Wolfgang Weber (journalist)

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Wolfgang Weber (born June 17, 1902 in Leipzig , † March 4, 1985 in Cologne ) was a German photo journalist.

origin

In 1846 Carl Friedrich Weber (* 1811 in Groß-Deuben near Leipzig, † 1882 in Leipzig) leased the "Nonnenühle" in Plagwitz from the City Council of Leipzig, whose water power he used to operate a cardboard factory, which 10 years later was impregnated with tar waterproof and made suitable as a roofing material "roofing felt". In 1889 the company acquired a large piece of land on Nonnenstrasse in Leipzig-Plagwitz and built its central office there, a factory for the production of rammed asphalt slabs and other specialties of the asphalt industry, as well as its own machine factory for the production of machines and equipment for the asphalt and tar industry. After the death of his successor in the management of the company, Emil Weber (married to Olga Vehrigs) in 1898, his son, Friedrich Weber (* 1877 in Leipzig), Wolfgang's father, took over management of the company at a young age. However, since he wanted to devote himself exclusively to scientific studies, the company was converted into a stock corporation on January 1, 1906, under the direction of the chairman of the Association of German Roofing Board Manufacturers EV, Stephan Mattar. Friedrich Weber remained on the company's supervisory board. He received his doctorate in 1910 at Leipzig University and moved with his family to Munich, where he took over the management of the Research Institute for Ethnology. His private library was auctioned in Leipzig in 1928.

Life

In 1919, Wolfgang Weber entered the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich and passed his Abitur here with Bernhard Benning , among others . As a child and adolescent, he was able to get to know numerous cultural assets from distant countries from his father's collection. His father also gave him his first big trip, the destination of which he could choose himself: he chose Morocco. He dealt with the basics of photography as a schoolboy. First, however, he studied ethnology , philosophy and musicology . In addition, from 1920 to 1926 he trained as a conductor at the Academy of Music in Munich .

Erich von Hornborstel, professor at the Phonetic Institute of the Humboldt University in Berlin , appointed Weber as an assistant and sent him on a music-ethnographic research trip to East Africa to the tribe of the Wadjaggas on Kilimanjaro . In addition to the elaborate sound recording devices that work with wax rolls , with which he recorded the tribal songs, he works with a stereo camera . He was able to publish the photographic recordings in the Münchner Illustrierte Zeitung (MIZ) in 1925 . The editor-in-chief Stefan Lorant became his first sponsor, but gradually the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ) became Weber's preferred publication medium. Its editor-in-chief, Harald Lechenperg, considered Wolfgang Weber to be an equal journalist. He was able to work out his publications largely independently.

In 1928 the Albertus Verlag in Berlin published 224 photographs for a photo portrait of the city of Barcelona in Spain , each on a separate page, for a series “The Face of Cities”. In 1931 the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung published “Dorf ohne Arbeit” on the situation of German unemployed people, in 1933 “The trial that the world is listening to” about the trial against van der Lubbe after the Reichstag fire, and in 1936 “The Olympic Stadium is filling up ". More appeared in sheets of the Ullstein publishing house such as “Die Dame” or “Vossische Zeitung”. In 1934 Weber traveled to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and in 1943 and 1944 he documented the situation in various European countries. In 1946 the BIZ published Weber's work for the last time. In 1945 and 1946 he worked for a US Army magazine.

Although Wolfgang Weber was often announced as war correspondent in the BIZ, he was not a member of the NSDAP. Tensions developed with Harald Lechenperg , which were founded on Wolfgang Weber's sympathy for the "American way of life". Lechenperg canceled an already booked business trip to the USA without asking, because he feared that Wolfgang Weber might introduce himself to the Life magazine publisher .

His family spent the worst part of the war in Positano, Italy . A friendship with Stefan Andres originated from this time and continued even after Weber moved to Cologne-Rodenkirchen . His wife, Gertrud Weber, b. Bierhals gave birth to their first daughter in Rome in 1943. A second daughter was born in Kiel in 1947.

From 1949 Weber was editor-in-chief of the magazine Neue Illustrierte in Cologne. He developed city portraits, a. a. from Munich, Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main, and traveled to England and Italy . In 1949, he was one of the first German photojournalists to travel to the United States, which was followed by other stays. The result was the photographic comparison "New York-Moscow", published in 1956 in the Neue Illustrierte Köln. This was taken over by Baur-Verlag in 1963. Weber now also turned to television. As a freelance journalist, he had access to many well-known personalities of the time. He was able to do interviews with David Ben-Gurion and Yasser Arafat . He reported on the situations in Cuba and Mozambique and - after a stay in China in 1964 - in 1966/67 as the only western journalist to give a comprehensive report on the Cultural Revolution in China. He was critical of the American nuclear armament, which can be read in his reports on the Hiroshima bomb and the American nuclear weapons tests in his book The Adventure of My Life .

In old age he switched from the Leica camera to film recording technology. Together with Peter Scholl-Latour and Dieter Kronzucker , he reported in a book on the work of television journalists . He remained a world-traveling journalist until the end of his life who demanded a lot from his family. He tried to alleviate these burdens by billeting his family in places like Davos , Lerici , Torno or Taormina .

