Arthur Grimm (photographer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arthur Grimm (born May 21, 1908 in Rehau ; † after 1990) was a German photographer . He was one of the most important photo reporters during the Nazi era .

Life

On May 1, 1933, Grimm became a member of the NSDAP local group in Rehau (Upper Franconia). In August 1934 he moved to Berlin . Before the Second World War , Grimm took press photos of numerous political events of the National Socialists .

In 1936 he was responsible for the Olympia-Film GmbH alongside his colleague Rolf Lantin for the still photos and for numerous work recordings during the filming of Leni Riefenstahl's " Olympia " film. Among other things, he accompanied Riefenstahl and their team to Greece. In the same year he documented the Spanish Civil War as a photo reporter for a French news agency .

In March 1939 he photographed the angry crowd at the roadside when the Germans marched into Prague . In autumn 1939, Grimm was working in the Warsaw ghetto . His “photo reportage”, which was printed in the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung on December 5, 1939 , shows, with staged scenes, Jews arrested in a raid who , as residents of the ghetto, “buried weapons in a corpse-shameful manner” in the graves of Polish soldiers. In Grimm's estate there are dozens of photos that use the “enemy image of the bearded 'Eastern Jew'”, which were obviously photographed “in particularly unfavorable perspectives that distorted them”. From May 1940 to 1945 he worked as a special leader in a propaganda company for the magazine " Signal ". There he published photo reports about the war in France , the Balkans and above all in the Soviet Union .

Around 1945 he moved his studio to Wernigerode in the Harz region. In the immediate post-war years he trained there among others the photographer Horst Lang, who later became famous . At an unknown point in time he returned to West Berlin and worked successfully as a still photographer for film and television until 1984. In 1955, the former Nazi propaganda photographer was the still photographer for the feature film " July 20 " (D 1955). Especially the ZDF was one of his regular clients. His studio was on Englerallee in Berlin-Dahlem . He lived in Hamburg for the last years of his life .

As early as 1971 he handed over parts of his archive to the Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin. Further material from his property was bought in 1983 by the “kpa” photo archive, which in turn became the property of the “Content Mine International AG” photo agency in Cologne in 1998 . In 2019, United Archives GmbH from Cologne acquired the archive, digitized large parts of it and put it online.

Grimm was married to the actress Helga Kalkum, his son Thomas Grimm (* 1942) works as a director and producer of documentary films.

Grimm's older brother was the director Hans Grimm , his sister Betti († 1989) was married to the director and producer Kurt Hoffmann since 1938 .

Illustrated books

  • Leni Riefenstahl: Beauty in the Olympic fight . Berlin 1937 [the volume contains numerous film stills as well as photos by Arthur Grimm, Rolf Lantin and Willy Zielke ]

Exhibitions

  • Regen, Niederbayerisches Landwirtschaftsmuseum: The picture of Waldler in the Third Reich, photographs by Hans Hubmann and Arthur Grimm (2000)

literature

  • Christian Binder: Photographed Reality? The Bavarian Forest in photographs by Hanns Hubmann and Arthur Grimm. Master's thesis Univ. Regensburg 1999
  • Christian Binder: Waidler clichés and National Socialist propaganda: the Bavarian Forest in pictures by Hanns Hubmann and Arthur Grimm. In: clearing. 13. 2000, pp. 10-14
  • Klaus Hesse: PK photographers in the Nazi war of extermination. A photo report by Artur Grimm from occupied Warsaw in 1939 . In: Rainer Rother , Judith Prokasky (ed.): The camera as a weapon. Propaganda images of the Second World War. edition text + kritik, Munich 2010, ISBN 3-86916-067-5 , pp. 137–149

Web links

Commons : Arthur Grimm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Hesse: PK photographers in the Nazi war of extermination. A photo report by Artur Grimm from occupied Warsaw in 1939 . In: Rainer Rother, Judith Prokasky (ed.): The camera as a weapon. Propaganda images of the Second World War. edition text + kritik, Munich 2010, pp. 140f.
  2. ^ Klaus Hesse: PK photographers in the Nazi war of extermination. A photo report by Artur Grimm from occupied Warsaw in 1939 , p. 143.
personal data
SURNAME Grimm, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Rehau
DATE OF DEATH after 1990