UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
The Travelling Lens: Munkacsi's Travel Reportages and Weimar Identity
by
Robert A. MacDonald
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC, SLAVIC AND EAST ASIAN STUDIES
CALGARY, ALBERTA
APRIL 2010
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••I Canada ABSTRACT
Travel was particularly important in the construction of German national identity from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. Due to political and economic instability, travel was not a possibility for many Germans living in the Weimar Republic. Representations of travel found in photography in Martin Munkacsi's reportages for the Berliner Illustrirte
Zeitung such as "Kaffee-Tragodie: Eine Milliarde Pfund Kaffee ins Meer geworfen!"
("Coffee Tragedy: One Billion Pounds of Coffee Thrown into the Sea!") and "Berlin-Rio in vier Tagen: Mit dem fahrplanmaBigen Zeppelin nach Sudamerika" ("Berlin-Rio in Four
Days: With the Regularly Scheduled Zeppelin to South America"), and the context of lost experience gave the photos new meaning through ersatz travel. Munkacsi's travelling lens created and commented upon discourses of German national identity such as masculinity, whiteness, economics, and an Orientalist gaze through the ersatz reality of the photograph and its representation of the foreign.
11 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis would not have been possible without the assistance and support of many people and organizations. Firstly, I would like to thank my family and friends, especially my parents, my sister, and my fiancee, for putting up with me while I worked and offering their support and encouragement whenever I needed it. I owe a further debt of gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Michael Taylor and Dr. Florentine Strzelczyk. Without their guidance, their experience, and their willingness to help whenever I needed them throughout the process of research and writing I would not have been able to come so far. I would also like to thank Herr Stephan Kuhr of the Axel Springer Infopool and Dr. Katrin
Bomhoff of ullstein bild, both in Berlin. Without their kind assistance, I would not have been able to access the copies of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung or original Munkacsi prints that were necessary for the successful completion of this thesis.
I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Department of Germanic, Slavic and East Asian Studies and the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Calgary, as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
in TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv
CHAPTER ONE: Mr. Munkacsi Goes to Berlin 1 Berlin andthe BIZ - "The Finest Picture Magazine in the World" 7 Munkacsi and New Photography 12 "Think while you shoot!" or Think While You View? 17
CHAPTER TWO: Being There vs. Seeing There 25 The German Question - Weimar National Identity 30 Summary 37
CHAPTER THREE: Coffee and the Colonialist Eye 39 Bailing and Burning 41 A Sea of Caffeine-poisoned Water 45 The Masculinity of the Foreign 48 Coffee Tragedy! 56 Burning Coffee for Heat? 58 The Power of Coffee 61
CHAPTER FOUR: First Contact 66 Role Model for the Republic? 69 A Year in Three Days 73 Flight and the Imperial Gaze 80 White Men Looking Down on the World 82 Looking Down at the Past 85 Contact Zone? 88 ...Or Moderated Contact Zone? 91 Encounter with the "Natives" 92 The Imperial Eye and the "Native" Foil 98
CHAPTER FIVE: The Travelling Lens 101
REFERENCES 107
APPENDIX A: "Ostein im Suden" ("Easter in the South") Ill
iv APPENDIX B:"Kaffee-Tragodie" ("Coffee Tragedy") 112
APPENDIX C: "Berlin-Rio in vierTagen" ("Berlin-Rio in Four Days") 115
v 1 Chapter One: Mr. Munkacsi Goes to Berlin
The day is Sunday, March 24, 1929. The first signs of spring are beginning to show, after a long, cold winter - in fact, the coldest winter since the Prussians first began to keep meteorological records for Berlin (Wehler 2003, 258). At a newsstand on Unter den
Linden, today's newspapers and magazines have just been put out on display, including the new copy of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ), a favorite magazine among Berliners. As usual, the cover on this week's BIZ is a full page photo, though for a Berliner just coming out of a long, cold winter, this particular cover may have drawn particular interest. The cover photo is of a well-dressed man and woman, both on camelback, being led by a host of local cam el-drivers in front of a building of foreign design bearing the name "Royal Hotel."
The photo is very bright, with intensely-cast shadows falling over the sand at the feet of the camels and their tenders. The camels seem to smile, whilst their European riders look somewhat uncomfortable, but intense; as they balance on the backs of their camels, the camel tenders grimace in the sunlight.
Particularly notable is the caption beneath the picture that reads, "Ostern im Suden:
Vor dem Royal-Hotel in der Oase Biskra (Nordafrika). Zum Trost fur die, die nicht reisen konnen: Unser Photograph schreibt uns: "Hier ist es hundekalt!" ("Easter in the South: In front of the Royal Hotel in the Oasis of Biskra (North Africa). As consolation for those who cannot travel, our photographer writes us: 'It's freezing here!'") (Munkacsi, "Ostern im
Siiden" 1929). The photographer mentioned by the caption is given name credit on the 2 lower right hand corner of the page, under the photo: Martin Munkacsi, the new rising photojournalistic star at Berlin's Ullstein Verlag (Hardt 2000, 71).l
In the late summer of 1928 (or late 1927, depending on the source one consults), a young Martin Munkacsi left his native Hungary and a successful job writing and photographing for the magazines Az Est, Pesti Napolo, and Szinhdzi Elet in Budapest to seek employment in the bigger and better markets of Berlin (Osman 1978, 6, Kaufhold
2006, 187). Unfortunately, individual details of Munkacsi's life such as these are sometimes difficult to piece together; for, as his daughter Joan Munkacsi once said, "My father never let the truth get in the way of a good story" (Morgan 1992, 4). Many other sources have similarly noted that Munkacsi liked to be vague and even start rumours surrounding the details of his life. Nevertheless, there are some facts that are either known or agreed to be true, and will be related below.
Martin Munkacsi was born on May 18, 1896 in Kolozsvar, Hungary (now Cluj
Napoca, Romania) to a working class family. Munkacsi was a passionate, natural athlete, and excelled especially at soccer (Osman 1978, 6, Morgan 1992, 4). However, Munkacsi was also very enthusiastic about work and education; he read avidly, and wrote for local publications. At age 16, Munkacsi followed the trend of rural Hungarians moving to the cities, and left his hometown for Budapest to seek work (Ewing, "Munkacsi" 1978, 4,
Morgan 1992, 5). In Budapest, he worked initially as a writer for the three publications listed above, until he taught himself photography with a home-built camera. His first photos
1 There are several ways to spell Munkacsi's name. Either one uses the correct Hungarian spelling, in which case it would be spelled Munkacsi, or one uses the German and English spelling, Munkacsi, which omits the accent on the a. For my purposes, I have chosen to use the latter option. 3 were published in Az Est and Theatre Life magazines (Morgan 1992, 5). Although he worked as a sports photographer and writer for the Az Est, Pesti Naplo, and Szihndzi Elet, his breakthrough as a photojournalist did not come until 1923, when a snapshot he had taken of an old man fighting with a soldier proved the old man's innocence of murder in court (Osman 1978, 6, Morgan 1992, 5).
Munkacsi gained an instant promotion from sports photographer to photojournalist as a result of this photo, as well as fame, prestige and more newspaper photography jobs.
His overnight success also began to pay off financially - by 1924 he was the highest-paid photographer in Budapest (Osman 1978, 7). There he continued to work until 1927, when he was asked to shoot photos of the wife of the publisher of Az Est. Although Munkacsi completed the assignment, the publisher was unwilling to pay him the last few cents that had been agreed to. Munkacsi was so put off by this encounter that according to Morgan, he left for Berlin the very next day (Morgan 1992, 5). Accounts as to the reason for
Munkacsi's departure differ between sources though; Kaufhold writes that Munkacsi's emigration to Berlin likely had to do with the unstable pseudo-fascist political scene in
Hungary at the time, though Munkacsi's ultimate motivation for moving is unknown
(Kaufhold 2006, 190).
For Munkacsi, this move to Berlin ushered in the beginning of his own golden age, not dissimilar from that of mid-to-late Weimar Berlin itself. Upon his arrival in Berlin, armed with a portfolio of photos he brought with him from Budapest that demonstrated his status as an "expert in his chosen profession," Munkacsi allegedly went straight to the publishing offices of Ullstein Verlag, a particularly prominent publishing firm, to look for 4 employment (Kaufhold 2006, 190). As the legend goes, Munkacsi emerged three hours later with a three-year contract to work as a photojournalist for various Ullstein publications (Osman 1978, 7, Morgan 1992, 5). As with many events in Munkacsi's past - due to his love of hyperbole - the veracity of this particular event cannot be confirmed, and is disputed by several sources (Osman 1978, 6, Kaufhold 2006, 190). Regardless of whether or not this story is completely true, Munkacsi photos began to be published in
Ullstein Verlag publications later that year. The continuity of the publication of Munkacsi photos in various Ullstein publications does tend to lend the story of the three-year contract some tacit validity (Kaufhold 2006, 205). Thus, likely armed with a three-year contract, a camera, and an innovative style of photography that will be discussed shortly, Munkacsi's first photos to be published in Germany appeared in the September 19th edition of the brand new Tempo magazine, which had launched only the week before (Kaufhold 2006, 191).
As a result of his experimentation and utilization of the tenets of what Werner Graff referred to as New Photography (Graff 1929, 1) - which will be discussed in greater detail below - and his uncanny ability to anticipate a photo and get the picture exactly at the right moment from the perfect angle, Munkacsi rose quickly to become one of the top photographers at Ullstein (Ewing, "Natural Means" 1979, 5). This is demonstrated by the prominence of his stories "Liberia: Vier Wochen im Modernen Negerstaat: Eine Reise fur die "Berliner Illustrirte" von Martin Munkacsi," ("Liberia: Four Weeks in the Modern
Negro State: A Trip for the "Berliner Illustrirte" by Martin Munkacsi") in given the cover spot for the 22 June 1930 issue of the BIZ, and "Berlin-Rio de Janeiro in 4 Tagen, von 5 Martin Munkacsi," ("Berlin-Rio de Janeiro in 4 Days, by Martin Munkacsi") the cover story for the 30 April 1932 issue.
