View from the town hall tower to the south

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Richard Peter: View from the town hall tower to the south , 1945

View from the town hall tower to the south is a black and white photograph by the German photographer Richard Peter , which he took in Dresden in autumn 1945 . The photo shows a figure of the tower of the New Town Hall and the ruins of Dresden's old town, which was largely destroyed in air raids by the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces in February 1945. The photo was published in 1950 in Peter's illustrated book Dresden - a camera accuses the city of documenting the destruction and reconstruction of the city. Together with two pictures of the same motif by Walter Hahn, photography developed into a symbol of the destruction of Dresden and an icon of German rubble photography . It has been used in a variety of publications on the subject and recreated by other photographers.

Emergence

Between February 13 and 15, the British Royal Air Force and the US Army Air Forces flew four waves of attack on Dresden, during which the city center was largely destroyed by a massive bombardment and the subsequent firestorm . It is estimated that up to 25,000 people lost their lives in the attacks. Richard Peter, who worked as a photographer for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung in the 1920s and 1930s , returned to Dresden from the war in September 1945. His image archive from the 1930s, like his camera equipment, was destroyed in the destruction of Dresden.

Nevertheless, he quickly began to document the ruins of Dresden with a Leica camera. According to his own statement, he climbed almost all the towers in the city center in order to take a bird's eye view from there. He tried several times from the town hall tower. At the first attempt a picture was impossible because of the backlight. On the second attempt, he discovered the tower figure and carried a stepladder two stories up to get to a window through which he could include the figure in the recording of Dresden. However, the recording was not usable because of the falling lines . He had therefore obtained a Rolleiflex with which, on the third attempt, the view from the town hall tower to the south was taken. Peter also glanced north and east.

description

The statues of virtue goodness (right) and wisdom on the town hall tower in Dresden. The wisdom is missing in Peter's photo, only the base can be seen. Apparently it had broken off earlier.

The foreground of the square photograph is dominated on the right by the stone figure of goodness , one of 16 statues of virtue on the tower of Dresden City Hall and one of six created by the sculptor August Schreitmüller . The female figure, which stands out darkly from the background, can be seen from the rear , next to her robe only the head in profile and the damaged left hand are visible. The figure looks south-south-west of Dresden's old town and points with his hand at its ruins. The city appears deserted, no known building of Dresden is recognizable among the ruins. The sunlight falls from the left, i.e. from the east. So the picture was taken in one morning.

publication

In the fall of 1946, 14 photos by Peter illustrated a report on Dresden in the magazine Heute published by the US military government in Germany . Among them was a photo of the town hall tower with a view to the south, which was wrongly declared as a photo of the tower of the court church . However, it was not the photo that later became famous, but a different shot.

In 1945 the City Council of Dresden published the illustrated book Bilddokument Dresden 1933–1945 by Kurt Schaarschuch , which showed famous buildings in Dresden before and after the air raids. The 40,000 printed copies were out of print in 1949. However, a new edition planned for 1950 failed. Instead, Richard Peters Dresden appeared in the Dresden publishing company - a camera is suing with a print run of 50,000 copies.

The illustrated book contains 104 black and white photos, nine of which are from other photographers, namely Walter Hahn , Erich Pohl , Erich Höhne and Bernhard Braun. The illustration part begins with three night shots that show Dresden before it was destroyed. The last one, an image of the so-called Canaletto view , is contrasted on the neighboring side with the view from the town hall tower to the south , which introduces the ruins. It takes up the entire portrait format. For this, the photo was cut heavily on the left side and the other three sides slightly, which emphasizes the stone figure. The section with photos of the ruins is followed by photos of the Dresden population and refugees. The image section ends with photos of the reconstruction of the city.

Instead of actually planned preface Richard Peters of the illustrated book was the poem Dresden of max zimmering initiated carries the propaganda trains. While the Soviet Union , represented by the Red Army soldiers , is thanked for the liberation, “ Wall Street ”, ie US capitalism, is also held responsible for the destruction of Dresden, in addition to its “own disgrace” . The poem thus followed a propaganda strategy that the Nazis began shortly after the air raids. Dresden was a peaceful city without an armaments industry, so the destruction of the city rich in cultural treasures was completely pointless. After the end of the war, this strategy was also adopted by politicians in eastern Germany. For them, the aim of the attacks was to make it more difficult to rebuild the democratic process in the Soviet occupation zone . The book ended with the Stockholm Appeal of the Standing Committee of the World Fighters for Peace Congress, a call to outlaw the atomic bomb and to condemn the first use of nuclear weapons.

