Hansel Mieth

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Hansel Mieth (born April 9, 1909 in Oppelsbohm , Baden-Württemberg ; † February 14, 1998 in Santa Rosa (California) , actually Johanna Mieth ) was an American press photographer and photojournalist of German origin.

She was the second woman after Margaret Bourke-White to be permanently employed by the US magazine Life and was considered one of the most important photographers of the 1930s and 1940s. Hansel Mieth worked together with her husband, the photographer Otto Hagel (1909–1973). She created highly regarded socially critical reports. The photographer and war correspondent Robert Capa belonged to her circle of friends .

Life

Hansel Mieth was born in Oppelsbohm, but grew up in Fellbach . She came from a strictly religious, pietistic family with simple circumstances, from which she tried to escape at an early age. When she was 15, she met Otto Hägele, who was the same age in Fellbach, and who later changed his name to Hagel. In 1927, at the age of 17, they set out on a bicycle trip around the Mediterranean, to Italy, France and Spain. Soon after their return they ventured into an even greater adventure. The destination of their trip was India, which they did not reach, but they migrated via Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia to Turkey.

In 1928 Hagel, who saw the calamity of National Socialism coming, went to the USA. To do this, he had hired a freighter and committed himself to several passages. When the ship reached Baltimore , hail disembarked. He got by as a laborer. He won ten dollars in a newspaper photo contest for a self-portrait made with a self-timer, showing him cleaning windows in San Francisco. He was followed in 1930 by Hansel Mieth after the Great Depression had just started in the USA. They shared a room in San Francisco, but also lived temporarily in a tent and made their living as migrant workers. With a Leica bought second-hand, they photographed the hardships of workers on cotton and fruit plantations, the plight of the ethnic minority population and labor disputes. When they had enough money to spend, they returned to San Francisco to develop their films in the labs of their photographer friends. In 1934 they took photos during the general strike in San Francisco.

Hansel Mieth initially worked for Time magazine . From 1937 to 1940 she was a permanent member of the Life editorial team. For this she moved to New York with hail . However, Hagel preferred to continue working as a freelance photographer, for example for Life , Time , Fortune and other magazines. In 1940 Hansel Mieth, who was now a US citizen, married Otto Hagel. After the USA entered the Second World War, Hagel, who still had German citizenship, feared being interned . The couple retired to a remote ranch near Santa Rosa, California. Hail did not leave the Singing Hills Ranch during this time; Hansel Mieth continued to accept orders from Life in the region. Hagel did not receive US citizenship until 1945. After the war, Hansel Mieth traveled to Germany for the first time in 1948 to visit her sister. Unlike Hagel, she had never lost contact with Germany. In 1950 both returned to their home town of Fellbach together on behalf of Life . The report We return to Fellbach appeared on June 26, 1950 and was reprinted on August 26 by the then Neue Münchner Illustrierte .

In the early 1950s, Mieth and Hagel were targeted by communist hunters during the McCarthy era . When they refused to appear before the Un-American Activities Committee in 1952 , they were put on an unofficial blacklist. They received no more orders and earned their living by keeping chickens. In 1955, Life published one last major photo essay about her life on the ranch. Hagel died in 1973; Hansel Mieth lived and worked on the ranch until her death in 1998.

Hansel Mieth Prize

The reports agency founded in 1984 Zeitenspiegel from Weinstadt awards since 1998 in memory of its honorary member Hansel Mieth annually the Hansel Mieth Prize to journalists for outstanding publications in German print media. The prize is endowed with 6,000 euros. Previous winners were (text / photo):

literature

  • Hansel Mieth, Otto Hagel: Simple Life. Photographs from America 1929–1971. Butterfly Verlag , Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-926369-15-9 .
  • Christiane Barckhause (Ed.): In the valley of the singing hills. Memories of a German-American woman. Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-926369-13-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.zeitenspiegel.de/de/preis/preistraeger/hansel-mieth-preis/2010/
personal data
SURNAME Mieth, Hansel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mieth, Johanna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American photojournalist
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berglen
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1998
Place of death Santa Rosa (California) , USA