George W. Bush , who had been flown in under strict security precautions to unexpectedly serve a turkey to soldiers in the heavily secured Baghdad airport for Thanksgiving (later it turned out that the turkey was just a decoration). Apart from her, no other photographer had captured the scene.

She photographed the bomb attacks on the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Baghdad , on the headquarters of the Italian security forces in Nasiriya and in the Iraqi Abu Ghuraib prison as well as the Iraqi elections in 2005. Niedringhaus received for photo reporting from Iraq - as the first German woman - together with nine AP colleagues the “ Pulitzer Prize ” 2005. In the same year she was also awarded a prize for courage, the “Courage in Journalism Award” from the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF). In 2008 she received the “ Golden Pen ” for outstanding reports as a woman in crisis areas.

In 2007, she spent an academic year on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University , which Warren Buffett also took over tuition fees for scholarship holders .

As a counterbalance to her main professional activity, Niedringhaus photographed important sporting events, for example she was at the Wimbledon Championships every year .

In September 2009, Niedringhaus was the first to take photos of the tank trucks destroyed in the air raid near Kunduz after the ISAF missile attack . The two tankers hijacked by the Taliban were bombed on the orders of German Colonel Georg Klein . At this point in time, the Bundeswehr had denied that 91 villagers had been killed in the air attack.

Her photo of two German soldiers hugging each other after an operation in the Kunduz province of northern Afghanistan was used many times by the Bund Deutscher EinsatzVeteranen and is shown on the cover of the book "The invisible veterans" published in March 2016. In the book's list of illustrators, the editors Marcel Bohnert and Björn Schreiber describe Anja Niedringhaus as a photojournalist who managed to "build close, personal and friendly relationships with soldiers".

Anja Niedringhaus' works have been exhibited many times, for example at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, the Kasseler Kunstverein , the International Forum for Visual Dialogues C / O Berlin , the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston , the Coalmine Forum for Documentary Photography in Winterthur and in Situation Art (for Max Imdahl) - art collections of the Ruhr University Bochum . Her motto as a war correspondent was: “If I don't take a photo, it won't be known.” In a special exhibition on the fifth anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize winner's death, there are more than 80 large-format photos at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne from the end of March to June 30, 2019 to see, it is the first posthumous retrospective of its kind.

attack

Niedringhaus and her Associated Press colleague, Canadian journalist Kathy Gannon, were in an election convoy of Afghan security forces and election workers who delivered ballot papers in Khost province to cover the 2014 presidential election in Afghanistan . On April 4, at a security force base, they were waiting in the back seat of their vehicle to continue their journey when a police officer with the words " Allahu Akbar " fired a volley from his AK-47 on them. Niedringhaus was killed instantly, Gannon was injured by three bullets.

The 25-year-old gunman was arrested without resistance. He had worked for the Afghan National Police since 2012 and had been trained by US instructors in Mazar-e Sharif . He claims to have acted in revenge for the deaths of family members in a NATO bombing in Parwan province .

On July 22, 2014, he was sentenced to death by a court in Kabul after a two-hour closed hearing. The judgment was not final until it was confirmed by a higher court and also had to be approved by the Afghan President. Until the judgment became final, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office also brought proceedings against the police officer. The German government spoke out against a death sentence. At the trial in Kabul, a diplomat pushed for imprisonment instead of the death penalty . The Supreme Court eventually reduced the sentence to 20 years in prison.

Niedringhaus was buried on April 12, 2014 in her hometown Höxter in the cemetery on Wall .

background

Between the official start of the presidential campaign on February 15 and the election on April 5, 2014, journalists were threatened or attacked in at least 20 cases. Two of them died in March, including Nils Horner .

The attack was carried out by an internal perpetrator. In addition to the case of Anja Niedringhaus, there were three such attacks in Afghanistan up to the beginning of August 2014, in which Germans were also injured. Contrary to the widespread belief that the perpetrators are regularly smuggled terrorists, intercultural misunderstandings, social insults and personal revenge often play a role in the acts.