Along with Felix H. Man , Erich Salomon , Martin Munkácsi and Alfred Eisenstaedt, Wolfgang Weber is considered a pioneer of modern photojournalism, as it was established in Germany around 1920. His subject area included reports on the social, political and economic situation at home and abroad, to which he also contributed the texts and the layout. His work, created over 40 years, consists of more than 900 reports written between 1925 and 1966, around 3000 published photographs and more than 20 documentaries. The largest collection of his work - over 100,000 negatives, prints and film sequences - is kept in the Folkwang Museum in Essen .

Exhibitions

  • In 1977 Wolfgang Weber was invited to take part in documenta 6 , 150 Years of Photography , in Kassel .
  • 1982: Travels without End - Photos 1933 to 1935 . Historical archive of the city of Cologne.
  • 1984: Barcelona 1928 . Caixa de Barcelona, ​​Barcelona, ​​Spain.
  • From December 4, 2004 to February 20, 2005, the Folkwang Museum in Essen presented his life's work in a special exhibition.

Numerous participations in group exhibitions.

Works

  • Barcelona. The face of the cities . Edited by Carl Otto Justh. Albertus Publishing House. Berlin 1928.
  • Hotel Affenbrotbaum, adventure on the Cape – Cairo road. Ullstein, Berlin 1936.
  • Adventure of a camera . Experiences of a picture hunter in Europe and Africa. German publisher, Berlin 1938.
  • Travel without end . Wolfgang Weber sees the world. Brothers Auer Verlag, Bonn / Rheindorf 1952.
  • Adventure of my life . Kurt Desch, Vienna et al. 1960.
  • Astray around the world . Sigbert Mohn Verlag, Gütersloh 1964.
  • Behind the scenes of television . Signal-Verlag, Baden-Baden 1975, ISBN 3-7971-0152-X .

Portrait

  • Ursula Vehrigs: Portrait of Wolfgang Weber , oil / canvas, 65 × 45 cm, 1950s. Fig .: Rudolf Jankuhn: Ursula Vehrigs - A painter's life. From the Imperial Era to the German Democratic Republic. Edition Kunsthof Berlin (2004), p. 130.

literature

  • Friedrich Weber: Contributions to the characteristics of the older historians about Spanish America. A biographical and bibliographical sketch. Voigtländer, Leipzig 1911.
  • Garf Ditzthum von Eckstaedt: CF Weber - Aktiengesellschaft Leipzig-Plagwitz (roofing felt factory). Historically biographical sheets. The Kingdom of Saxony. Culture, trade, industry and commerce. Eckstein, Berlin 1911.
  • Hans Herzog (Ed. On behalf of the Board of Directors): Report on the international building exhibition with special exhibitions in Leipzig 1913. Photographs, clichés and printing by Dr. Trenkler & Co., Leipzig-Stött. Graphische Kunstanstalt, Leipzig 1917. VIII. Own discussions: CFWeber Aktiengesellschaft, Leipzig-Plagwitz.
  • Cecil Beaton, Gail Buckland: The Magic Image. Genders of Photography 1939 to the Present Day. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London and Boston 1975.
  • Catalog for documenta 6. Volume 2: Photography, film, video. Kassel 1977, p. 110. ISBN 3-920453-00-X .
  • Rudolf Jankuhn: Ursula Vehrigs - A painter's life. From the Imperial Era to the German Democratic Republic. Edition Kunsthof Berlin 2004 (: rudolfjankuhn.de ›cms› media ›2015/03› Ursula_Vehrigs1).
  • Ute Eskildsen (Ed.): "Fly to ...". Wolfgang Weber - reports, photography and film 1925 to 1977. Steidl, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-86521-098-8 .
  • Kristina Grub, in: Lynne Warren (ed.): Encyclopedia of Twenty-Century Photography. 3 volumes. Routledge, New York 2006, pp. 1653-1655 (online).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leipzig 1910 - Historic address books (adressbuecher.sachsendigital.de ›search results› address book ›Book› list): p. 895: CF Weber, founded 1848, Kleinzschocher, Nonnenstr. 31 - BK board member Stephan Mattar
  2. ↑ The doctoral books of the University of Leipzig from 1810 to 1991 ( https://www.archiv.uni-leipzig.de  ›history› people ›doctor book)
  3. ^ Karl W. Hiersemann: Catalog 586 America. Ethnology and Linguistics. Containing u. a. the library of the Americanist Friedrich Weber. KW Hiersemann, Leipzig 1928
  4. ↑ Annual reports of the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich for the school years 1919/20 and 1920/21. Father: Dr. phil. Friedrich Weber, America researcher, Munich, Ohmstr. 13 / II
  5. ↑ in the student directory of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich 1921/22 and 1925 it is not listed
  6. ↑ Warren, p. 1654; no source is given for both courses
  7. ↑ Randy Kaufmann, Brigitte Werneburg: The most imaginative. In: TAZ. February 9, 2005, Retrieved September 6, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Weber, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH March 4th 1985
Place of death Cologne