After his sports photography for Tempo set the standard against which all other sports photography would be judged, Munkacsi moved on to photo assignments for the BIZ
(Kaufhold 2006, 202). Munkacsi approached these assignments with the same innovation that he had shown in his previous work, both in Germany and in Hungary, and as a result was given greater profile work, such as photographing Greta Garbo on vacation and Leni
Riefenstahl on a skiing trip. In addition to this celebrity work, Munkacsi also produced photo reportages on such wide and varied topics as commando training, the Munich
Commercial Flying School, Siamese twins, the opening of the Reichstag, and the Prince of
Wales (Ewing, "Natural Means" 1979, 5).
Between 1929 and 1934, Munkacsi travelled extensively to produce photo reportages for the BIZ. These trips took him to Angora (Ankara), where he photographed the wedding of Kemal Atatiirk's daughter, as well as to Palestine and the Near East, Egypt,
Liberia, western and northern Europe, Brazil, and the United States (Osman 1978, 7,
Kaufhold 2006, 209). Munkacsi produced a prolific quantity of work during the course of these travels, and many shots were published in the context of Munkacsi's reportages.
However, as is the case for many photographers, many more remained either unpublished or were published as stock photos with different, and in some cases misleading captions 6
(Kaufhold 2006, 210).2 While for some the balance between quantity and quality of work is
a zero-sum game, this was not the case with Munkacsi. His work was of a consistently high
quality, as evidenced by the photography journal Gebrauchsgrafik hailing Munkacsi as
"...der geistvollste, der interessanteste unter den modernen Photographen" ("the most
intellectual, brilliant, interesting of the modern photographers") (Sahl 1932, 38).
Despite increasing tensions in the Weimar Republic as a result of political
polarization, and even after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Munkacsi was able to
continue working for the BIZ and was even selected to take photos of the infamous Day of
Potsdam - a political event designed by the Nazis to show apparent continuity with
Prussian tradition, in essence the passing of the torch of power from the Prussian elites to
Hitler and the Nazis - for a special edition of the magazine (Kaufhold 2006, 227-228,
Peukert 1991, 280). Nevertheless, being Jewish, Munkacsi decided not to stay in Germany,
and in summer 1934 left for the United States and signed an exclusive contract with
Harper's Bazaar, which had been offered to him six months previously by the editor of the
magazine, Carmel Snow (Osman 1978, 8, Morgan 1992, 7). Munkacsi took up residence in
New York City, which was second only to Los Angeles for the population of European,
especially German exiles. There, Munkacsi continued to take fashion photography in new
and unexpected directions, making history with a combination of Carmel Snow's editing,
his photography, and Russian exile Alexey Brodovitch's new and innovative cropping and
page design (Ewing, "Natural Means" 1979, 7). It was as a result of Munkacsi's work for
2 In the course of my research for this thesis at Ullstein Archive in Berlin, the number of photos with the handwritten "n.g." (nicht genommen, or not published) far outnumbered the ones that had publication information on the back. 7 Harper's Bazaar that fashion was shot with an eye towards spontaneity and the individual personality of the model, rather than shooting as if the model were simply a clotheshorse on a set (Osman 1978, 9). This approach persists in fashion photography in the present day, and as a result the knowledgeable viewer can still keenly feel Munkacsi's influence in the visual styles of current fashion photography (Osman 1978, 9).
Though his fashion sets garnered him the greatest attention stateside, Munkacsi never forgot his roots in photojournalism. For the Ladies' Home Journal, Munkacsi was commissioned to do a reportage entitled "How America Lives". Despite the success of this story, Munkacsi was never able to work in colour as effectively as he had in black and white; slowly but surely his fame began to wane (Osman 1978, 10). So too did his health -
in 1943, Munkacsi suffered the first of many heart attacks. Finally, in June 1963, almost broke, Munkacsi suffered a final, fatal heart attack while a spectator at a soccer game
(Osman 1978, 11). This thesis will focus only on two reportages Munkacsi produced for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung at the height of his career there, between 1929 and 1932, namely his trip abroad to Brazil.
Berlin and the BIZ- "The Finest Picture Magazine in the World"
During the 1920s, Berlin was the third largest city in the world after New York and
London (Kaufhold 2006, 188). The draw of the big city was irresistible to many, from aristocrats to proletariat. Berlin was especially a major press center for Europe, with many large and influential media concerns in residence in the so-called Newspaper Quarter of the city (Osman 1978, 7). The atmosphere was electric and eclectic, the former being attested to by Carl Zuckmayer when he said, "Berlin schmeckte nach Zukunft, und dafiir nahm man 8 den Dreck und die Kalte gern in Kauf' ("Berlin tasted of the future, and so one willingly accepted the dirt and cold") (Zuckmayer 1966, 314), and the latter by Kurt Korff, chief editor of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, when he wrote "Berlin ist nun einmal des Reiches
Brennpunkt, und was innerhalb Deutschlands Grenzen geschieht, pflegt irgendeine
Spiegelung in Berlin zu erfahren" ("Berlin is the focal point of the Empire, and whatever happens within the borders of Germany is mirrored in some way in Berlin") (Korff 1927,
282). Although it had started the decade in ruins and revolution, Berlin entered the last third of the 1920s as not only the focal point of Germany, but also the cultural magnet of Europe, replacing Paris as the place to be (Kaufhold 2006, 187-88, Zuckmayer 1966, 312-13).
In this vibrant and metropolitan city, the Ullstein Verlag was the largest publisher of the day, and was considered to be one of the four pillars of the Weimar Republic (Fulda
2009, 2).3 In fact, Ullstein Verlag was the largest publishing firm for papers, magazines and books in Central Europe from 1927 onwards (Osman 1978, 7, Fulda 2009, 2). More than that though, Ullstein was said to be a center of liberalism in Berlin, and as BIZ serial novel author Vicki Baum stated, "one of the several hearts of the city" (Baum 1964, 264, Fulda
2009, 2). Accordingly, Ullstein had magazines and newspapers that catered to the broad spectrum of public interests and literacy levels, among them Die Dame, Berliner Illustrirte
Zeitung, and Tempo. Although the main difference between these magazines were production quality, photographic and text quality and content, illustrated magazines such as these did tend to have a common format: they would cover interesting stories of the day such as notable politicians, disasters, or celebrity news, illustrated reports from
3 Fulda notes that the other three pillars were Bauhaus, the Reichstag, and (Gustav) Stresemann. 9 photographers around the world, serialized novels, jokes, and most importantly advertising
(Kaufhold 2006, 199).
The primacy of advertising is apparent when leafing through copies of the BIZ - serialized novels are interspersed with exotic ads for cigarettes, and photo reportages may be bookended by ads for the latest pocket-sized camera or Chlorodont toothpaste. As Fulda notes, readership in the Weimar Republic actually demanded that their newspapers and magazines have more advertisements; less popular papers tended to have less, while more popular ones met this demand for more (Fulda 2009, 27-8). Considering the popularity of the BIZ - expanded upon below - and the sorts of foreign, pseudo-colonialist and travel imagery that were used in advertisements in the BIZ, and the fact that the foreign travel imagery was extremely popular at the time (Hardt 2000, 60, 67), one can quite reasonably make the argument that the advertisers understood that colonialism sold products, and the editors of the BIZ could use it to sell more issues.
Despite the fact that Ullstein's magazines were somewhat similar in format, there certainly was a public preference. The BIZ is noted to have been the "most well-known and most widely circulated magazine of the time" (Kaufhold 2006, 190), and "the finest picture magazine in the world," with a weekly circulation of over two million copies at its peak in the late 1920s and early 1930s (Osman 1978, 7), and national distribution (Fulda 2009, 14).
This figure is particularly impressive when one considers that there were 147 daily newspapers in Berlin at the time, and only 26 of them had a distribution of over 100,000
(Kaufhold 2006, 199). However, an even greater measure of the BIZ's success is given by
Korff, who notes that only the Saturday Evening Post in North America surpassed the 10 BIT'S, distribution numbers, as the Post served a readership of around 2.5 million in 1926 as compared to the BIZ's 1.75 million in the same year (Korff 1927, 301).
The circulation figures of the BIZ are not surprising though, considering the innovative attitude of the BIZ's chief editor, Kurt Korff. Under Korff s reign, the debate at the BIZ between illustrators and photographers was mostly decided in the favour of the latter4 Similarly, the debate in the publishing world over the primacy of text or photos was a non-issue for the BIZ, the result of a seemingly comfortable compromise for supporters of both camps (Kaufhold 2006, 199). Although the primary purpose of the BIZ was to showcase important or interesting images of the time, this focus did not preclude the publishing of purely textual items, such as serialized novels by authors such as Vicki
Baum, Thea von Harbou, and Norbert Jacques, among others (Korff 1927, 298). As a result of these progressive attitudes, there was a general understanding that "one could move on to using the image itself as a news item" - accordingly, the BIZ was the first illustrated magazine to form an artistic advisory committee (Korff 1927, 292). This committee had as its task the duty of selecting the best possible photos, and then arranging them in the best way they could for publication (Kaufhold 2006, 200).
