Günter Rapp

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Günter Rapp in front of a mill in 1968

Günter Rapp (* 1933 in Schwerta near Marklissa , Lauban district; † February 17, 1990 in Görlitz ) dealt intensively with the research of windmills , especially windmills , in East Germany and left behind an extensive archive of materials and, above all, photographs relating to his research area .

Life

Rapp learned the trade of ribbon weaver . In 1951 he participated as an athlete in the III. World Youth Festival in Görlitz . He was a member of the People's Police and later worked as a prison guard in the prison in Görlitz. In this context he began a collection of material about the Görlitz judiciary. Since the early 1980s he worked in the administration of the municipal cemetery in Görlitz.

In 1964 he began researching and documenting windmills, initially limited to objects in Upper Lusatia . In 1972 he extended his work to the entire GDR area, with the focus remaining on the present-day federal states of Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg . Part of his work also concerned mills in areas in Poland and the Czech Republic that were formerly part of Germany . He made a chronicle of windmills.

Mill archive

In his estate there were 14,000 black and white miniature photos of mills and their surroundings that he had made. Partly the view from the mill mountains, but also the operation of mills and those who work there is documented. The documentation that he has compiled contains in part the only known recordings of certain objects and is an important testimony to the history of the East German mill.

In 1990, his archive, which contains a further 1,700 positives and texts, came into the possession of the Upper Lusatian Library of Sciences in Görlitz. In 2005 the Deutsche Fotothek took over the negatives and digitized the entire stock of images. It has been prepared for the Internet. By making them available under a free license at Wikimedia Commons and the resulting widespread use in the Wikipedia encyclopedia , the recordings were made available to a large audience.

literature

Kai Wenzel: Günter Rapp. A collector and his stylistic devices . In: Silke Wagler, Kai Wenzel (Ed.): At the moment. New research on photography from Saxony and Lusatia . Dresden 2020, p. 62-75 .

Web links

Commons : Günter Rapp  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Rapp, Günter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rapp, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mill researcher
DATE OF BIRTH 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerta
DATE OF DEATH 17th February 1990
Place of death Goerlitz