Anja Niedringhaus Prize

As a souvenir and honor, the International Foundation for Women in the media offered an Anja Niedringhaus Prize in mid-April 2014. The prize is given annually as an award for photojournalists who are committed to reporting through extraordinary bravery. A grant of one million US dollars from the Foundation of Howard Graham Buffett , son of Warren Buffett , brought the award to life. The prize was awarded for the first time in 2015, namely to the photojournalist Heidi Levine . In 2017 the US photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair was honored, in 2018 the US photographer Andrea Bruce .

Exhibitions

  • 2019, March 29th - June 30th: Anja Niedringhaus - Bilderkriegerin , retrospective on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the death of the photojournalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne
  • 2017, April 21 - July 21: Beloved Afghanistan , custody / art collection of the University of Leipzig
  • 2015/2016, November 25th - January 24th: Beloved Afghanistan , Willy-Brandt-Haus , Berlin
  • 2015, April 12th - May 25th: At World , Korbmacher-Museum Dalhausen
  • 2015, February 11th - April 12th: pictures from the war . GaF - gallery for photo art in the former ice cream factory (Hanover)
  • 2014, June 28th - September 7th: Faces of War. Town house Ulm
  • 2014, April 10th - July 11th: AT WAR. War photographs of 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner Anja Niedringhaus. Coalmine Forum for Documentary Photography, Winterthur
  • 2013, June 16 - August 25: Anja Niedringhaus at sports. Cultural association ART Driburg, Museum Burg Dringenberg
  • 2013, June 15 - July 28: Anja Niedringhaus at war. Jacob Pins Society - Kunstverein Höxter
  • 2012, August 22nd - September 3rd: Photography from war zones. Kassel Art Association
  • 2012/2013, June 3 - January 13: Total photography. Works from the MMK Frankfurt collection
  • 2012, January 21 - April 15: Anja Niedringhaus - 20 years of photography from war zones. Situation art (for Max Imdahl), art collections of the Ruhr University Bochum
  • 2012, January 12th - March 18th: Anja Niedringhaus. at war , Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Eschborn
  • 2011, September 10th - December 4th: At War. Solo exhibition, 40 large prints of black and white photographs from the past ten years. C / O Berlin
  • 2010/2011, September 25th - April 25th: The Luzid Evidence. Photography from the collection of the MMK Frankfurt.
  • 2003, January 11th - March 26th: M_ARS - Art and War. New Gallery Graz
  • 2001/2002, September 28th - March 3rd: change of scene XX. Museum of Modern Art , Frankfurt

