Werner Braun (photojournalist)

Werner Hans Braun (born June 12, 1918 in Nuremberg ; † December 25, 2018 in Israel ) was an Israeli photojournalist .

Life

Selection of some photos by Werner Braun

Immigrants in a transit camp (ca.1950)

Snow in Zion Square (1950)

David and Paula Ben-Gurion (1953)

Adolf Eichmann at his trial (1961)

Werner Braun was born into a German-Jewish family, grew up initially on Fürther Strasse and later in Nordstadt ; he attended elementary school in Uhlandstrasse . After attending grammar school, he did an apprenticeship as an upholsterer from 1933 to 1936 and was supposed to join his uncle's family (furniture) business. From 1936 to 1937 Braun completed his hachschara at the Neuendorf Landwerk on Gut Neuendorf in Brandenburg . In exchange for an accordion, Braun received his first camera and began taking photos seriously when he was 18. Due to the increasing repression by the National Socialists , Braun first fled to Sweden in 1937 , came to Denmark in 1939 , and then fled to Sweden again in 1943. In both Scandinavian countries he was prepared for a later life in Palestine (Hachshara). He spent almost ten years on various training farms before he settled in the Mandate Palestine after the end of the Second World War in 1946 . As Braun himself said in an interview, he had felt anti-Semitism in his home country, but had not taken it seriously. He described his childhood and parts of his youth in Nuremberg as "happy and carefree". Instead of a career as a farmer in a kibbutz , Braun realized his childhood dream in his new home and became a press photographer . In Scandinavia he had already got himself a used Rolleiflex and made an enlarger himself. He developed and copied his photos in the hachshara bathroom.

During a troubled time marked by military conflicts, he acquired a photo lab on the prominent Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem and named it Photo Europe . He did not cease operations during the Israeli War of Independence and took photos while serving as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces in that war. His real career as a photojournalist began when he took photos of a terrorist attack on Ben Yehuda Street in February 1948. At the same time he ran a photo company with his first wife and in 1950 became a freelance press photographer. He later became chief photographer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , for which he photographed from 1952 to 1998, and published his photos in almost all major Israeli newspapers and in international media. During the Eichmann trial , he photographed for the Government Press Office of Israel and was also a photographer for the Jewish National Fund (JNF). At the JNF he was one of the leading photographers alongside Fred Chesnick and a few others. He also illustrated numerous travel guides, books and other articles with his photos. In 1977, as a member of the Histadrut , he accompanied the Israeli delegation to international ski competitions in the USSR . When he died there were about half a million negatives in his archive . His spectrum ranged from aerial photographs and underwater photos to nature photographs and portraits. According to Braun, he was the first Israeli photographer to take pictures underwater .

He has received several awards throughout his life; Among other things, he received third prize in the Nikon International Contest in 1979 . In 1989 he received the Enrique Kavlin Life Achievement Award for Photography from the Israel Museum and in 2007 he received the Life Achievement Award from The Audio-Visual Conservation Forum in Israel . From the 1950s he regularly took part in national and international exhibitions with his recordings. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, a short TV portrait was created in 1998 about Braun's life and work. Werner Braun died on December 25, 2018 at the age of 100 in Israel. Most recently he lived with his wife Anat Rotem Braun in Mewasseret Zion , a suburb of Jerusalem.

family

Braun's father Arthur Asher Braun (1882–1967) was a businessman, his mother Martha (née Bernhard; 1887–1981) a teacher. His siblings were Stefani Orfali (1911-1994), who studied chemistry at the University of Erlangen , emigrated to Palestine in 1934 and emigrated to the United States via Jordan and Brazil, Wolfgang Seev (1914-2010), a carpenter who also emigrated to Palestine, and Heinz Michael, born in 1917, who also came to Palestine after the Hachshara and was, among other things, managing director of a factory there.

In his first marriage, Braun was married to Yael Renate Fleischmann (* 1921 in Prague ) from 1941 to 1976 . Braun had met this at the Hachschara in Denmark and had come with him to Israel, where she worked as an artist, among other things. After the divorce, in 1977 he married Anat Rotem (* 1947), an employee in the Israeli Ministry of Health. The children Ruth (* in Frederikssund , Denmark) and Dani (* 1944 in Norrköping , Sweden) come from the first marriage .

literature

• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 88f.

Web links

• Ofer Aderet, Werner Braun: Israeli Photojournalist Icon Werner Braun Turns 100. In: Haaretz . June 14, 2018 (English). 
• Ofer Aderet: Israeli Photojournalist Icon Werner Braun Dies at 100. In: Haaretz. December 25, 2018 (English). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Jim G. Tobias: A companion of Israel - the German-Jewish photographer Werner Braun. In: haGalil . April 17, 2010, accessed December 28, 2018 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Werner Braun. In: Website of the Information Center for Israeli Art . Retrieved December 28, 2018 . 
3. ↑ The German-Israeli photographer Werner Braun is dead. In: haGalil. December 26, 2018, accessed December 28, 2018 .