Kurt Hielscher

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Kurt Hielscher (Kurt Hilšer) (born January 7, 1881 in Striegau , Silesia, † July 10, 1948 in Lichtenstein in Saxony) was a German photographer and teacher.

He toured large parts of Europe in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s and was the author of many successful books on landscape and architecture photos.

Life

Kurt Hielscher was born the son of a forester and was sent to an orphanage in Bunzlau at an early age . He became a teacher and was a teacher in West Prussia . This gave him the opportunity to live out his passion for hiking every year. His first major trip abroad took him to Spain in the summer of 1914 . When the First World War broke out during his stay there , he could no longer leave the country. He worked in Spain as a tutor and used the time to wander through the country and document it with his camera. The exhibitions and lectures on his photographs brought him attention and fame there.

Back in Germany he continued his lectures and exhibitions in Spain and in 1921 brought out his photos under the title "The unknown Spain" as a book in Germany and Spain. The work was published in French, Italian and English as early as 1922. The latter was used by the architect Frank Meline in the late 1920s for the landscaping of newly developed areas of the so-called Californian Riviera in Pacific Palisades , west of Los Angeles, where numerous German emigrants lived in the 1930s and 40s.

Motivated by the success of his work, Hielscher wanted to make a similar book about Germany. In 1922 and 1923 he traveled through his homeland with his camera. The resulting photo book was published in 1924 and contained over 300 black and white photos between Helgoland and Berchtesgaden and was sold 175,000 times in 9 editions by 1941. In the works that appeared between 1933 and 1945, enthusiastic words about the "Führer" and the Greater German Reich are loud in the foreword.

Hielscher's fame grew quickly and public contracts for similar photo documentation in other countries followed. He published illustrated books about the Scandinavian countries , Italy , the Balkans , Austria and Romania . He soon said goodbye to teaching and from then on devoted himself entirely to photography. All of his works were published using the copper gravure printing process and became significant examples of a new book form he had created: the travel book. Looking ahead, he once wrote: " I try to show the primal face of a country and its people in my books. As witnesses of a sinking world, my pictures will still speak when I have long fallen silent myself ."

In the turmoil of World War II , his negatives and printing plates, as well as a large number of printed books, were lost. After the war, he lived in the Soviet sector and was initially not given a permit to leave the West. His lecture tours were limited to the area of ​​the emerging GDR . He died in 1948 at the age of 67.

reception

Kurt Hielscher was honored by the highest dignitaries of the countries, for example the Spanish and Romanian King, the President Hindenburg and Mussolini . The forewords to his books were written by Gerhart Hauptmann , Hans Thoma , Selma Lagerlöf , Karin Michaëlis and Octavian Goga .

Despite his high book editions of around 490,000 in total, Hielscher was largely forgotten after the Second World War.

Works

Turbe in Gazi Baba, Skopje, Macedonia (1926)

Well-known works by him are "The Unknown Spain", "Germany", "Denmark, Sweden, Norway", "Romania".

  • Kurt Hielscher: The Unknown Spain. Architecture, landscape, folk life . Berlin: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth 1922.
  • Kurt Hielscher: La España incógnita . Barcelona: E. Canosa, s. a.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Picturesque Spain architecture. Landscape, life of the people . New York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1922.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Germany. Architecture and landscape . Berlin: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth 1924.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Scandinavia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland: architecture, landscape and folk life . Berlin: E. Wasmuth 1924.
  • Kurt Hielscher: The Eternal City: Memories of Rome . Berlin: E. Wasmuth 1925.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Picturesque Spain architecture. Landscape, life of the people . New York: Brentano's Publishers, 1925.
  • Kurt Hielscher: La España incógnita . Madrid: Espasa Calpe, s. a.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Italy. Architecture and landscape . Berlin: E. Wasmuth, cop., 1925.
  • Kurt Hielscher: The Unknown Spain. Architecture, landscape, folk life . Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1925.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Yugoslavia. Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia. Landscape, architecture, folk life . Berlin: E. Wasmuth, cop., 1926.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Austria landscape and architecture . Berlin: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth 1928.
  • Kurt Hielscher: The Unknown Spain. Architecture, landscape, folk life . Berlin - Zurich: Atlantis-Verlag, 1930.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Denmark, Sweden, Norway; Landscape, architecture, folk life . Leipzig: FA Brockhaus 1931.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Romania. Landscape, buildings, folk life . Leipzig: FA Brockhaus 1933.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Roumanie. Son paysage, ses monuments, son peuple . Leipzig: FA Brockhaus, 1933.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Transylvania: Banat, Sathmar, Marmorosch: landscape, buildings, folk life . Leipzig: FA Brockhaus 1936.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Castles in the Bozener Land . Munich: Bruckmann 1938.
  • Kurt Hielscher: The Unknown Spain. Architecture, landscape, folk life . Leipzig: FA Brockhaus, 1942.
  • Kurt Hielscher: España inédita en fotografías. Costumbre, arte y tradiciones . Madrid: Agualarga, 2000.
  • Kurt Hielscher: Recuerdos de España . Madrid: Agualarga, 2004.
  • Kurt Hielscher, Wolfgang Henkel, Peter Schubert: Germany - A Century: Germany a Century . Dresden: K4Verlag, 2019.

literature

  • Hermann Bahr : September 23 [1922]. In: Love of the Living. Diaries 1921/23. Hildesheim: Borgmeyer 1925, II, 227–228.
  • Wilhelm Schöppe: Master of the Camera Telling: How they became and how they work . Halle, Saale: Knapp, 1937.
  • David Sánchez Cano: Genesis of a Photo Book. "The unknown Spain" by Kurt Hielscher, in: Michael Scholz-Hänsel (Ed.): Spain in a photo book. From Kurt Hielscher to Mireia Sentís, Plöttner Verlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-938442-39-5 , pp. 51–57
  • Francis Nenik : Outsiders of Remembrance. Exile and exiles in the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades , in: Exil, Heft 1/2 2018, Frankfurt / Main 2019, p. 10 and p. 22.

Web links

Commons : Kurt Hielscher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Sánchez Cano: Genesis of a photo book. "The Unknown Spain" by Kurt Hielscher . In: Michael Scholz-Hänsel (Ed.): Spain in a photo book. From Kurt Hielscher to Mireia Sentís . Plöttner Verlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-938442-39-5 , p. 51-57 .
  2. ↑ Francis Nenik: Outsiders of Memory. Exiles and exiles in the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades . In: exile. Research - Findings - Results . tape 1/2 . Exilverlag Koch, Frankfurt / Main 2019, p. 10 .
  3. ↑ Hielscher, Henkel, Schubert: Germany - A Century, p. 15 ff.


personal data
SURNAME Hielscher, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hilšer, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Striegau , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 1948
Place of death Lichtenstein in Saxony