At the core of the BIZ was its use of photo reportage to cover important stories of the day. Photo reportage as a photojournalistic style developed in the late 1920s as a result of criticism of the illustrated magazine format. This criticism developed as a result of the
"flood" of photos that inundated the press in the 1920s, and their "questionable use"
4 Kaufhold does note that illustrators kept their jobs longer in Germany even after being overshadowed by photographers. This, he notes, was especially true in the case of Ullstein Verlag (Kaufhold 2005, 203). 11
(Uecker 2007, 470) This criticism is best stated by Siegfried Kracauer, who pointed out that as a result of photojournalism and mass news distribution, the world "had never before had so much information about itself, though conversely no generation had ever known so little about itself due to the largely arbitrary and haphazard presentation of photos in illustrated magazines up to that point (Kaufhold 2006, 203). Thus, illustrated magazines such as the BIZ began to plan their issues - or at the very least their individual photographic reports - so that the photos and accompanying texts covered only one topic. This element became the basis for photo reportage (Kaufhold 2006, 203), as "out of the presentation of thematically related images, new and fundamentally superior insights into contemporary reality were expected to emerge" (Uecker 2007, 471).
A particularly good example of this linking, Kaufhold notes, is an issue of the BIZ where Munkacsi's photos of Helene Meyer were published alongside a serialized novel by
Vicki Baum on women's emancipation (Kaufhold 2006, 208). Although this style of photo reportage was apparently common to all the illustrated magazines in Germany at the time, the BIZ was more successful than all the others, success which one can attribute to the
"effervescence" of Kurt Korff, who constantly sent his photographers out to cover new topics, while at the same time teaching his editors the art of the concise, captivating and informative caption (Kaufhold 2006, 206). This was in keeping with Korff s view that for the BIZ "als Zeitchronik machte es sich zur Aufgabe, Kenntnisse auf alien Gebieten zu verbreiten" ("as a chronicle of the times it made it its duty to disseminate knowledge from all areas") (Korff 1927, 294). 12 Accordingly, the BIZs influence on its readers cannot be understated. Korff uses the example of a reportage featuring the Prince of Wales in which he was photographed wearing a new style of tie. According to Korff, the day after the BIZ published these images this tie appeared in the show windows of men's shops across Germany (Korff 1927, 300).
At the same time as it was influential in matters of style, the BIZ did not shy away from ensuring that its readers remained critical to what appeared in the magazine. There seems to have been a widely held belief in the general public that photos were an incontrovertible and unerring record of reality - in short, that photos could not lie. To counter this belief, the
BIZ produced a photographic April Fool's joke, the brainchild of staff photographer Georg
Busse. This "photographische Luge" ("photographic lie") depicted the fantastic and the impossible as if they had actually occurred, and could have helped counter this impression of photographic infallibility (Korff 1927, 295).
As a result of a new and compelling format, an enlightened and innovative editorial staff, excellent photographers, serialized works of some of the best German writers of the
20th century, and an eye towards keeping its readership informed, entertained, and skeptical, the BIZ became the premier illustrated magazine of the time. The way in which it showed new political, social, technological developments at a price that was far more affordable than other illustrated magazines made it into a publication that a large circle of readers saw as a necessary accompaniment to their regular newspapers (Korff 1927, 293).
Munkacsi and New Photography
Munkacsi's work has been said to fall under the auspices of what Werner Graff referred to as New Photography, defined in the latter's book Es kommt der neue Fotograf. 13 ("Here comes the New Photographer"). Graff called for a drastic re-evaluation of the
"Regeln der Kunst" ("rules of Art") that had limited the creativity of photographers prior to the publication of Es kommt der neue Fotograf in 1929 (Graff 1929, 1). Prominent photographers such as Albert Renger-Patzsch and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy expressed sentiments similar to that of Graff. Up to this point in history, photography had been seen very much as the poor younger brother to painting, as both were concerned with the
[re]production of images. Photography was also indebted to painting when it came to technical considerations such as composition and subject matter (Graff 1929, 1). However, while painters were highly thought of in society, and educated in art history, theory, composition, etc., photography was seen to be a very low-brow endeavour, as it required no special training to produce the image; one had to be able to aim the device and push a button. Thus, contemporary criticism that compared photography to other visual art such as painting was very negative (Uecker 2007, 469).
New Photography challenged these notions. Prominent photographers began to question the relationship of photography to painting, and of photography to art, and of art to modernity itself. The match between photography and the modern age seemed perfect - in a period driven by mechanization, what better than a mechanical device to produce an
"objective representation" of it (Renger-Patzsch 1928, 19)? Nevertheless, at the end of the
1920s debate in artistic circles continued to center on the superiority (or not) of painting to photography, with those artists involved in the former pursuit arguing strenuously for their medium for fear that photography would replace it, fear that may not have seemed that unrealistic. After all, painting involves the creation of an image on canvas or other material 14 by hand, a process that took a great deal of time and effort. In contrast, photography created images mechanically, with the eye assuming the artistic responsibilities of the hand
(Benjamin 2008, 4); as a result, the process was very fast, efficient, and precise (Moholy-
Nagy, "Diskussion" 1927, 233). When the two media were compared on the basis of ease of reproducibility of images, the scale shifted again in the favour of photography. To copy a painting required an artist of sufficient skill, in addition to more time and effort; to copy a photo required only the negative and a lab, where it could be reproduced more quickly and precisely than a painting could be copied.
Some critics in favour of painting argued that it possessed elements that photography could never hope to attain. An example of this is Ernst Kallai, who wrote at length about the inability of photography to capture "facture," or the tactile tension between the image and the material on which it is reproduced. According to Kallai, this lack of facture is the primary reason why photography is not the equal of painting, as through facture painting is a deeper, more meaningful representation of reality (Kallai 1927, 151).
For those in the pro-photography group such as Moholy-Nagy and Adolf Behne, the argument that photography lacks facture is nonsensical. They both argue in response to
Kallai that photography does possess facture, but realizes it through either the interaction of light with the film, or the mechanical nature of the camera (Moholy-Nagy, "Diskussion"
1927, 233, Behne 1927, 227).
Despite these differences in the perceived value of photography as an art or a medium between its advocates and detractors, the media of photography and painting were not locked in a zero-sum game. As Moholy-Nagy noted in his response to Kallai's article, 15 "photography does not doom painting, either today or in the future" (Moholy-Nagy,
"Diskussion" 1927, 233). This is due to the fact that while related media, both painting and photography have their own niches, as both "arrive at different images" (Benjamin 2008,
25). Benjamin sums up this debate best - albeit with a certain degree of hindsight - in his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" when he wrote: "Much wisdom had already been thrown away on trying to decide whether photography was an art
(without asking the prior question: whether, with the invention of photography, the very nature of art had undergone a change)" (Benjamin 2008, 15). Similarly, Moholy-Nagy commented that the fact of photography did not diminish, regardless of its classification as an art or not (Moholy-Nagy, "Fotografie" 1927, 115).
Influential and important photographers such as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Albert
Renger-Patzsch rejected photography that mimicked other more traditional visual arts, especially painting (Moholy-Nagy, "Fotografie" 1927, 115, Renger-Patzsch 1928, 19). A call went out from Moholy-Nagy and other photographers that photography should be recognized as a unique medium, that through experimentation and utilization of photography to its fullest extent it could aid in the understanding of the chaos and complexity of the modern world (Moholy-Nagy, "Fotografie" 1927, 114, Ewing, "Natural
Means" 1979, 5). These ideals drove the movement that called itself New Photography.
The New Photography movement wanted to "break down barriers," that had sprung up around photography; there was no right way to take a photo, no "regular" photo, and photographers should not be limited by the artificial rules and restrictions imposed by "the rules of art" or its pundits and adherents (Graff 1929, 1). In practice, New Photography was 16 "concerned with dramatic angles, strong diagonals, and bold patterns" (Morgan 1992, 7), there was more to it than that. New Photographers wanted to photograph common, banal subjects, to see old things without falling victim to sentimentality; to use new perspectives
(i.e oblique angles), to use vertical framing instead of traditional horizontal framing, to make use of reflections and other illusions, to experiment with effective close-ups, to focus on partial detail instead of always using the whole image, and to use forms and patterns to show the aesthetic beauty of new materials (Ewing, "Natural Means" 1979, 5-6); to experiment with new lens positions, new varieties of camera and even camera-less photography (Moholy-Nagy, "Fotografie" 1927, 117).
Ewing and others note that as a movement, New Photography developed during
Munkacsi's tenure in Berlin, and that Munkacsi's work certainly reflects some of these ideas. This is apparent in Munkacsi's photos - including the two travel photo series analyzed here - through his use of juxtaposition of images, abstraction, and what Ewing calls "an inclination for surreal ideas" such as disembodied hands, close-ups, and obscured subjects (Ewing, "Natural Means" 1979, 6). Munkacsi's support for Graffs New
Photography is further revealed by what he had to say about photography: "Take back views. Take running views... Pick unexpected angles, but never without reason. Lie down on your back, climb ladders" (Osman 1978, 12), and most importantly: "Think while you shoot!"
In keeping with his flair for the dramatic described by his daughter, Munkacsi was seemingly more concerned with style and abstraction in his photos, not necessarily an objective viewpoint. Thus, as many photographers commonly did, Munkacsi would often 17 touch up his photos with paint once they were developed, to sharpen contrast, or highlight a certain detail so that the viewer would be able to see in the finished image exactly what he saw in the viewfinder. In fact, it was not unheard of for Munkacsi to selectively crop an image, changing the orientation of heads, arms, or other elements in the photo. Sources did not elaborate as to whether Munkacsi adjusted any of the photos from the travel photo reportages in question, though it should be noted that despite widespread photo retouching, this element of photography was hardly acknowledged by photographers and editors
(Uecker 2007, 470).5
"Think while you shoot!" or Think While You View?
