Hugo Jaeger

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Hugo Jaeger (born January 18, 1900 in Munich , † probably after January 1, 1970) was a German photographer .

Photo of Jaeger in Warsaw, 1939
" Gypsies ", Warsaw September 1940 Photo by Jaeger. The production of such photos as a counter-image to the ordered German formations "Untermenschen", including expressly "Gypsies", was a requirement of the Propaganda Ministry: "Poland is sub-humanity. Poles, Jews and Gypsies are to be mentioned in the same breath."

As an employee of Adolf Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann , he had access to Hitler and his personal environment from 1936 to 1945. During the Second World War he worked as a photographer for a propaganda company . As one of the first German press photographers , he turned to color photography . Apparently, after the war, he was unable to continue his career. After meeting US soldiers, who, however, did not notice the color negatives during the inspection, Jaeger feared his imprisonment if the negatives were noticed. In 1945 Jaeger therefore decided to hide the negatives and save them by burying them in twelve glass containers in a suburb of Munich. In 1955 he dug up these containers and kept the negatives in a safe deposit box. In 1965 he sold this inventory (2000 color slides) to Timelife Pictures for LIFE magazine .

literature

  • Rudolf Herz: Hitler & Hoffmann. Photography as a medium of the Führer myth (exhibition cat. Stadtmuseum München 1994). Munich 1994.
  • Michael Sontheimer (ed.): Pictures of the 2nd World War. Munich 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Miriam Y. Arani: Photographs of the propaganda companies of the Wehrmacht in World War II as sources for the events in occupied Poland 1939–1945. In: Journal for East Central Europe Research 60 (2011) issue 1, here pp. 30 and 48.
personal data
SURNAME Jaeger, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1970