The view from the town hall tower was to be seen in 1950 along with five other photos on the advertising poster for the book, which advertised with the slogan "Every German this book". While the book cover of the first edition showed the title alone, the new edition published in 1980 showed the view from the town hall tower .

analysis

Contrary to the actual meaning of the stone figure in Peter's photo, it is often interpreted as an angel in the reception of the photo. Several art historians, for example, establish a relationship between her and the "angel of history" by Walter Benjamin , whom the latter had described with reference to the painting Angelus Novus by Paul Klee in his posthumously published article On the Concept of History . According to Benjamin, this angel looks at the past and sees in it “a single catastrophe that incessantly piles rubble upon rubble and hurls it at his feet.” He is driven from paradise towards the future by a storm, commonly called progress turn your back. For Christoph Hamann, the town hall figure also looks back on the ruins of a disaster. In contrast to Benjamin, for whom paradise lies in the past, Peters predicts the future according to the dramaturgy of the illustrated book Dresden - A Camera Complains of an earthly "paradise" in the form of a socialist society.

In addition to looking back at the past, the gesture of the figure suggests a statement. Which statement this is remains open and can be filled with meaning depending on the needs of the viewer. It could be interpreted as a lamentation about the destruction but also as an indictment against the guilty party, either the National Socialists, their supporters or the Allied bomber pilots. A warning against human hubris or a heavenly forgiveness of worldly guilt are also possible. Hamann also emphasizes that photography met the need for reception in the Federal Republic of the post-war period . At that time, although they demarcated themselves from National Socialism, this was combined with an amnesty for the perpetrators and the Germans. The memory of the bombing raids had become the dominant memory of the war, which made it possible to portray the Germans as a community of victims and to avoid discussions about their own responsibility. Due to the lack of people in the picture, the destruction of Dresden appears to be a higher fate, and the question of guilt need not be asked here either.

Aftermath

Richard Peter: Photo from the town hall tower to the south, around 1967

The negative of the view from the town hall tower to the south is now part of the collection of the Deutsche Fotothek in Dresden. Of the second, very similar photo by Peter, which was published in the magazine Heute , only one positive exists and is in the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

Numerous photographers took pictures that resemble Peter's view from the town hall tower . In 1945, Walter Hahn and Willi Roßner also took photos. In Hilmar Pabel's photo from 1955, the ruins have been removed and the rubble cleared, only the apparently pointless streets through undeveloped area can be seen. Richard Peter himself also reproduced the photo several times. In the 1960s, for example, he documented the newly built prefabricated buildings on Prager Strasse from the town hall tower .

The motif became an icon of German rubble photography and a symbol of the destruction of Dresden and the bombing war in general. Numerous publications used either Peter's view from the town hall tower to the south or one of Walter Hahn's photos. In addition to German school books, these include numerous specialist books, the novel Schlachthof 5 or The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut as well as various press products. The motif was particularly frequent in the media in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. It was also used in a political context. It appeared both on posters and flyers of the NPD , which misused the memory of the bombing raids for their own purposes, as well as on leaflets of activists who campaign against this abuse.

literature

  • Christoph Hamann : Visual History and History Didactics. Image competence in historical-political education (=  historical science . Volume 53 ). Centaurus, Herbolzheim 2007, ISBN 978-3-8255-0687-2 , p. 123-134 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-86226-495-7_4 .
  • Wolfgang Hesse: The hapless angel. The destroyed Dresden in a photograph by Richard Peter . In: Forum Wissenschaft . No. 2 , 2005, p. 30–35 ( Arbeiterfotografie-sachsen.de [PDF; 2.2 MB ]).
  • Steven Hoelscher: 'Dresden, a Camera Accuses': Rubble Photography and the Politics of Memory in a Divided Germany . In: History of Photography . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2012, p. 288–305 , doi : 10.1080 / 03087298.2012.666071 (English).
  • Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. Part of Dresden's culture of remembrance. Dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg, Marburg 2010 ( uni-marburg.de ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christoph Hamann: Visual History and History Didactics. 2007, p. 125.
  2. ↑ Richard Peter: Good photos take time and effort. In: photography. No. 4, 1960, pp. 149-151. Quoted in: Christoph Hamann: Visual History and History Didactics. 2007, p. 129.
  3. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, pp. 44, 107.
  4. ↑ The town hall tower , accessed on June 17, 2020
  5. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, pp. 100-101.
  6. ^ A b Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, p. 44.
  7. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, pp. 65, 85.
  8. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, pp. 88, 99-100.
  9. ^ Christoph Hamann: Visual History and History Didactics. 2007, p. 128.
  10. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, pp. 60-61.
  11. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, p. 93.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Hesse The hapless angel. 2005, p. 32.
  13. ^ Christoph Hamann: Visual History and History Didactics. 2007, pp. 123-124.
  14. ^ Christoph Hamann: Visual History and History Didactics. 2007, pp. 131-134.
  15. ^ Sylvia Ziegner: The Dresden illustrated book - a camera accuses Richard Peter senior. 2010, pp. 104-106.
  16. ^ Christoph Hamann: Visual History and History Didactics. 2007, p. 130. Wolfgang Hesse The hapless angel. 2005, p. 32. Steven Hoelscher: 'Dresden, a Camera Accuses'. 2012, p. 296.
  17. ^ Steven Hoelscher: 'Dresden, a Camera Accuses'. 2012, pp. 289-290.