Hanns Tschira

Hanns Theodor Tschira (born August 17, 1899 in Mülhausen , Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine , † August 23, 1957 in Baden-Baden ) was an on-board, portrait and press photographer of the 20th century.

Life

Hanns Tschira was born as the son of the Baden court photographer Karl Konrad Tschira and his wife Ernestine Friederike (née Eichin). His grandfather Carl Christian Tschira had acquired the title of Grand Ducal Baden and Royal Saxon court photographer. In 1915, Hanns Tschira took over one of the family's four photo studios from his father.

At the beginning of the Weimar Republic , Tschira mainly lived and worked for the major publishing houses in Berlin. He developed into a chronicler of the social upheavals in the working-class districts of Berlin. He took part in photo competitions several times and won in the late 1920s with a photo of the so-called street children, a photo that was not taken in Berlin, but in Osterode am Harz.

In 1927 Hanns Tschira began working as an on-board photographer for North German Lloyd , mainly on the Bremen and Columbus . He not only devoted himself to his on-board service, which consisted of taking photos of the passengers, the festive dinners, etc., but also made skillful studies of the environment in North and South America. His photos, especially of New York, are legend and graced numerous magazines and journals at the time. Tschira had the film greats in Germany and the USA , including Marlene Dietrich , in front of the lens several times.

As a staunch supporter of Hitler and the Nazis , Hanns Tschira achieved notoriety shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939 with his propagandistic publication Die Bremen Returns heim . The background was the last voyage of the Bremen in mid-August 1939 from Bremerhaven to New York . Although the Americans did all sorts of things to hold the ship in New York, the Nazis and the crew managed to cast off on August 30, 1939. After the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939, the Bremen was ordered to Murmansk , where she lay for about three months. On December 10, 1939, the Bremen lifted anchor and set sail for Germany. Thanks to their camouflage paintwork and thick fog, the ship managed to break through the English blockade in the North Sea and reach the home port of Bremerhaven. The Nazis extensively exploited the event for propaganda purposes. Captain Ahrens wrote the book Die Siegesfahrt der Bremen ; Hanns Tschira wrote the above-mentioned pamphlet .

In 1940 Tschira moved to Berlin . When the bombing began on Berlin, the family, wife and three children, moved to Lübchen in Silesia . Here the family was surprised by the invasion of the Soviet army in 1945 . As a staunch National Socialist, Tschira had persevered to the end, but always carefully captured the reality of the war in his photos. In the middle of the harsh winter of 1945, Tschira and most of the residents of the village of Lübchen set out on the trek west. He documented this death march with numerous photographs, which are documented in an illustrated book from 2004.

In 1946 it and his family settled in Baden-Baden, one of the former headquarters of the Tschira photo studio. He reactivated the studio that had been closed for years. In addition to his portrait studio, Tschira ran an agency for advertising and reportage photography. At the same time he was the in-house photographer of the Baden-Baden theater and the Baden state studio of the later SWR . For many years, the Baden-Baden broadcaster opened its broadcasts with the recording of the fountain in the spa gardens, a motif that came from Hanns Tschira.

Hanns Tschira had been with Johanna born in 1922. Autumn married. The marriage had five children. On August 23, 1957 Tschira died suddenly and unexpectedly and was buried in Baden-Baden.

In 2003 the photo archive of the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven acquired the Hanns Tschira estate.

literature

• Writings of the German Maritime Museum Vol. 81 - One Million Nautical Miles - Hanns Tschira 1927–1939, 2010
• Adolf Ahrens (Commodore of the NDL and captain): The victorious voyage of the "Bremen" . Berlin, 1939
• Hanns Tschira: The Bremen returns home , German, published in cooperation with the Reichsamt Deutsches Volksbildungswerk of the NS.-Gemeinschaft Kraft durch Freude, Berlin - Leipzig 1940
• Hanns Tschira / Lucia Brauburger - Farewell to Lübchen , Berlin 2004

Web links

• Biographical summary of Hanns Tschira
• Spiegel Online : On- board photographer Hanns Tschira on the "Bremen". Blind drive into the unknown , article from September 12, 2012