In as much as it is necessary for a photographer to "think while [they] shoot," it is incumbent upon the viewer of a photo to think while they view, due to the intrinsic power of photos in society since their inception. Photography - especially photojournalism - has this power due the assumption of a privileged relationship to veracity through objectivity
(Sontag 1977, 86, Barthes 1980, 77, Uecker 2007, 470). This objectivity claimed by photography changes the critical stance needed by the viewer, and many hold an underlying assumption that if something has been photographed, it does exist or has existed at some point; that the image represents the truth, or reality unvarnished (Barthes 1980, 76). In the case of photojournalism this may be especially true, as similarly to the "truth claim" of documentary films, viewers expect that the images they are seeing present a view of an actual socio-historical world, and not a work of total fantasy (Beattie 2004, 10-11). This
5 Looking at Munkacsi's original prints at the Ullstein Archiv in Berlin, it was obvious where paint had been applied by hand to emphasize particular details or lighting in the photo 18 was certainly the case as reported by Kurt Korff; thus the BIZ began to publish the April
Fool's photos to shake the readership out of their illusion of truth of photography (Korff
1927, 295).
Ironically, the camera cannot show the truth of reality; the camera can only show the reality that the photographer put in front of the lens. In this manner, photography is merely a reflection of reality, subject to standards of aesthetic and personal taste, among other biases (Sontag 1977, 6, Barthes 1980, 66, Hardt 2000, 60). Truth value must then be sorted out later by the viewer based upon their own conception of reality, the reality presented by the photo, and the context given to the reality of the photo by the caption.
Additionally, Barthes notes the relationship between photography and loss or death.
In Camera Lucida, he writes that this relationship is one of a monsterous freezing of time; that in looking at a photograph one is faced with the realization that the person or the moment captured on film has been as the photograph shows it to be, yet cannot be that way again (Barthes 1980, 85, 91). The photograph therefore becomes almost a memorialization of the subject as it was. Furthermore, for Barthes the photograph seems to imply that its subject is something alive that has been captured, and that this subjects' complete essence is captured as well. However, this is not the case, as the photograph can only capture part of the subject's essence, attested to by Barthes while discussing the impossibility of finding his dead mother in photographs of her (Barthes 1980, 65-67). There is therefore a sort of cognitive dissonance at play when one views a photo; at the same time as a photo is true because its subjects existed in front of the lens at some point, the photo is a lie because it cannot represent the complete and total reality of the subject it depicts. 19
Thus, although far from being the perfect mirror of the real world that may have been hoped for when photography first began in the late 1830s, it is possible for photography to help people sort out the "chaos of the modern world" (Ewing, "Natural
Means" 1979, 5). To this end, photography can be used for multiple purposes, for example: to provide evidence, to justify, to inform, to represent, to surprise, or to provoke desire
(Barthes 1980, 28). Paradoxically, it could also be argued that in so doing photography increases the chaos of the modern world for the reasons listed above.
Barthes also points out that the attraction society holds for photo is linked to adventure - without adventure there is no photo (Barthes 1980, 19). It makes sense then that the development of photography occurred in tandem with the development of tourism.
Sontag notes this as well, providing an anecdote about how in the early 1800s a Frenchman travelling in the South Pacific even went so far as to bring a Daguerreotype - the forerunner to the modern camera - with him to record images of what he saw (Sontag 1977,
89). In her book, On Photography, Sontag goes to great effort to demonstrate the co- development of photography and travel, which helps to substantiate the claims to be made about connectedness of photography and travel in this thesis.
Firstly, she notes, the camera has a unique way of "making real" what one experiences, both while travelling and not (Sontag 1977, 9). Considering the barrage of new and unfamiliar stimuli that a traveler is confronted with while travelling, it is conceivable that one may be unable to process the depth of an experience at the time it occurs. The camera offers a way to freeze at least the visual stimuli at any given time, which one can then revisit upon returning home and developing the film. In this manner, 20 the camera and photography offer a soothing respite from the chaos of travel, allowing one to feel as if one does have some measure of control over the environment. Photos thus become "experience captured," and a primary experiential medium (Sontag 1977, 3, Hardt
2000, 87).
Especially in the case of the sort of photojournalism that Munkacsi engaged it, and particularly for the photo reportages in question, there is no doubt that they show adventure, and are indeed "experience captured". Although Munkacsi himself was doing the actual legwork of travelling those vast and unfamiliar distances, he was able to capture these experiences on celluloid and ship them back to Germany. Once there, the photos which the editorial staff thought best "eine Situation auf ihrem Hohepunkt fassen"
("captured the situation at its climax") would be selected for printing (Korff 1927, 291).
Thus, once printed in the BIZ, his readers could experience what the destruction of billions of pounds of coffee looks like, or a four-day trip to Brazil aboard the illustrious Graf
Zeppelin looks like. These photos, along with the captions and stories that Munkacsi wrote to accompany and contextualize them, represent a whole gamut of experiences that could be seen, collected, savoured, and enjoyed vicariously by millions of Germans who would not have otherwise been in a position to do so. This, therefore, turns travel from something that relies upon being there, to something that can be enjoyed by seeing there as well.
Secondly, Sontag notes that photography can help people make sense of the chaotic world around them by providing a means to take possession of spaces in which they feel insecure (Sontag 1977, 9). Photography can be said to accomplish this as the photo represents a frozen moment in time that can be possessed and collected; in so doing, it can 21 capture, domesticate, and explain an unknown, unfamiliar or dangerous subject (Sontag
1977, 4, 10). In other words, photography can help naturalize the foreign. Although this may seem positive, in that through photography a viewer's anxiety about a particular subject may be able to be alleviated, there is also a potentially dark side. This dark side comes in the form of a distinct implication of visual imperialism in what Sontag calls
"photographic seeing" (Sontag 1977, 97). Although actual imperialism and colonialism must be distinguished from the photographic imperialism of "photographic seeing", which passively captures and controls the unfamiliar, the surprising, and the possibly dangerous parts and peoples of the world, both accomplish similar ends - mastery of the captured subject (Sontag 1977, 10).
In the case of a Germany reeling from the effects of disastrous recession and tumultuous politics, the world at large may have been a place where Germans felt insecure.
Through the extremely popular genre of travel reportage, the modern, chaotic, and possible dangerous world was presented in harmless black and white to the readers of the BIZ, while
Germany became visually reintegrated into the world community (Hardt 2000, 60-1). Thus,
Munkacsi's photos from these reportages might have to some measure restored the illusion that there was still the ability to have the sort of imperial control that Germany had previously wielded. Especially after the loss of German territories and colonies at the end of World War I, this sort of travel photography and its implicit, visually imperialistic
"photographic seeing" could have helped establish a new, "informal Empire" for Germany for the viewers of these photos (Poiger 2005, 118), a concept that will be explained in a later chapter. 22 As previously noted, Barthes writes that the primary reason for the attraction to photos and photography is adventure. Beyond this primary element, Barthes brings forward other critical elements, which will be considered in this analysis of Munkacsi's photo reportages -punctum and studium. Firstly, the studium is described to be the element that first catches the awareness of the viewer when looking at photos. For Barthes, studium refers to a general, non-specific interest or taste in subject matter held by the viewer
(Barthes 1980, 26). Studium only describes part of the equation, though, by promoting general interest in photography.
The second element is the punctum, an element or detail that "pricks" the viewer, which attracts and holds one's attention onto a single photo for an extended period of time
(Barthes 1980, 27). This is the element at work when a viewer in a photography exhibit moves in to get a closer look at a particular photo, and will vary from person to person.
Punctum has the further advantage of metonym; by noticing the detail of the punctum, one can expand the meaning of a particular photo indefinitely (Barthes 1980, 45).
More essential to the meaning of a photo than either studium or punctum is the caption, an element one must keep in mind while viewing, interpreting, and analyzing photos. Captions, first implemented by illustrated magazines such as the BIZ, were to act as
"interpretive signposts," denoting to the viewer the "right way to interpret [the] photo"
(Benjamin 2008, 14). Thus, photos cannot be analyzed in isolation from either their captions, or, in the case of photo reportage, from one another (Sontag 1977, 108). To ignore them would be to overlook important interpretive clues that could aid in the analysis of their parent photos. Thus, this thesis will proceed not by discussing individual photos 23 alone, but by discussing them in the context given by their captions, the accompanying stories, and the other photos that they are arranged with in the reportage.
With the necessity of considering the caption in addition to the photo itself, it is necessary then to return to Munkacsi's photo of the couple riding the camel at the Oasis of
Biskra. This photo has studium in the form of foreign imagery, punctum due to the fact that the gentleman is wearing a suit (among other interesting details about the photo), seems to embody travel and adventure. Moreover, this photo seems to claim that it is "experience captured" through the caption, "Ostern im Siiden: Vor dem Royal-Hotel in der Oase Biskra
(Nordafrika)" ("Easter in the South: In front of the Royal-Hotel in the Oasis of Biskra
(North Africa"). This photo and its caption assert that they represent an actual socio- historical world - through them, Munkacsi purports that this is what Biskra is like.
However, the second part of this caption, "Zum Trost fur die, die nicht reisen konnen:
Unser Photograph schreibt uns: "Hier ist es Hundekalt!" ("As consolation for those who cannot travel: Our photographer writes us: "It's freezing here!"), destroys the illusion of truth and reality that were set up in the first part of the caption. In effect, Munkacsi turns this photo into a joke; March in North Africa would not be as cold as March in Berlin. In making this joke, he therefore shows the viewer that by its nature, this photo (and photography generally) makes a claim to represent a reality that it cannot fulfill, because there is more to reality than can be captured visually. Thus, the reality that the photo claims to represent is actually an ersatz reality - ersatz, because it purports to be something that it is not, and makes claims that it cannot fulfill. 24
Moreover, this photo makes a comment on travel, which is fitting considering the parallel development of photography and travel. In this case, as the photo itself represents an ersatz reality, it follows that that which is represented is ersatz as well; far from being real travel, the travel experience shown by this photo is an ersatz travel experience. This photograph makes very specific truth claims visually that are then counterindicated by the caption. In the true sense of the word ersatz, there is a sense of loss that could be felt when viewing these photos; this particular photo, through its memorialization of travel (in this case Biskra) makes all the more poignant the fact that Germans could not travel as readily as they were once able. Through this ersatz travel, Munkacsi's photo turns travel from an exercise of being there into one of seeing there, as the ersatz traveler can only experience the image of the travel experience, not the experience itself.
