A time photographed
Jupp Darchinger: the Fifties and early Sixties. By Klaus Honnef. Excerpt from the book 'Wirtschaftswunder'
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The further time recedes into the past, the more bizarre its photographic images appear to be. Yet according to many theorists of the medium, it is indeed such images that preserve the true reality of how things actually were. Nevertheless, Josef H. Darchinger's photographs from the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany somehow make us feel that the Wizard of Oz has waved his magic wand and allowed us to look into a strange and oddly unreal world. The clothes people wear are homely and sedate, girls and boys stare into the camera with cheerful faces and unkempt hair, the goods in the shops are limited in range and the cars are all classics. Policemen in uniform direct the sparse traffic at critical points in the town under a metal canopy. City architecture is plain and functional; technology, on the other hand, is still harnessed to the craftsman's trade. An increasingly visible dividing line runs through the country, built of barbed-wire barriers, razor wire and then concrete. All the men wear hats, and where the war-time bombing was generally thought to have laid the cities waste, the unscathed town houses of the Wilhelminian period of industrial expansion occasionally still stand in all their splendor. Even people who grew up in the time photographed can hardly believe their eyes.
"Without a miracle, the German nation will slowly but surely go to rack and ruin."
What Darchinger's photographs show across the spectrum of one and a half decades is something not even the people then, at the time when he was taking their pictures, could provide a rational explanation for. Yet they were the ones who made it happen, with pragmatic élan and enormous energy. That is why they resorted to metaphysics and spoke in terms of a miracle. The years the photographer portrays are anchored firmly in the collective memory as years of an economic miracle. Even Konrad Adenauer, who was elected the first Federal Chancellor in September 1949 with a majority of one vote, his own, was beset after the end of the Second World War by the vague presentiment: "Without a miracle, the German nation will slowly but surely go to rack and ruin."Not at all surprising, as a few plain figures and details will make clear. 1.35 million tonnes of bombs had been dropped on German cities, 3.6 million homes were destroyed. The country, partitioned among the four victorious powers USA, Great Britain and France in the west and the Soviet Union in the east, was politically, economically, culturally and morally on its knees. Most of its tradition-steeped cities were largely in ruins. Düren, Jülich, Wesel and Moers in the West were totally destroyed, as were three quarters of Cologne, half of Hamburg, and to a somewhat lesser extent Berlin, Dresden and Munich. The Allied troops had occupied the whole of the territory and dealt summarily with the criminal Nazi regime, which the Germans had followed in droves. The German share in the death toll was high. They are listed on the horrifying balance sheet, both as perpetrators and as victims. The rubble had been cleared away, less damaged houses patched up and countless new ones built in faceless functionality. But the ruins and the disabled ex-servicemen were part of the familiar scene when Darchinger started out on his career as a photographer in the field of journalism. To work as a photographer without having completed the stages prescribed for training in a skilled trade was problematic and provoked stubborn opposition from the powerful craftsmen's guild of photographers. For this reason, too, Darchinger was not allowed to register with the tax office in Bonn as a professional photographer. Nevertheless, Darchinger succeeded in overcoming the persistent opposition and establishing himself as a freelance "photojournalist", the first under that label.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The further time recedes into the past, the more bizarre its photographic images appear to be. Yet according to many theorists of the medium, it is indeed such images that preserve the true reality of how things actually were. Nevertheless, Josef H. Darchinger's photographs from the early years of the Federal Republic of Germany somehow make us feel that the Wizard of Oz has waved his magic wand and allowed us to look into a strange and oddly unreal world. The clothes people wear are homely and sedate, girls and boys stare into the camera with cheerful faces and unkempt hair, the goods in the shops are limited in range and the cars are all classics. Policemen in uniform direct the sparse traffic at critical points in the town under a metal canopy. City architecture is plain and functional; technology, on the other hand, is still harnessed to the craftsman's trade. An increasingly visible dividing line runs through the country, built of barbed-wire barriers, razor wire and then concrete. All the men wear hats, and where the war-time bombing was generally thought to have laid the cities waste, the unscathed town houses of the Wilhelminian period of industrial expansion occasionally still stand in all their splendor. Even people who grew up in the time photographed can hardly believe their eyes.
"Without a miracle, the German nation will slowly but surely go to rack and ruin."
What Darchinger's photographs show across the spectrum of one and a half decades is something not even the people then, at the time when he was taking their pictures, could provide a rational explanation for. Yet they were the ones who made it happen, with pragmatic élan and enormous energy. That is why they resorted to metaphysics and spoke in terms of a miracle. The years the photographer portrays are anchored firmly in the collective memory as years of an economic miracle. Even Konrad Adenauer, who was elected the first Federal Chancellor in September 1949 with a majority of one vote, his own, was beset after the end of the Second World War by the vague presentiment: "Without a miracle, the German nation will slowly but surely go to rack and ruin."Not at all surprising, as a few plain figures and details will make clear. 1.35 million tonnes of bombs had been dropped on German cities, 3.6 million homes were destroyed. The country, partitioned among the four victorious powers USA, Great Britain and France in the west and the Soviet Union in the east, was politically, economically, culturally and morally on its knees. Most of its tradition-steeped cities were largely in ruins. Düren, Jülich, Wesel and Moers in the West were totally destroyed, as were three quarters of Cologne, half of Hamburg, and to a somewhat lesser extent Berlin, Dresden and Munich. The Allied troops had occupied the whole of the territory and dealt summarily with the criminal Nazi regime, which the Germans had followed in droves. The German share in the death toll was high. They are listed on the horrifying balance sheet, both as perpetrators and as victims. The rubble had been cleared away, less damaged houses patched up and countless new ones built in faceless functionality. But the ruins and the disabled ex-servicemen were part of the familiar scene when Darchinger started out on his career as a photographer in the field of journalism. To work as a photographer without having completed the stages prescribed for training in a skilled trade was problematic and provoked stubborn opposition from the powerful craftsmen's guild of photographers. For this reason, too, Darchinger was not allowed to register with the tax office in Bonn as a professional photographer. Nevertheless, Darchinger succeeded in overcoming the persistent opposition and establishing himself as a freelance "photojournalist", the first under that label.
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Josef Heinrich Darchinger, Wirtschaftswunder
Hardcover, slipcase, 39.6 x 33 cm (15.6 x 13 in.), 290 pages
$ 600.00
$ 600.00
Rare color photographs of the German "economic miracle." Limited to 1,000 copies, each numbered and signed by J. H. Darchinger and containing the signed color photograph Reichstag, Berlin, 1958
The city centers are all aglow with the bright lights of department stores like Neckermann in Frankfurt. Not quite twenty years after the lost war, the illuminated façades proudly proclaimed the affluence that had been achieved.
In the foreground a Mercedes-Benz 220 Saloon, the new status symbol. The mail-order magnate and later tour operator Josef Neckermann is an icon of the "reconstruction". His slogan "Neckermann makes it possible" is the fanfare of a hitherto unknown mass prosperity.
Photo (c) Josef Heinrich Darchinger, 1964