Frieda Riess

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Frieda Gertrud Riess (born June 21, 1890 in Czarnikau , Province of Posen , † before July 5, 1957 in Paris ) was a German photographer of the Jewish faith. She was considered the “most successful society photographer of the Weimar Republic ” and was also respectfully called “the Riess”.

Life

Frieda Riess came from a Jewish merchant family. Her father Emil Riess died when she was eight years old. In the 1890s, her mother Selma Riess (née Schreyer) and her three children Alfred (* 1882), Walter (* 1884) and Frieda moved to Berlin . There Frieda Riess took lessons from the sculptor Hugo Lederer , but then turned to photography. From 1913 to 1915 she completed the two-year training as a photography assistant at the Lette Association established in 1890 . The association had set itself the goal of promoting the employability of daughters of the middle and upper middle class . However, it is not known whether Riess got a job after successfully completing his training. Kurt Pinthus wrote that she was "at no time the student of a great photographer".

In 1917 Frieda Riess opened a studio on Kurfürstendamm 14/15 , between Joachimsthaler Straße and the Gedächtniskirche , not far from the Romanesque Café and opposite the Berlin Secession . With the opening of the atelier, Frieda Riess was one of the first independent entrepreneurs of her generation. The Kurfürstendamm was one of the most exclusive addresses in Berlin. It stood for modern life, exclusivity and was the experimental field of modernity . In Berlin in the Roaring Twenties , writers and artists met in bars, cafes and pubs and turned night into day with drugs and cheap entertainment. From 1922 Frieda Riess moved daily in this environment, because at that time she moved into an apartment in the house in which her studio was located. Introduced into the circle of prominent personalities of the Weimar Republic through her marriage to the lawyer and writer Rudolf Leonhard , she experienced a social rise. The people she was with soon included actors, dancers, singers, painters and writers. In her private life, too, Riess was very interested in literature. In addition to portraits, she also made photographs for films and the like. a. for Joe May's The Indian Tomb , Ernst Lubitsch's The Pharaoh's Wife , for Richard Eichberg's Monna Vanna and Carl Boeses Maciste and the Chinese chest . The recordings were intended for the film courier and the showcases. Selling recordings to the press, for which she often worked, became less and less important. So far, her work has been u. a. Published in Vogue , Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung , Die Dame , Der Cross section and Uhu .

With the renowned art collector and dealer Alfred Flechtheim , who gave her the opportunity to have a solo exhibition with 177 photographs in 1925, she made her final breakthrough, even beyond the borders of Berlin. Now she was commonly referred to as "The Riess". She spent the summer of 1928 on Monte Verità, which has since been shaped by life reforms . There she took the well-known photo of the cross-section editor Hermann von Wedderkop in the "air dress".

In 1929 , through the mediation of Margherita Sarfatti , she portrayed Benito Mussolini in Rome , which she herself described as the most important event in her life.

From 1930 she joined a liaison with the French ambassador Pierre de Margerie . In 1932 she gave up her studio in Berlin and followed de Margerie, who had returned to Paris as a pensioner . Here she was in regular contact with Thea Sternheim and Klaus Mann , with whom she was still friends from Berlin. From the mid-1930s, Frieda Riess' living conditions suffered significantly from an illness that restricted movement and led to symptoms of paralysis. After German troops occupied Paris in 1940, Frieda Riess now called herself “Riess de Belsine” to disguise her Jewish origins. In 1942, Pierre de Margerie died, who until then had given her help against persecution by the National Socialists . Portraits of Gottfried Benn , which Frieda Riess is said to have given in 1953 according to Thea Sternheim's statements, were lost after her death.

plant

Frieda Riess followed the tradition of Nicola Perscheid with her work . She paired this classic art of portraiture with modern imagery. Her style can be characterized as soft and flowing; the background of the photos is gray and slightly lightened, the light comes finely dosed from the front and back. This is how the head and face of the person portrayed are modeled. Another effect of the lighting is flowing fabrics. In many of the pictures there is also an opposite movement of the head and body. In addition, the photos show impressionistic tendencies because of their painterly blurring . With her style, Frieda Riess dedicated herself to the prevailing customer tastes of the time. However, she also went on excursions into nude photography and expressionist photography.

The Riess' oeuvre can thus be divided into three categories, with the last category being the largest:

Nude photography

Expressionist photography

Society photography

On the initiative of the Verborgenes Museum, the Berlinische Galerie devoted a first retrospective to her life's work in 2008 .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1921: "Berlin Photography", Museum of Decorative Arts Berlin
  • 1922: Exhibition at Friedmann & Weber, Berlin
  • 1925: Galerie Alfred Flechtheim , Berlin
  • 1929: “Photography of the Present”, Essen
  • 1930: “Drawn or snapped”, Berlin
  • 1932: “1. International Fascist Photographic Exhibition ”, Rome
  • 2008: “Die Riess”, retrospective, Berlinische Galerie

literature

  • Marion Beckers, Elisabeth Moortgat (ed.): The Riess. Photographic studio and salon 1918–1932 in Berlin. = The Riess. Photographic studio and salon in Berlin 1918–1932. Das Verborgene Museum , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8030-3326-0 (exhibition catalog, Berlin, State Museum for Modern Art - Photography and Architecture, June 6 to October 20, 2008).
    • Almost all portrait photos of the Riess are so full of insight. In: Museums Journal. 2, 2008, ISSN  0933-0593 , p. 54.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Riess, Die. The Hidden Museum, accessed June 21, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Achim Drucks: A woman disappears. In: taz.de . June 14, 2008, accessed June 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Kurt Pinthus: The Rieß . In: 8 o'clock evening paper , November 6, 1925.
  4. ↑ Beckers / Moortgat: The Riess. P. 197
  5. ↑ Beckers / Moortgat: The Riess. P. 199.
  6. ↑ June 6th, 2008 - October 20th, 2008 Die Riess: Photographic studio and salon in Berlin 1918 - 1932. Das Verborgene Museum, accessed on June 21, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Timm Starl: A “modern Circe” or “the best German female photographer”? In: timm-starl.at. July 2008, accessed on June 21, 2020 (Review of Die Riess: Photographic Atelier and Salon in Berlin 1918 - 1932 ).
personal data
SURNAME Riess, Frieda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Riess, Frieda Gertrud (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Czarnikau
DATE OF DEATH around 1955
Place of death Paris