Considering the popularity of the BIZ and images of the foreign such as this one, it would be logical to suggest that the readership of the BIZ enjoyed and sought out these ersatz travel experiences. This raises some important questions: why would these Germans have desired ersatz travel experiences? Why was actual travel infeasible to this population?
Was travel important to Germans for some reason, and if so, why? 25 Chapter Two: Being There vs. Seeing There
In the previous chapter, it was shown that the travel reportage photos taken by
Martin Munkacsi invited and enticed readers of the BIZ to engage in a form of ersatz travel.
It was also shown that the developments of modern travel-tourism and of photography were intimately linked, from the first Daguerreotype in the 1830s onward. Munkacsi's travel reportages showed travelers encountering the foreign and the unfamiliar, and, by extension, invited the BIZ readers to also confront or reflect on German national identity. This assertion raises a number of questions: How is travel implicated in the construction of national identity? Was travel important to how German-ness was conceived? What specific meaning did travel, and its representation in photos, acquire in the context of Weimar
Germany?
Travel is more than just movement; the word has connotations of adventure, the foreign, and encounters with people far removed from one's community. Thus, I would separate the local, weekend-out-of-town component one could ascribe to "travel" by calling that simply "locomotion," and the travel that this thesis covers as being what one would normally consider "foreign travel." By the time of Munkacsi's reportages, local travel within parts of Germany no longer counted as foreign travel, as it did for the first
German tourist crossing German political boundaries experiencing the diversity of the
German cultural landscape. At the same time, technology opened up new global forms of travel and more distant destinations offered a new version of what it meant to travel to foreign locales. 26
Generally, it was accepted then - as it is now - by both scholars and society at large that travelling (both foreign and domestic) is a core component of national identity (Koshar
2000, 7, Furlough 2002, 442-3, Mandolessi 2007, 456). This is due to the fact that societies, both modern and primitive, negatively derive their sense of identity - one is not a part of a foreign community as much as one is part of their own (Said 2003, 54). Thus, travel becomes an essential component of designating group identity, from small communities to nations. This is because especially the encounter with foreign peoples, cultures and their environments, may elicit in the traveler a degree of self-reflexivity, whereby constituent elements of one's national identity could become more apparent in contrast to the foil of prevailing foreign identities around them. Through this mirroring, the traveler should be in a position to strengthen or if necessary modify their impressions of themselves and their national affiliation (Leutner 1997, 202, Koshar 2000, 7, 27, Furlough 2002, 443). This process, notes Said, is especially the case for European cultures, as they "gained strength and identity by setting [themselves] off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self (Said 2003, 3).
Especially in Germany, where national identity building had been exceptionally difficult, the drive to create national identity was very important for successive national governments, and travel seems to have been an important component (Koshar 2000, 10).
Koshar writes that ever since modern travel-tourism started evolving in the early 17th century, travelling was something encouraged for aristocratic German (and European) youth. This "Grand Tour" took such youth to centers of cultural importance in Europe, such as Italy and Greece. In the 19th century, the Grand Tour was adopted by the 27 Bildungsbiirgertum (middle class) as an essential step in the development of their youth; thus, the Bildungsreise was born, following in the footsteps of Goethe's famous Italian trip.
The Bildungsreise was encouraged as a sort of "travel for travel's sake," through which discovery and reinforcement of (middle class) community membership would be engendered and personal development would occur (Koshar 2000, 2-3, 22, 47).
As the 20 century approached, and new modes of transportation - especially the railway - were developed, the urge to travel next came over the working class. With travel becoming easier due to these new modes of transportation, increasing numbers of Germans were able to travel, with 1913 being the peak year for pre-war tourism (one assumes both domestic and foreign) in Germany (Keitz 1997, 56). Naturally, the onset of World War I had made travel difficult (Koshar 2000, 67), and especially between 1918 and 1924 the weakness of the German economy and massive inflation likely made foreign travel, for example to other continents, something affordable only to the super-rich. This did not mean that travel was suddenly unimportant; with the finalization of the Dawes Plan in 1925 and the resulting stabilization of the economy - in fact, the resulting boom in the economy
(Wehler 2003, 252-3) - Germans of all classes began to travel again, both within and outside of Germany (Koshar 2000, 71). Travel was important enough that Germans made up more than half of travelers in neighbouring European countries in the late 1920s and travel began to be seen as a right by all classes of German society (Keitz 1997, 69, Koshar
2000, 71, 73). Increasingly, the working class was able to afford the time and money for travel. To this end workers travel organizations were founded with the aim of promoting and enabling working class travel through low-cost group trips (Keitz 1997, 60-62). 28
As the German economy continued to improve - finally re-achieving its 1913 GNP in 1929 as a result of massive American financing (Wehler 2003, 240) - more and more
Germans of upper and lower classes began to travel, with 1929 being the high point of travel in the Weimar Republic (Keitz 1997, 59). In April 1929, though, due to a combination of "economic overheating through overinvesting, overcapacity and overproduction [as well as] a shaking financing basis", the speculative bubble began to leak in Germany, and deep recession started to sink in (Wehler 2003, 254). Concomitantly, the number of travelers shrank exponentially to levels lower than those of any of Germany's neighbours while those who did travel spent markedly less time abroad than those from any other nation (Koshar 2000, 74). This number decreased even more as depression set in, and the German banks began to collapse, starting in 1931 (Wehler 2003, 262). Thus, as actual travel experiences became more difficult to afford, images of travel abroad gained new context and new meaning. They became representations of something that readers could no longer have.
Whereas their British, French and American counterparts had not lost their empires, and were able to take part in grand adventures in their colonies more readily during the inter-war period, this avenue of travel was not open to German travellers.6 Despite losing its overseas empire as a condition of the Treaty of Versailles, the colonial idea and the colonialist gaze had not lost much of its currency for Germans and their power in the political fabric of the Weimar Republic cannot be underestimated (Hardt 2000, 60-1, Poiger
2005, 122). In popular culture, this colonialist gaze was represented through the prevalent
6 For an excellent discussion of French travel to their colonies in the inter-war period consult Furlough, 2002. 29 images of the foreign and exotic other and their environments, from the utterly fantastic in the cinemas of the nation to the more realistic depictions of the newspapers and tabloids.
It is also noteworthy that in addition to its deeply held beliefs about the value of travel, German society also had a strong tradition of travel writing as well as a deep fondness for and fascination about representations of travel and the foreign (Koshar 2000,
1-3, Hardt 2000, 60). Travel writing can be used to raise questions about identity and cultural encounter with the foreign in a manner similar to that of travel itself (Mandolessi
2007, 456). From the travel guidebooks of Karl Baedecker to works of fiction such as Karl
May's Winnetou, images and descriptions of the foreign have abounded in Germany since the mid-19th century, and obviously were popular (Koshar 2000, 1, Hardt 2000, 60, 67). As
Koshar notes, the popularity of travel writing exploded in the Weimar Republic due to a sense of "loss of world" in Germany (Koshar 2000, 72).
Thus, it can be argued that not only were Munkacsi's travel photo reportages a continuation of this tradition of travel literature in Germany, but they were also made more poignant the sense of loss over this void of travel. For 20 Pfennig though, the BIZ offered a photographic representation of the foreign and of travel that claimed to represent these experiences in an objective manner that literature could not. However, as we have seen - and like much of the travel literature that came before it - the images of Munkacsi's travel reportages undercut their own claims to objectivity. Nonetheless, the expectations to which photography gave rise are best demonstrated by SPD (Social Democratic Party) Reichstag member Anna Siemsen when she remarked, "Kino und illustrierte Zeintungen haben uns an die fremdesten Gegenden gewohnt, und die meisten von uns wissen heute besser Bescheid 30 vom Himalaja oder von den abessinischen Steppen, als ihre GroBvater von den Alpen oder vom Riesengebirge" ("Films and illustrated newspapers have accustomed us to the furthest ends of the Earth. Most of us today know more about the Himalaya or the Abyssinian
Steppes than our grandfathers did of the Alps or the Riesengebirge" (Keitz 1997, 68).
Although Siemsen is not entirely clear what exactly she means with this quote, it seems to say that in seeing a place through photography, one could come to know it in a far more meaningful way than one was able to in previous generations. This seems to imply that the emphasis on how one comes to know a place had shifted from being there to seeing there.
The German Question - Weimar National Identity
While it has been shown that travel aids the development of national identity, both generally and specifically in the German example, this is not the sole factor at play. These reportages constructed discourses of German-ness and German national identity, much in the sense of how Benedict Anderson defined the nation in his seminal treatise on the subject, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. For
Anderson, nation is defined through three criteria: it is an imagined political community that is inherently limited and sovereign. The major differentiating factors between these communities though are how they are imagined, and what style they take (Anderson 2006,
6). Thus nations are differentiated, for these factors are results not of political realities, but of underlying cultural considerations, most significantly language (Anderson 2006, 133).
This last point about cultural considerations is the departure point from nation to the concept of national identity. Until recently, scholars concerned with the development of national identity and nationalism have focused primarily on the so-called "politically 31 oriented" explanations of the phenomena, especially within the framework of how these phenomena relate to the German experience. However, since the initial publication of
Imagined Communities in 1983, and in German circles especially since 1990, scholars have concerned themselves with the "cultural approaches" to nationalism, focusing on the language, lifestyle and mentalities of the groups in question (Reagin, "Recent Work" 2004,
275).
