Liselotte Organ-Koehne

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Liselotte Orgel-Köhne , née Purper (* 1918 in Strasbourg , † 2002 in Berlin ), was a German photographer .

Life

Liselotte Purper was the daughter of a lawyer; her mother, née Klingler, came from a family of musicians. The family also had a son named Heinz, who was born in 1910 and died in World War II in 1942 . Liselotte Purper grew up in Berlin, where she completed a four-semester course of study at the Photography School of the Berlin Lette Association with the grade “very good”. She completed traineeships in Berlin (with Yva and Ewald Hoinkis ) and Braunschweig (with Hilde Brinckmann-Schröder ). A young girl novel entitled Herta's Profession inspired her career choice . The training was financed by her aunt Margarethe Klingler by marriage, a daughter of the CEO of Deutsche Bank Arthur von Gwinner , who was married to the violinist Karl Klingler .

In 1936/37 Hanna Holzwardt , the editor-in-chief of the magazine Frauenkultur in the Deutsches Frauenwerk , became aware of her and established contact with the press and propaganda department of the Reichsfrauenführung and the Reichsarbeitsdienst . A successful career as a photo reporter began for Purper in the Third Reich . From then on she worked as a freelancer for the press and propaganda departments of various Nazi organizations. Among other things, she took photos at the Nazi party rallies in 1937 and 1938. From 1938 onwards, as a result of the expansion policy of the German Reich, she worked a lot abroad. In the early years of the war Purper had four employees and a monthly income of 3,000 to 4,000 Reichsmarks . In the Reichsgau Wartheland she photographed in 1939 and 1940 on behalf of the NS-Volkswohlfahrt and the German Women's Association. The Jewish star was introduced there in November 1939 and ghettos for Jews existed from 1939/40 . Liselotte Purper documented these developments in Poland alongside her official assignments. In 1940 she was commissioned by the Reichsfrauenführung to document the resettlement of people of German origin from Dobruja and therefore worked in the Balkans from October 29 to September 6, 1940. She was supposed to capture the relief work of women in the Heim ins Reich campaign . In the summer of 1942 she was sent to Romania , in the autumn of the same year to occupied Ukraine .

Krumke Castle

After her marriage to the lawyer Kurt Orgel on September 25, 1943 in Krumke , she called herself Orgel-Purper. The couple only spent a few days together, as Kurt Orgel was in the military. However, there was an extensive correspondence. Kurt Orgel sent the letters he had received from his wife back to her when the situation at the front became increasingly critical. Excerpts from his correspondence and his wife's diary were published in 1995 under the title Will you be my widow? released.

A few weeks after the wedding, in November 1943, the Purper family's apartment at Martin-Luther-Strasse 27 in Berlin fell victim to an air raid. Liselotte Orgel-Purper moved with her parents to Krumke Castle in the Altmark , which at the time belonged to Karl Klingler, and laid the foundation stone for a new photography business in Osterburg . There she found accommodation at Gartenstrasse 11. At the time, her husband was stationed on the Eastern Front. At the end of January / beginning of February 1945 he was wounded. From Gotenhafen he was transported to Rügen and from there to a hospital in Copenhagen . He died on February 19, 1945 as a result of the inadequately cared for war injury, and three days later his wife was notified of his death by telegram.

After the end of the Third Reich, Liselotte Orgel-Purper initially earned her living in agriculture and as a dental assistant so that the Soviet military government would not be aware of her past. But from 1946 she worked again as a photojournalist, now under the name Orgel. One of the buyers for her pictures was the Neue Berliner Illustrierte . At times the photographer was a member of the Kulturbund for the democratic renewal of Germany .

With her second husband, the teacher Armin Köhne, whom she had met in Osterburg, she moved from the GDR to West Berlin in 1950 . Köhne no longer worked as a teacher there, but was trained by his wife and also became a photo journalist; the couple worked together under the name Orgel-Köhne.

In 1997 an exhibition of pictures by the photographer took place in the German Historical Museum . Liselotte Orgel-Köhne was still alive then. In a newspaper report on this exhibition, the author Brigitte Werneburg stated that anyone who took photographs in the service of the National Socialists “should have recognized that his work was signaling his consent to a criminal regime and thus potentially becoming a perpetrator. But such insight “was not given with Liselotte Purper. Werneburg explained: “It has not even been decided whether it was just the wonderful career that pushed any concerns into the background. Rather, it seems that there were no such concerns [...] Of course, this attitude meant that Liselotte Purper did not deny her Nazi work and let it rot in the cellar. ”Her letters and diary entries also show that the photographer did not go blind through the world. On October 15, 1941, for example, she wrote from Prague: “The newsreels are not sensitive, and I know enough reports and pictures that are so horrific that they are not published, although it would be necessary for gossipers that they reflect the brutal reality for once. ”On December 16, 1942, she wrote to her husband from Berlin:“ You, today the chief editor called from the NSDAP's training letters. I didn't think I heard right. No more "Nordic faces". No narrow blond heads. Preferred is the agile and usually more intelligent breed - the Slavic. We probably want to Germanize the East. It has long been known that the Nordic types do not evoke any special talents, which is why they turned them into what everyone can acquire: the "Nordic disposition, the Nordic mental attitude". I am curious to see what will come of the race research. We will only hear what we should hear. "

estate

Around 600 negatives by the photographer, most of which were from the period before 1945, became the property of the German Historical Museum in 1991. There are also the letters from the first marriage and the photographer's diary. In 1994 the remaining negatives came to the Preussischer Kulturbesitz picture archive .

literature

  • Liselotte Orgel-Purper: Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2, took care of the selection of the letter passages

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In some sources, such as www.photo.rmn.fr , the year of birth is given as 1912.
  2. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , letter of August 9, 1942, p. 58, made the selection of the letter passages
  3. ↑ a b Brigitte Werneburg, exemplary service provider , August 11, 1997 in the taz (online at www.taz.de )
  4. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , p. 89, made the selection of the letter passages
  5. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , p. 108, made the selection of the letter passages
  6. ^ Frank Schmarsow, Gripping Letters , October 25, 2011 at www.az-online.de
  7. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , p. 190, made the selection of the letter passages
  8. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , p. 189 f.
  9. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , p. 46, made the selection of the letter passages
  10. ↑ Liselotte Orgel-Purper, Do you want to be my widow? A German love in war . With 109 photos by Liselotte Orgel-Purper and Kurt Orgel. With a foreword by Günther Drommer. Ulrich Völklein, Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-351-02431-2 , p. 65, made the selection of the letter passages
personal data
SURNAME Organ-Koehne, Liselotte
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Purper, Liselotte (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH 2002
Place of death Berlin