Awards

literature

  • Michael Kamber: image warrior. Of those who move out to open our eyes. War photographers tell. Translation and editing: Fred Grimm; with a foreword by Takis Würger. Ankerherz Verlag, Hollenstedt 2013, ISBN 978-3-940138-44-6 .
  • Marcel Bohnert: Enemies in your own ranks. On the problem of internal perpetrators in Afghanistan. In: if. Journal for Inner Leadership , 2, 2014, ISSN  1864-5321 . Pp. 5-12.
  • Hannelore Fischer (Ed.) For the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Cologne: Anja Niedringhaus - Bilderkriegerin , exhibition catalog with contributions by Sonya and Yury Winterberg, Minka Nijhues, Michael Kamber, etc., Wienand-Verlag, Cologne 2019, ISBN 978-3-86832-514 -0 .
  • Anne-Marie Beckmann: Anja Niedringhaus . In: Photographers at the front. From Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus, Munich a. a .: Prestel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7913-5863-5 , pp. 189-217.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Fasel: You wanted to see how big the world is. , Die Welt vom May 22, 2005, accessed September 12, 2011.
  2. ↑ Paths of life: Anja Niedringhaus, Abitur 1986 (July 2013). Homepage of the König-Wilhelm-Gymnasium Höxter
  3. ↑ Marco Böhme: The direct. ( Memento from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) factor online from December 8, 2007.
  4. ↑ a b Anja Niedringhaus - 2005 Courage in Journalism Award. International Women's Media Foundation , October 23, 2005.
  5. ↑ On the death of Anja Niedringhaus ( memento from June 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), Stern.de, April 4, 2014
  6. ↑ Alumni Fellows . Nieman Foundation, Nieman Fellowships. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
  7. ↑ Christoph Reuter : Steadfast and cheerful. In: Der Spiegel , edition 15/2014 of April 7, 2014, pp. 88–90.
  8. ↑ On the death of Anja Niedringhaus: As close as possible. FAZ , April 4, 2014
  9. ^ Homepage of the book The Invisible Veterans
  10. ↑ M. Bohnert & B. Schreiber (eds.) (2016): The invisible veterans. War returnees in German society. Carola Hartmann Miles-Verlag : Berlin, p. 220
  11. ^ The Lucid Evidence ( memento November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 2010–2011.
  12. ↑ M_ARS - Art and War . 2003.
  13. ↑ a b Information on the 2011 exhibition on the c / o Berlin website ( memento of April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 9, 2014.
  14. ↑ Anja Niedringhaus - "Bilderkriegerin" , tagesschau.de, published and accessed March 28, 2019
  15. ↑ German war photographer shot in Afghanistan. Spiegel Online , April 4, 2014.
  16. ^ German photographer shot dead in Afghanistan. Zeit Online, April 4, 2014.
  17. ↑ AP photographer killed, reporter wounded. (Eng.) AP, April 4, 2014.
  18. ^ Death penalty for murderer of the photographer in Afghanistan. Spiegel.de, accessed on July 24, 2014.
  19. ^ Federal government against death sentence. In: Der Spiegel , 31/2014 of July 28, 2014, p. 13.
  20. ↑ Der Spiegel , 31/2014.
  21. ↑ Anja Niedringhaus: German photographer's murderer escapes the death penalty. Zeit Online from March 28, 2015.
  22. ↑ Funeral service in Höxter: hundreds say goodbye to Anja Niedringhaus. Focus Online from April 12, 2014.
  23. ^ German photographer killed in Afghanistan. ( Memento from December 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) br.de, April 4, 2014.
  24. ↑ Marcel Bohnert: Enemies in your own ranks. On the problem of internal perpetrators in Afghanistan, if. Journal for Inner Leadership, 2, 2014, p. 5ff.
  25. ^ Organization donates the Anja Niedringhaus Prize. From HNA.de on April 16, 2014.
  26. ↑ Prize named after photographer Anja Niedringhaus. From die-glocke.de from April 16, 2014.
  27. ↑ Heidi Levine receives Anja-Niedringhaus-Preis 2105 , Der Tagesspiegel from March 28, 2015, accessed March 28, 2019
  28. ↑ Anja Niedringhaus Prize for Stephanie Sinclair , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, accessed on June 8, 2017
  29. ↑ Images From A Photographer Of Courage , National Public Radio, April 28, 2018, accessed March 28, 2019
  30. ↑ Information on www.kollwitz.de , accessed on February 13, 2019
  31. ↑ Information on a page from the Berlin Humboldt University , accessed on April 30, 2017
  32. ↑ release of the exhibition , www.willy-brandt-haus.de, accessed on January 1, 2016th
  33. ↑ Korbmacher-Museum Dalhausen shows photos by Anja Niedringhaus , accessed on March 28, 2019f
  34. ↑ The "special view" of Anja Niedringhaus. ( Memento from February 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) ndr.de , February 12, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2015.
  35. ↑ The horror that remains: Exhibition "Faces of War" in Ulm. In: Südwest Presse , June 27, 2014. Accessed July 9, 2014.
  36. ↑ Organizer information , accessed on April 20, 2014.
  37. ↑ Dieter Langhart: Ambassador of humanity. In: Thurgauer Zeitung from April 16, 2014.
  38. ↑ Exhibition: ?? At War ?? In war?? - Photographs by Anja Niedringhaus. Page of the Höxter VHS Marienmünster
  39. ^ Kasseler Kunstverein in the documenta year 2012. ( Memento from March 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Page of the Kasseler Kunstverein
  40. ↑ Anja Niedringhaus. At war. Photographs ( Memento from July 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) herrenzimmer.de
  41. ↑ Announcement with group photo of the AP photographers with Niedringhaus on the award page , accessed on September 12, 2011.
  42. ^ Spiegel interview , accessed on July 27, 2009.
  43. ↑ Die Goldene Feder 2008 ( Memento from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 1, 2011
  44. ^ The 2011 award winners , Abisag Tüllmann Foundation
personal data
SURNAME Niedringhaus, Anja
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photojournalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Höxter , Germany
DATE OF DEATH April 4, 2014
Place of death Banda Khel , Afghanistan