Of these cultural approaches to national identity and nationalism - language, lifestyle and mentality - Anderson focuses on language, as large communities must resort to common language as opposed to common traditions and ways of life in order to imagine themselves (Anderson 2006, 6). This criterion is particularly important for the analysis of
Munkacsi's travel reportages, as many contemporaries thought that photography was a universally acceptable means of communication (Uecker 2007, 470), and could be seen as a common language. Anderson ascribes the development of nations and their corresponding national identities to two factors: the increasing primacy of secular languages of state following the fall of Latin as the only language capable of accessing "ontological truth," and - more importantly - the effects of "print capitalism" and "print languages" (Anderson
2006, 44).
Anderson discusses the former criterion at length in Imagined Communities, though more interesting in the framework of this thesis is the second criterion. Anderson notes that as a result of a printing boom between 1500-1550, book printers had saturated the Latin- speaking market worldwide; to remain in business, these publishers needed to diversify into local languages (Anderson 2006, 38). In so doing, to reach the greatest number of people, 32 the dialects that were most understandable between linguistic regions - or even in some cases a combination of dialects - were selected as "print languages", so as to save time and money in printing and distribution (Anderson 2006, 43). Print languages, helped begin the standardization and stabilization of languages, making it possible for people from different dialect regions to begin to understand each other. This in turn enabled the creation of a larger, imagined community (Anderson 2006, 44).
This effect was not limited to books, though. Especially in the New World, where book publishers were few, newspapers also were an important tool in the creation of these imagined national communities (Anderson 2006, 61). By publishing regularly information of interest to members of the community, such as trade manifests and schedules, and social gatherings, as well as news from the metropole, newspapers promoted a sense of belonging in the imagined colonial community (Anderson 2006, 33-35, 62). Newspapers thus served as an outlet to reach people of similar political or economic perspectives, creating a sense of unity among these subsets of the nation. This is a particularly important point to keep in mind when one considers the example of the Weimar Republic, especially the work of
Martin Munkacsi for the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, as print media was a major influence on the evolution of the imagined German national community (Reagin, Sweeping the
German Nation 2007, 52).
But what of how national identity was constructed in Germany specifically? Prior to
1871 and the foundation of the German Empire, Germany had been made up of many small states and principalities, all of which had their own strong regional identities, and affiliation 33 to their own particular Heimat (Reagin, "Recent Work" 2004, 279, 284, 289).7 Regions had possibly developed these identities through the creation of cross-dialectal print languages in small areas now represented by regional dialects in Germany, as well as through the cultivation of their own particular lifestyles and mentalities. These regional identities perpetuated themselves into the Weimar Republic, perhaps with even more vigor than they had done previously.
Even though it had been difficult to define German-ness in Wilhelmine Germany, in the Weimar Republic it was paradoxically easier and harder to define what was German- ness. Despite the fact that the German Empire and the Weimar Republic did have a national print language - High German - and that the development of national identity in Germany was highly dependent on this print media, this alone was evidently not enough to create a solid national identity. On the subject of values and symbols of the nation, Reagin notes that especially in the Wilhelmine period, very little in the way of coherent values for
Germany could be agreed to, as stark opposition was met from one or more political camps
(Reagin, "Recent Work" 2004, 285). Considering the political instabilities in the Weimar
Republic, it is obvious that this remained an issue.
Although the Weimar Republic had more or less stabilized economically, politically and socially in the latter half of the 1920s, undercurrents of chaos still flowed. A distinct lack of coherent national identity characterized Weimar, perhaps because the Weimar
Republic as an entity was only partially imagined; almost everyone had a different idea as
7 It would also be appropriate to call these regional identities national identities, as the regions that came to make up the states of the Empire were their own nation-states prior to 1871. 34 to what should constitute the Republic, or what form a new German national community should take. 8 Modernity clashed with tradition, democracy with authoritarianism and monarchism, right wing with left wing, and deeply ingrained and cherished gender, class, regional and national identities were at the same time polarized and uncertain (Peukert
1991, 83, 88-95). It was, as Peter Gay noted, "a dance on the edge of a volcano" (Gay
1968, xiv).
While the economic situation that plagued the Republic from the beginning bettered itself as the 1920s progressed (with the exception of the crash in 1929), its political situation remained tenuous throughout its lifetime The more the political and economic situation in Germany deteriorated, the more Germans were susceptible to nostalgia for the
"good old days" of the Wilhelmine period (Peukert 1991, 13-14), which doubtless made consensus on national identity in the Weimar Republic even more problematic. Across the
Republic though, nationalism shared common features that crossed class and regional lines: a belief in the primacy of Bildung, and in the superiority of Kultur (Dumont 1994, 19,
Fuhrer 2001, 472).
Firstly, all could agree on the contribution of Germans to the culture and society of
Western Europe as a result of the flowering of German thought and philosophy from 1770-
1830 (Dumont 1994, 17). In fact, it has been said that German scholarship was indeed preeminent in Europe by 1830 (Said 2003, 19). However, while their neighbours sought to enhance the primacy of the individual, German nations valued the individual within the
8 It is worthwhile to note that the completeness of the national identity building process in the Wilhelmine period is contested by the sources consulted. Some claim that this process was complete and firmly in place as of 1914, while others claim that it was an ongoing project. 35 construct of the Gemeinschaft (community), which a German individual could best serve by developing themselves through education and self-development - Bildung - as much as possible (Dumont 1994, 19). Although this primacy of Bildung was especially important to intellectuals, it was by no means limited to intellectual spheres. This reverence for Bildung and the importance of Gemeinschaft is, according to German theorist Ernst Troeltsch in
1916, the key to understanding the contrast of Germany and Western Europe (Dumont
1994, 19). Keeping in mind the temporal proximity of Troeltsch's opinion to the Weimar
Republic, it is more than likely that Bildung had not lost any of its ideological significance.
Especially in the Weimar Republic context of political fractitiousness, ideas about Kultur provided a cultural foundation for discourses of German nationalism.
These aspects, coupled with German mythic history, seemed to imply that German
Kultur was a culture "par excellence" (Dumont 1994, 22-3). This reverence for Kultur continued into the Weimar Republic, as during times of political instability Kultur served as a cultural tie of nationalism, and an even more powerful anchor of the cultural past.
However we have evidence from Fuhrer that in the late Republic though, as a result of the financial crisis of 1929, expenditure on and attendance at cultural productions such as theatre, film and literature dropped drastically, leading many to believe that Kultur was at risk of fading away (Fuhrer 2001, 472-4).
Furthermore, it should be noted that in the Wilhelmine period there was a significant void of readily accepted signs and symbols to help define German-ness (Reagin,
Sweeping the German Nation 2007, 3-4). Despite the fact that the Weimar Republic did possess a flag, an anthem, and a host of other symbols and signs around which to rally the 36 population, these still seemed to lack a common meaning (Reagin, "Recent Work" 2004,
285). The only place that this commonality of meaning was likely to be found was in the memorials erected to commemorate World War I (Anderson 2006, 9). For all classes, these memorials not only commemorated the dead, but likely also a major change in the nature of their nation: Germany was no longer a conquering nation. This fact brings into focus one of the main elements of European and German thought on nations and national identity, and sheds some light on the instability of national identity in Weimar. This element was the prevailing idea at the time that "great nations" were "global conquerors" (Anderson 2006,
98). Conquest was an act of power, thus powerful states were conquerors.
Despite being a latecomer to the colonial game, Germany did possess a number of overseas colonies in Africa, China and the South Pacific (Poiger 2005, 121). With such a past, Germans of all regions and classes would have been justified in assuming that
Germany had been a "great nation," and - assuming that the ability to conquer and the possession of overseas territories were the only indicators of a "great nation" - equally valid in believing that they had lost that status as a result of losing World War I (Ftthrer
2001, 472). For this reason, many Germans "hankered" for the past, remembering lost opportunities and hopes from the time of the Empire. Especially as the tensions of the
Weimar Republic heightened, the "good old days" of the Kaiser took on a "nostalgic afterglow" (Peukert 1991, 13-14). As Germany's colonies were gone, citizens of the
Weimar Republic could not look to them to help self-actualize. However, despite the fact that travel literature and travel reportage such as that produced by Munkacsi represented an ersatz travel experience as discussed previously, these images still offered representations 37 of the foreign and constructed and commented upon discourses of German national identity.
Summary
In these first two chapters, it has been shown how it is possible that exposure to
Martin Munkacsi's travel reportages images in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ) in
1932 could have acted as ersatz travel for readers of the BIZ, and that as such, readers would thus had the opportunity to engage with or renegotiate their conception of what it meant to be German. This was demonstrated by showing the market dominance and high contemporary critical acclaim and popularity of both the BIZ and Martin Munkacsi, and that it is possible for photos to act as ersatz travel due to the status of photography as a primary experiential medium. Furthermore, it was shown that travel was paradoxically both essential to the development of German national identity and difficult due to the economic position of the Weimar Republic. Finally, the nation and constituents of national identity were defined, and the example of national identity development in the Weimar Republic was discussed in detail, demonstrating in particular the importance of print media both generally and with respect to Germany in particular.
