Limited Collector’s Edition of 1,000 signed copies, each with signed pigment print Reichstag, Berlin, 1958
Josef H. Darchinger. Wirtschaftswunder
Edition of 1,000
Archival pigment print, 11.8 x 14 in., hardcover volume in slipcase, 15.6 x 13.0 in., 290 pages
US$ 1,000
Emerging from the rubble of catastrophic defeat, postwar West Germany amazed the world with its energized ascension to economic powerhouse. These exceptional photographs of the era by Josef Darchinger capture a nation in transition, from disaster to triumph. In color and black-and-white, they offer unique visual testimony of a transformative historical moment.
Limited Collector’s Edition of 1,000 signed copies, each with signed pigment print Reichstag, Berlin, 1958
Limited Collector’s Edition of 1,000 signed copies, each with signed pigment print Reichstag, Berlin, 1958
Economic Miracle
Rare color photographs of Germany’s postwar recovery
It was no more than eight years after the surrender of the Nazi government when Josef Heinrich Darchinger set out on his photographic journey through the West of a divided Germany. The bombs of World War II had reduced the country’s major cities to deserts of rubble. Yet his pictures show scarcely any signs of the downfall of a civilization. Not that the photographer was manipulating the evidence: he simply recorded what he saw. The country’s economic boom was so incredible that the whole world spoke of an “economic miracle.”Dated between 1952 and 1967, Darchinger’s pictures, in color and black-and-white, show a country in a fever of reconstruction. Exceptional historic and cultural documents,they reveal a specific German moment, caught between technological modernism and cultural restoration, between increasing affluence and continued penury, between bomb sites and new building, between German Gemütlichkeit and the new threat of the Cold War. Above all, however, they reveal, the ordinary people swept up in this particular period.
Limited Collector’s Edition of 1,000 signed copies, each with signed pigment print Reichstag, Berlin, 1958
Josef H. Darchinger. Wirtschaftswunder
Edition of 1,000
Archival pigment print, 11.8 x 14 in., hardcover volume in slipcase, 15.6 x 13.0 in., 290 pages