David Rubinger

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David Rubinger (2014)
David Rubinger (2014)

David Rubinger ( Hebrew דוד רובינגר; born June 24, 1924 in Vienna ; died 1. March 2017 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli photographer and photojournalist , the history of Israel has captured in vivid images since the state was founded. His famous photo of three Israeli paratroopers looking at the Western Wall after the capture of the Western Wall in June 1967 became the defining icon of the Six Day War . Shimon Peres called Rubinger “the photographer of the nation in the making”.

Life

David Rubinger was born in Vienna in 1924 as an only child. He lived there until he was 15. But the German invasion of Austria on March 12, 1938 and the subsequent de facto annexation of Austria by the National Socialist German Reich forced Rubinger to leave school. He then joined the Zionist youth movement Child and Youth Aliyah and was able to escape the Nazi thugs two months after the start of the Second World War . From Trieste he sailed with a group to Palestine . His father had previously managed to escape from a concentration camp to England. His mother fell victim to the Holocaust , she was murdered in a concentration camp.

In Palestine, Rubinger lived in a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley for two years until he joined the British Army’s Jewish brigade in 1942 . He served in North Africa , Malta , Italy , Germany, and Belgium . While on vacation in Paris , a friend gave him his first camera and sparked his passion for photography. His first professional photo was taken in 1947 on the occasion of the United Nations' plan to divide Palestine in favor of a separate Jewish state: At the time, Rubinger photographed Jewish youths who climbed onto a British tank to celebrate this event.

After the Second World War, Rubinger returned to Palestine in 1946. Before that he had bought his first own camera in Germany for 200 cigarettes and a kilo of coffee. There he met his cousin Anni and her mother, both survivors of the Holocaust. Since Anni was stateless after the war - the lot of many former concentration camp prisoners - Rubinger married her in order to secure her emigration to Palestine. This initial marriage of convenience changed quickly and lasted until Anni's death 50 years later. Nevertheless, Rubinger described their marriage as “stormy” and admitted in his autobiography “Israel through my lens” to having had several affairs. David and Anni Rubinger had two children.

During the Palestine War of 1947, Rubinger fought in Jerusalem and narrowly escaped death when two soldiers were killed next to him. After the war, he opened a photography studio in Jerusalem and tried to sell his pictures to newspapers. His breakthrough came when he was hired five years later by Uri Avnery as a photojournalist for the weekly magazine haOlam haZeh . He worked for the magazine for two years. After that, the most widely read Israeli evening paper Jedi'ot Acharonot and the Jerusalem Post hired Rubinger as photographers.

In 1954 a correspondent for Time-Life magazine asked Rubinger to illustrate her story - the beginning of a long collaboration with one of the most influential magazines in the world. Rubinger worked for the magazine for more than 50 years. In 1972 he finally became their contract photographer. His first internationally published photo in Time-Life magazine showed a nun. She was holding the prostheses of a patient who dropped them out of the window of a hospital over the green demarcation line into Jordanian territory. After long negotiations, the nun was allowed to get the prostheses on the other side of the border.

In 2000 Anni died of cancer. Afterwards Rubinger was in a relationship with the Yemeni immigrant Ziona Spivak. The relationship ended tragically when Spivak was murdered by a Palestinian gardener in their home in 2004. In 2008 he published his autobiography "Israel through my lens: sixty years as a photojournalist" together with Ruth Corman. In 2010 it was also published in Germany.

“Photography is feeling. Sometimes you photograph what you are witnessing with pride, other times with pain. "

- David Rubinger

Career

Rubinger is considered one of the most famous photojournalists in the world. His pictures document contemporary Israeli history since the state was founded in times of war and peace. As early as 1949, he photographed the opening of the Knesset by the first President Chaim Weizmann .

While working as a photojournalist, Rubinger established close contacts with the powerful in Israel. He was granted unprecedented access. He was the only one who was allowed to take pictures of the Knesset cafeteria and to some extent photographed extremely private and intimate moments of Israel's political leadership. These include pictures of Shimon Peres in shorts, a close hug between Ariel Sharon and his wife, a photo of Golda Meir feeding her granddaughter or quiet moments between Yitzchak and Leah Rabin . His photos can be viewed in a permanent exhibition in the Knesset.

The well-known photos include a picture of the summit meeting between the Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat and the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1980. Both put their heads together so that their foreheads almost collide.

However, Rubinger was not only a photographer of those in power. He also staged the suffering of the poor and minorities: the lives of Jewish immigrants in Israeli transition camps as well as Arab refugees during the war of independence.

In 1997 he received the Israel Prize in the field of art, culture and media for his work as a photojournalist , the highest award of the State of Israel. He was the first photographer to be honored with the award. His archive contained more than half a million recordings. In 1999 he sold it to the Jedi'ot Acharonot newspaper .

Rubinger and Israel

Rubinger's relationship with Israel was ambivalent. He condemned the territorial annexations after the Six-Day War to the last, but missed the idealistic spirit of the early days. He considered the establishment of the state to be necessary and sensible:

"The Jewish state must exist so that Jews have a place to flee to if they have to."

- David Rubinger

Paratroopers at the Western Wall

Rubinger's best-known picture is the paratroopers at the Western Wall shortly after the Wall was recaptured in the Six Day War. Photographed from a flat angle with 35 mm film , the three faces of the paratroopers contrast the Western Wall. The soldiers look up in awe and relieved along the wall. The paratrooper in the middle holds his helmet in his hands.

Before Rubinger took the photo, he was in al-Arish on the Sinai Peninsula . When he heard of historical developments in Jerusalem , he flew in a helicopter with wounded soldiers to Beersheba without knowing where the helicopter was going. By chance his car was in Beersheba and he drove to Jerusalem. When he reached the Western Wall, he lay down on the ground and photographed the paratroopers as they passed. A short time later, Rabbi Shlomo Goren reached the Western Wall with Torah and Shofar . The soldiers took him on their shoulders. Rubinger also photographed this scene.

Because of their emotionality, Rubinger preferred the pictures by Shlomo Goren. Anni convinced him, however, that the paratroopers were better received. So he sent it to the army, which sold it to all newspapers in Israel for two Israeli liras . This is how the picture became an icon of the Six Day War. Even later Rubinger was of the opinion that the picture was not very meaningful and artistically weak because a head was cut off.

In 2001, a judge from the Israeli Supreme Court said the photo had "become a feature of the entire nation."

Publications

  • with Ruth Corman: Israel through my lens. Sixty years as a photojournalist . Translated by Miriam Fried. Pellens Verlag, Bonn 2010, ISBN 978-3-9810534-4-9 .
  • Witness to an era . Translated by Christine Bacher. Nahar & Yedioth Ahronot, Tel-Aviv 1988, ISBN 965-360-003-6 .

literature

  • Alisa Douer : New territory. Israeli artists of Austrian origin. Picus, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-85452-407-2 , p. 236f. (Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name).

Web links

Commons : David Rubinger  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Message from the family: David Rubinger died at the age of 93 . APA-OTS , March 2, 2017, accessed March 2, 2017.
  2. ↑ Joseph Croitoru : Israel's eye on the death of the photographer David Rubinger . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 3, 2017, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Rubinger, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli photographer and photojournalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 1st March 2017
Place of death Jerusalem