This thesis will focus on two photo reportages produced by Martin Munkacsi during his trip to Brazil, namely "Kaffee-Tragodie: Eine Milliarde Pfund Kaffee ins Meer geworfen!" ("Coffee Tragedy: One Billion Pounds of Coffee Thrown into the Sea!") and
"Berlin-Rio in vier Tagen: Mit dem fahrplanmdfiigen Zeppelin nach Sudamerikd" ("Berlin-
Rio in Four Days: With the Regularly Scheduled Zeppelin to South America") with the intent to show that exposure to these images published in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung in 38
1932 would have acted as ersatz travel for its readers. Furthermore, this thesis will show how Munkacsi's images constructed these discourses of German-ness and German national identity. As such, BIZ readers would have had the opportunity to engage with or renegotiate their conception of what it meant to be German by using these images of the foreign as foils. Munkacsi does this by showing the foreign other attempting to emulate German economic models, and by showing the foreign other in contrast and alluding to contact with
Germans. 39 Chapter Three: Coffee and the Colonialist Eye
Instead of analyzing Munkacsi's reportages in chronological order, this thesis will progress by treating these reportages as increasingly involved encounters with the foreign.
Therefore, this chapter will focus on Munkacsi's reportage "Kaffee-Tragodie: Eine
Milliarde Pfund Kaffee ins Meer geworfen!" ("Coffee Tragedy: One Billion Pounds of
Coffee Thrown into the Sea!"), which demonstrates the adoption and effect of European economic systems and its accompanying stresses in a formerly colonial framework.9
Issue number 26 of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung from June 30, 1932 includes, amongst other things, a serialized biography of the explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley entitled "Das Leben Stanleys, des Eroberers von Zentralafrika" ("The Life of Stanley,
Conqueror of Central Africa"), the newest part of a serialized novel by Vicki Baum entitled
"Leben ohne Geheimnis" ("Life without Secrets"), a segment on the German border patrol on the German-Swiss border, and a brief section on air-raid drills in Prussia, in addition to the standard jokes and games feature, as well as an assortment of advertisements for products ranging from cameras to cigarettes. Although all of these features are fascinating from the perspective of a cultural historian, the article on Stanley is particularly telling. It goes to show that readers of the BIZ had lost neither their interest in the foreign nor their colonial gaze. This colonial gaze is especially clear in the wording of the title of the article:
"Conqueror of Central Africa." The retention of this gaze is made furthermore palpable by the very presence of this feature in such a popular magazine at all; by glorifying Stanley, a rhetoric of whiteness is invoked and a set of colonialist cultural values is reimported.
9 This reportage appears in its entirety in Appendix B. 40 This inherent neocolonialism in the headlines seems to underline the fact that although Germany had lost all of its colonies as a result of the terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, it had never lost its colonialist eye (Wehler 2003, 241, Poiger 2005, 122).10
Even in the Weimar period, the reacquisition of lost colonies, or colonies generally, remained a key issue not only on the political right, but also on the center-left, personified by Gustav Stresemann (Poiger 2005, 122). Although German foreign policy between 1923 and 1929 had been primarily cooperative and non-confrontational - a gamble by
Stresemann to try to lift various restrictions and conditions of the Treaty of Versailles - upon Stresemann's death this policy was discontinued. In its place, the new Briining government pursued a new policy of self-assertion whereby Germany would no longer try to avoid open confrontation (Peukert 1991, 194, 205-6). Nevertheless, the avenue to a political or territorial empire remained firmly closed by the Treaty of Versailles. Thus, the establishment of so-called "informal empire," or German spheres of economic and political influence (Wehler 2003, 261, Poiger 2005, 118), was pursued.
Of great interest in this thesis is the fact that Germany's newfound informal- imperialist gaze and colonialist fantasies, focused in particular on Africa and South
America. This is to be expected, as Germany had previously possessed colonies in Africa, and was suspected of having colonial ambitions in Latin and South America - particularly
Brazil, where a large German expatriate community already existed - by U.S. Naval
Intelligence at the height of German colonialist adventure, circa 1906-1913 (Bonker 2001).
It makes sense then that the Munkacsi's travel reportages for the BIZ were from these areas
10 Wehler details what Germany lost in the Versailles Treaty in Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Most notable in the framework of this thesis is the loss of German colonies. 41 of distinct neo-colonialist and informal imperialist interest. One can infer that had these areas, in this case Brazil, been of no major importance to the readership of the BIZ,
Munkacsi would not have been sent, especially at a time when travelling of this nature must not have been inexpensive. Continuing German pseudo-imperialist interest in South
America and Africa is evidenced not only by the reportages themselves, but also by exotic imagery in advertisements for products ranging from cigarettes to face cream, as this colonialist gaze seems to have been a staple of advertisements in the BIZ and likely other
Weimar newspapers and magazines as well.
Bailing and Burning
Although these features are interesting in and of themselves, the most important feature of issue number 26 in the framework of this thesis is the three-page reportage by
Martin Munkacsi entitled "Kaffee-Tragodie: Eine Milliarde Pfund Kaffee ins Meer geworfen! Erster Bericht unseres Mitarbeiters Martin Munkacsi von seiner Sudamerika-
Reise" ("Coffee Tragedy: One Billion Pound of Coffee Thrown into the Sea! The First
Report of our Colleague Martin Munkacsi from his South American Trip") (Munkacsi,
"Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 833). Although the reportage is not mentioned on the cover of the issue, it is noteworthy that it begins with a pseudo-cover of its own, which would seem to give this particular reportage higher status when compared to the other reportages that share this issue. Also important to note is that this reportage appears on the fourth page of this issue; far from being tucked away in the back recesses of the BIZ near the jokes and puzzles, everyone who read the magazine would have encountered it very early in the reading experience. 42 What these readers would have seen first and foremost was the headline, written in large, bold print, proclaiming "Coffee Tragedy" - a headline that, although it has none, implies an exclamation point. But what is the tragedy here? Far from Berliners holding empty coffee cups and looking forlorn, the photo which takes up the rest of the page below the headline is of two men - one shirtless and one with a t-shirt, both of whom are wearing ragged scarves and hats - wallowing chest-deep in a veritable sea of coffee. This sea is precisely the problem, as the article's sub-headline and the caption of the photo inform the reader: "Eine Milliarde Pfund Kaffee ins Meer geworfen!" ("One billion pounds of coffee thrown into the sea!"), and "Die Kaffee-Tragodie: Brasilien erstickt im Kaffee" ("Brazil suffocates in coffee"), respectively (Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 833). Thus, the tragedy here is that there is an overabundance of supply, not a lack of it.
As Benjamin and Sontag note, a photo cannot be analyzed in isolation from its accompanying caption (Sontag 1977, 108, Benjamin 2008, 14). In this case, the combination of the photo and the caption makes for a degree of cognitive dissonance for one important reason: namely that for people drowning in coffee beans, the two men in the cover photo do not look panicked or displeased. Instead, both of them look relaxed and possibly satisfied, almost as if these two workers are indeed having a bath, lounging in the sea of beans around them. Both men have their arms splayed out around them, as if trying to come into contact with as many of the beans as possible. The man in the bottom left of the photo looks especially pleased, grinning pleasantly while surveying the coffee beans around him. The other, in the top right of the photo, seems to be leaning back somewhat in the coffee, and is not smiling quite as much as his comrade, though he still looks content. It 43 is likely that neither of them had experienced such a bath in coffee beans before and possible that they never would again. However, this seeming contentment is a sham, a fact that is alluded to by the caption which informs us that despite outward appearances, Brazil is choking on coffee - so much so, that there is no other option but to toss billions of pounds of it into the sea.
On the next two pages, the reader is confronted with seven images that give visual evidence as to the drastic, unusual plight that Brazil found itself in when Munkacsi visited the country in 1932. Although the photos can tell part of the story of this coffee tragedy, the true impact of this disaster is attested to by Munkacsi himself in his accompanying article, in which he writes:
„Was dem Lande Kanada der "What wheat is to Canada, Weizen, was Argentinien das meat to Argentina, and wine Fleisch, was Ungarn der to Hungary, so it is for Brazil Wein ist-das ist Brasilien der with coffee. Brazil produces Kaffee. Brasilien bringt drei three-quarters of the world Viertel der Welternte an coffee harvest. That is an Kaffee hervor. Das ist ein overload that would push the Ueberertragnis, das die price under the cost of Preise unter die production if it were allowed Entstehungskosten driicken to come to market, thus wiirde, wenn es auf den Brazil puts far more effort Markt kame, und so macht into its destruction than its seine Vernichtung Brasilien creation. It must put aside its mehr Sorge als die old surplus so that nothing Erzeugung. Denn es mufi den will interfere with the alten UeberschuB beiseite valuation of the new coffee schaffen, damit der harvest in July. This is Verwertung der neuen Brazil's part of the world Kaffee-Ernte im Juli nichts crisis: up to this point twelve im Wege stehe. Es ist million sacks of coffee beans Brasiliens Anteil an der have been sunk into the Weltkrise: Bisher sind zwolf Atlantic Ocean, burned on Millionen Sacke the Plantations of Santos, Kaffeebohnen im and turned to ashes in the Atlantischen Ozean versenkt ovens of the gas plant of Rio. worden, auf den Plantagen A ship loaded to the brim von Santos in Flammen sails every day from Rio to aufgegangen, in den Oefen the open sea, where workers der Gasfabrik von Rio zu shovel the cargo overboard Asche geworden. Taglich and the coffee disappears sticht von Rio ein bis an den forever in the tides. Rand gefulltes Schiff in See, However, this sad fahrt hinaus aufs offene destruction costs a lot of Meer, dort schaufeln Arbeiter money. Thousands of die Ladung uber Bord, und workers shovel coffee into der Kaffee verschwindet fur the sacks, take them to the immer in den Fluten. Dabei ship and to the fires. When kostet diese traurige one asks one of these Vernichtung viel Geld. temporary workers if he has Tausende von Arbeitern a job, earns money, etc. one schaufeln den Kaffe in receives the same unusual Sacke, fuhren ihn zum answer: "Yeah, as long as Schiff, zum Feuer. Fragt man the destruction continues I einen dieser have a job, but who knows if Gelegenheitsarbeiter, ob er I'll have bread when Arbeit hat, Geld verdient, so production resumes again." kann man eine seltsame Antwort bekommen: "Tja, solange die Zer stoning dauert, finde ich Arbeit, aber wer weifi, ob ich Brot haben werde, wenn die Produktion wieder einsetzt."
