Fritz Tiedemann (photographer)

Fritz Tiedemann (born February 14, 1915 in Hamburg ; † November 23, 2001 in Münster ) was a German photographer .

Life

The trained surveyor Fritz Tiedemann received special training as a photogrammeter during his military service . In the post-war period, from February 1948, he documented the destruction of historic buildings left by the Second World War for the Office for the Preservation of Monuments at the Magistrate of Greater Berlin . In 1949 he became an employee of the construction department in East Berlin's New Magistrate . He used a large format camera and took over 15,000 pictures, which he developed in the Berlin Palace and which are now in the Berlinische Galerie .

After the division of Germany, Tiedemann always made two prints of his photos and gave one of them to colleagues from the western part of the city. On February 28, 1953, Tiedemann tried again to send part of his building photographs to the West Berlin preservation authority. He was arrested and sentenced. For that day he had actually planned to escape to the western part of the city; his wife was supposed to flee with the four children and the luggage in another S-Bahn on the same day. But Anna-Liese Tiedemann was intercepted by a Russian patrol and had to return to her house in East Berlin, where she later learned that her husband had also been intercepted. He had his camera and numerous pictures in his luggage. Fritz Tiedemann was sentenced to two years in prison for trying to escape.

His early release from prison was due to the events of June 17, 1953 . In the same year he fled the GDR with his family and reached Hamburg via the Marienfelde emergency reception center and later to Münster. From January 1954 he worked there for the company Plan und Karte, from which Hansa Luftbild GmbH later emerged.

Tiedemann's identity and biography were not known to the public for a long time. Only through the exhibition “As far as no eye can see. Berliner Panoramafotografien aus der Jahre 1949-1952 “, which was shown in the Berlinische Galerie in 2008 and 2009, the originator of the pictures could be determined: Relatives and a colleague had found out about the exhibition through the supraregional reporting and reported to the museum , after only the last name Tiedemann had been determined by Arwed Messmer up to this point . He became aware of Tiedemann's recordings while preparing his book Anonyme Mitte - Berlin .

Thirteen panoramic pictures by Tiedemann were shown in the exhibition. When digitally reassembled, they reached widths of up to 25.5 meters.

Arwed Messmer also processed 32 photographs by Tiedemann, on which he documented the condition of the houses in Berlin Fruchtstrasse on March 27, 1952 on behalf of the Berlin magistrate into panoramas.

literature

• Annett Gröschner , Arwed Messmer (eds.): Fritz Tiedemann: Berlin, Fruchtstrasse on March 27, 1952 , with texts by Annett Gröschner, Florian Ebner, Uwe Tiedemann. Hatje Cantz Verlag , Ostfildern, 2012, ISBN 978-3-7757-3472-1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Sabine Müller, Smuggled Pictures from the 50s - Late Honor for Fritz Tiedemann , in: Münstersche Zeitung, February 14, 2009 ( Memento from February 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ The photo archive of the former East Berlin City Administration for Urban Development, Housing and Transport, comprising around 50,000 photos, was taken over in 1991 by the Berlin Senate Department for Building and Housing. This collection is the most comprehensive document of the architectural and urban development of East Berlin. Next to Fritz Tiedemann, Gisela Dutschmann was the main photographer. From 2003 to 2005 the archive was inventoried with the help of the Getty Foundation Los Angeles . A selection of images was made in East Berlin and its buildings. Photographs published 1945-1990 . See East Berlin Photo Archive ( Memento of the original from May 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ Berlinische Galerie: Exhibition Review ( Memento from September 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
4. ^ Exhibition Berlin, Fruchtstrasse on March 27, 1952 ( Memento of February 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )