Erich Andres

Erich Andres (born January 12, 1905 in Leipzig , † February 6, 1992 in Hamburg ) was a German photo editor .

Live and act

Erich Andres completed a professional training as a typesetter in Dresden from 1921 to 1922 . During his apprenticeship, he took photos with a self-made camera and used the images for diary-like recordings. He photographed landscapes, people, costumes and folk customs. In 1923 he became unemployed, moved to Hamburg and found a job in the printing house of the Rauhe Haus . During this time he was already working part-time as a photo reporter. The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung published the first pictures from his extensive travels through southern Europe in 1927/28 . In 1928/29 he also went hiking through Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy.

During the Great Depression in 1929 he lost his job as a typesetter. He photographed the unemployed in Hamburg, the free table of the workers 'council that met in the Hamburg trade union building and the workers' self- help. The pictures could be seen in the Hamburger Echo and in Volk und Zeit . His photo series entitled "Crisis" from November 1930 also showed his own unemployment card. His first major photo reportage trip was in 1931 to the multi-ethnic state of Albania , at that time a young kingdom that became increasingly dependent on neighboring Italy under Mussolini . Andres planned together with the publisher Reimar Hobbing to publish the pictures as a book with the title People of the Albanians . However, the project did not materialize.

In 1931 Andres was able to establish himself as a full-time photographer. During the period of National Socialism , he continued to work as a photographer. On May 1, 1934, he captured a march of the broken trade unions on the Heiligengeistfeld in the picture and photographed the 1936 imperial professional competition . He also documented the launching of Wilhelm Gustloff , Robert Ley and Bismarck . It can be seen that Adolf Hitler frequently visited Hamburg and that Rudolf Blohm was in close contact with him.

Andres, who won numerous photo competitions, was officially accredited as a photo reporter for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin . With the permission of the Propaganda Ministry , which was necessary at the time , Erich Andres photographed the Spanish civil war from the perspective of the fascists in 1937 . He showed republican prisoners of war doing forced labor in the basement of the Palace of Toledo . Many of the recordings did not meet the Ministry's expectations and showed the difficult life of simple people in particular during the civil war.

From 1939 to 1945 Erich Andres was called up for military service, which he completed in the naval propaganda company . On home leave in June 1943, he married Hildegard Hänisch in Dresden. During this time he photographed - which was strictly forbidden - the destruction of Hamburg in the hail of bombs and the consequences for the everyday life of the survivors. When Operation Gomorrah the Royal Air Force were more than 50,000 hamburgers killed and much of the city lay in ruins. The writer Hans Erich Nossack , who kept a diary during this time, processed the photos and his notes in the book Der Untergang .

Heinrich Breloer and Horst Königstein interviewed Andres as contemporary witnesses in their award-winning television film Das Heil von Wandsbek (1982) .

After the war, Andres worked as a freelancer. In the beginning he documented the destroyed city, the black market and the reconstruction. Later worked for the Spiegel and Hamburg daily newspapers , among others . One of his tools of the trade was a folding ladder, which gave him unusual perspectives and earned him the nickname “Man with the Ladder”. Again and again he was drawn to the harbor. In April 1958 he photographed protests of the movement Fight against Atomic Death on the Rathausmarkt . He took impressive pictures at the inauguration of the Hohe Weide synagogue and the storm surge in 1962 . From 1962 he illustrated the annual reports and annual calendar of SAGA in particular .

Erich Andres, who lived in Hamburg-Altona , developed into a sought-after specialist in the documentation of Hamburg's history. Museums and publishers repeatedly showed his photographs at exhibitions or printed the pictures. The photographer died in Hamburg in 1992.

Archives

His estate is in the Dresden City Museum . Pictures with a connection to Hamburg are archived in the Hamburg Monument Protection Office and additional in the picture archive Preussischer Kulturbesitz , Berlin. The owner of the partial estate with exclusive rights without the motifs related to Hamburg and Dresden has been United Archives GmbH, based in Cologne, since February 2019.

Publications

• with Horst Wisser: A childhood in Hamburg in the 50s . Wartberg-Verlag, Gudensberg-Gleichen 1998, ISBN 3-86134-479-3 .
• Albania. A photo-reading book . Basisdruck, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-86163-031-1 .
• with Ulli Müller: The man with the ladder - 50 years on the road with the Hamburg photo reporter 1920–1970. Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-926174-52-8 .
• with Hans Erich Nossack: The downfall. Hamburg 1943 . Kabel-Verlag and Hamburger Abendblatt, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-8225-0236-7 .
• Death over Hamburg: Photos and notes from the firestorm - July 25 to August 1, 1943. Ed. By Jan Zimmermann . Junius Verlag, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-88506-835-8

literature

• Wilfried Weinke: Andres, Erich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 22-23 .
• Erich Andres: Death over Hamburg - Photos and notes from the firestorm July 25 to August 1, 1943 , Junius Verlag GmbH, 2018, ISBN 978-3-88506-835-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erich Andres - The photographer as a chronicler. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. February 9, 2009.
2. ^ Enterprise Gomorrah. In: Der Spiegel. February 16, 1981 and in the book Der Untergang 1943. pp. 230–231.
3. ^ Photographs by Erich Andres in the Prussian Cultural Heritage Image Archive