Richard Kitschigin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Around 1955. Richard Kitschigin in the photo lab

Richard Kitschigin (born February 16, 1930 ; died May 3 or 4, 2015 ) was a German journalist, presenter, author and photographer. He first attracted attention with the later much-cited article from 1960 "On the spirit of constructive tolerance". In 1962 he and his colleagues received the Ernst Reuter Prize for the radio program “They came from Europe”. From 1962 he built up the youth editorial team at RIAS Berlin and was its boss. During this time he was responsible for the music program RIAS Treffpunkt (initially called “Youth Journal”) and political radio features that dealt critically with the GDR and its youth culture.

After the dissolution of the GDR, Kitschigin worked as a journalist and editor in the field of motorsport. He was a member of the board of the ADAC Berlin-Brandenburg for 27 years . His best-known book publication was "Races, tires and records - the Avus story" from 1972.

life and work

Kitschigin's activity as a photographer was not known to his later comrades. In an extensive funeral speech it was only pointed out that in the 1950s he worked as a freelancer for the student magazine “Colloquium” of the Free University (FU) in Berlin.

Richard Kitschigin studied German at the Free University of Berlin from 1949 to 1953 and remained connected to it over the next few years. In the 1950s and 1960s he took photos with two-lens reflex cameras on 6 × 6 roll film . His main photographic work took place between 1951 and 1964. In Berlin he documented exhibitions, fashion, nudes, personalities, theater performances, student life, laying the foundation stone for new buildings in Berlin, which was marked by World War II , ceremonies and motorsport on the former Avus race track in Berlin. He kept meticulous records of his photographs. In notebooks there are information about the location and the motif for each individual negative. The medium format negatives are individually packaged and each provided with a unique signature so that they can be assigned to the notes. He enlarged his prints with a self-made enlarger .

His work at RIAS pushed photography into the background, but he continued to pursue it. Kitschigin later mainly used 35mm film. Around 2008 he had many of his photos professionally digitized. In his photographic estate there were 20 data carriers ( CD ) with 515 image files. His medium-format negatives (approx. 7000) have been in the Gade photo archive since 2017, while other partial holdings are with the ADAC and its heiress.

Medium format negatives by Richard Kitschigin. In notebooks he wrote a date, place and subject for each photo.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ death notices , trauer.tagesspiegel.de, accessed on 4 November 2019
  2. ↑ Richard Kitschigin on medienarchiv.com, accessed on November 4, 2019
  3. ↑ In: Colloquium 1 4, 1960, p. 16. See also ISBN 3-476-01955-1
  4. ^ Authors: Alfred Berndt, Richard Kitschigin, Peter Krebs and Leo Rosh. RIAS, November 27th and December 8th, 1961
  5. ↑ transcript: Pop history. Retrieved November 4, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Example: Youth and Nationalism - A reflection on the VIII parliament of the FDJ, from May 16, 1967. RiAS Jugendfunk, series title: Kompass - Thoughts between East and West. Authors: Hans-Günter Goldbeck-Löwe, Detlev E. Otto.
  7. ^ Yearbook for Brandenburg State History 2004, p. 288
  8. ↑ Kitschigin, Richard .: Races, Tires and Records: The Avus Story. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-87943-206-6 .
  9. ↑ Thomas Gade: Richard Kitschigin - The forgotten years as a photographer in PhotoKlassik II 2020, pp. 80–83
personal data
SURNAME Kitschigin, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, moderator, author and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1930
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 2015 or May 4, 2015