Der ErnteuberschuB des The production surplus from vergangenen Jahres betrug the previous year was in sechs Millionen Sacke. Ein excess of six million sacks. Sack hat sechzig Kilogramm. One sack weighs 60 In den vorausgegangenen kilograms. In previous years, Jahren war der the production surplus was in Ernteiiberschufi in festen safe hands: the "Conselho Handen: der"Conselho Nacional Do Cafe" bought it, Nacional Do Cafe" hatte ihn and destroyed it. Every year, ausgekauft, den Rest Brazil exports 16 million vernichtet. Brasilien fuhrt sacks of coffee! It has jahrlich 16 Millionen Sacke diamond fields and gold Kaffee aus! Es hat mines, but its greatest Diamantenfelder, treasure is coffee. The sea Goldgruben, aber sein near Rio de Janeiro suffers 45 groBter Schatz ist der Kaffee. from caffeine poisoning, a An Koffeinvergiftung leidet cloud of smoke from the die See bei Rio de Janeiro, burning coffee at Santos von Santos verbreitet sich der spreads great distances, and Rauch des brennenden in the briquette factories the Kaffees nach unabsehbaren mountains of coffee are Fernen, und in den sprinkled with creosote, so as Brikettfabriken besprengt to make the coffee inedible... man die Kaffeeberge mit MM." Kreosot, um sie ungenieBbar zumachen... MM." (Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 834-5)
A Sea of Caffeine-poisoned Water
One can see from this article the dire straits that Brazil figuratively (and its coffee literally) found itself in mid-1932. The bleak outlook reflected in the text is amplified by the photos, through which Munkacsi walks the reader step-by-step through the process of coffee destruction, either by ship or by being made into briquettes. In the case of the former means of coffee destruction, the photos demonstrate the progression from sack to sea from left to right: A shirtless worker with impeccable and glistening physique carries a 60 kg sack of coffee on his head; trucks (onto which one can assume the coffee was loaded) are unloaded at the dock onto the ship under police supervision; workers empty the sacks onto the ship; the ship sails out onto the open sea, still under police supervision; and finally, the coffee is shoveled into the sea by a number of workers.
Munkacsi's captions that accompany these photos prove the perfect companions to this dramatic visual narration, telling the reader exactly what happens so that there can be no mistake. These captions, in the same order as the photos above, read: "Die
Kaffeetragodie: Aus den uberfullten Lagerhausern werden Millionen Sack Kaffee..." ("The 46
Coffee Tragedy: Millions of sacks of coffee are taken from their overloaded warehouses..."); "•••unter polizeilicher Aufsicht auf Schiffe verladen..." ("...under police supervision and loaded onto ships..."); "...in die Laderaume geschaufelt und auf hohe See hinausgefahren." ("...shoveled into the cargo holds and taken out onto the high seas");
"Die Polizeiwache bleibt an Bord, damit nichts der Vernichtung entzogen wird." ("The police detachment remains on board so that nothing gets in the way of the destruction");
"Der Kaffee wird ins Meer geschuttet. Mann will durch diese Verringerung des Vorrats verhuten, dafi die Preise nicht unter die Entstehungskosten sinken, was den
Zusammenbruch der brasilianischen Wirtschaft zur Folge hatte" ("The coffee is shoveled into the sea. It is hoped that this decimation of the supply will ensure that the price does not sink below the production costs, which would lead to the collapse of the Brazilian economy") (Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 834).
It is interesting that the Brazilians would have used the sea as a means of disposal for coffee. Traditionally, the sea has been many things: means of transportation, provider of nourishment, and when needed or unavoidable, a grave. However, the sea is also an untamable, unavoidable, unpredictable force of nature. In this case, on land the coffee takes on the devouring nature of the sea - instead of men or a nation drowning in water though, they are drowning in coffee. One of the only ways they can deal with this problem is similar to that of a sailor trying desperately to save himself and his ship when faced with such flooding: bailing. These pictures seem to show people desperately trying to bail this flood of coffee out of Brazil so that the load does not sink it. As Munkacsi wrote, the sole 47 reason for doing this is to safeguard the Brazilian economy (and by extension the nation) from collapse.
Moreover, these photos have inherent in them a sort of cognitive dissonance when viewed. Traditionally, one has made one's living in coastal areas by taking things out of the sea, i.e. fish. Entire economies have sprung up around this process; net-makers to provide fishermen with nets, shipwrights to build the ships that would take the fishermen out to set the nets, sail-makers - and later the entire coal production industry - to provide the means of propulsion to get the ships with their fishermen and nets out to sea. Then, of course, there are the fish markets and middlemen, for example, which assist the consumer in purchasing the fish that were caught.
However, in this photo set, the traditional use of the sea as described above is turned around completely, for instead of taking a living out of the sea, these workers are putting a living into it, and as a result an entire economy developed around - and depended upon - this process, documented by Munkacsi's reportage. Thus, the progression that the photos for the coffee dumping document are rather jarring to the viewer, as they are exactly in reverse from the usual order of dealing with the sea. First, the coffee is loaded into sacks on land, taken to the ships and then taken out to sea, where the "bounty" of the land is then shoveled unceremoniously into the sea (as opposed to the "bounty" of the sea being laid out more or less unceremoniously onto the land). 48 The Masculinity of the Foreign
These photos also construct a discourse of masculinity and foreignness. In the modern period, European colonial powers such as Germany made use of what Said calls an
Orientalist discourse; this discourse not only legitimated European domination of colonial territories, but was also crucial for Western self-definition (Said 2003, 1-3, Timm and
Sanborn 2007, 99). This Orientalist discourse identified the colonized as inferior to superior
European peoples and cultures, and required that the colonized continue to be dominated as these "subject races" - being childlike, primitive and irrational - did not know what was best for them (Said 2003, 4, 7, 37, 40, Timm and Sanborn 2007, 97). Nevertheless, there was a tension in this colonial power dynamic between "civilized" and "barbaric" that some found worrying, a cognitive dissonance that saw the colonized as being both inferior and a threat (Timm and Sanborn 2007, 97-9).
This is best demonstrated in how the masculinity of the foreign was perceived. At the same time, colonized foreign males were seen as emasculated and hypermasculine - the former because they could be conquered and dominated by Europeans, and the latter because they were "closer to nature... more 'pure' in sexuality and violence," and possessed of "unchecked virility" (Timm and Sanborn 2007, 101). In the case of the
Germany, during the Wilhelmine period and the early Weimar Republic the image of the foreign colonized male was often effeminized, as noted by Poiger when she discusses advertisements featuring, for example, generic African warriors fawning over the possibilities afforded to them by perfumed German soap (Poiger 2005, 130). However, as discussed below, this image of the effeminate, emasculated foreign male had the 49 counterpoint of the virile, hyper-sexual, hyper-masculine, threatening foreign male that caused a great deal of anxiety for Germans (Timm and Sanborn 2007, 99, Campt 2008, 34-
7). As Timm and Sanborn note, "The thought that these pure men were manlier than the men who had conquered them troubled European masculine consciousness" (Timm and
Sanborn 2007, 101).
It is this virile, hyper-masculine vision of the foreign, Brazilian male that Munkacsi presents in this reportage. This is especially indicated by the photo of the shirtless worker carrying the sack of coffee beans on his head in the upper left-hand corner of the page. The worker strikes an imposing figure, as the camera's eye is basically level with the man's abdominals. This camera position, and especially the vertical stature of the worker - both arms up, supporting the bag of coffee beans - draws the eye along the torso of the worker to the bag of coffee beans, and then back again to the torso. This seems to imply power, especially when one notices the worker's physique - broad-shouldered, well muscled, and covered in dark skin, reflecting the sunlight off of it.
This photo is a reflection of one of the two kinds of masculinity that these photos display: raw, powerful, barely restrained masculinity, as opposed to the controlled, ordered, nearly civilized masculinity displayed in the photos that will be discussed below. Aside from the physical characteristics of the worker in this photo, it should be noted that the unrestrained nature of his masculinity is attested to by the framing of the photo itself.
Instead of being constrained inside a normal, rectangular frame, the worker and his bag of coffee beans are literally erupting out of the top of the frame onto the page. His unrestrained nature is further demonstrated by the fact that man is not wearing a shirt. This 50 not only allows the viewer to examine his impeccable physique, but also implies that signifiers of civilization such as clothing cannot contain his masculine prowess. Equally important in this photo is the fact that the worker's eyes are in shadow; they cannot be seen except for the faintest traces of the worker's eyebrows. Thus, instead of perceiving the humanity of the worker, the viewer is confronted by a nameless, faceless, powerful (and possibly dangerous) simulacrum of the masculine figure. However, this raw, powerful masculinity that the worker in this photo demonstrates is balanced and controlled by another kind of male, whose masculinity is restrained, ordered, and civilized; a signifier of the European masculine ideal.
This second variety of masculinity is attested to in the photo that follows immediately in the progression: that of the mounted police officers watching the workers offload the beans into the ship. Their purpose here is attested to by Munkacsi's caption, which reads, "...unter polizeilicher Aufsicht auf Schiffe verladen..." ("...loaded onto ships under police supervision") (Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 834). Munkacsi composed this photo in such a way that it is impossible not to notice the two police officers in the foreground, as their mounts' rear quarters intersect the frame of the photo. When one's eye inevitably follows the body of the horse in the foreground, one finds oneself in the middle of the photo, with the workers loading the sacks of coffee on the ship. The ship, meanwhile, makes up the left hand frame of the photo. However, the police occupy the highest point in this photo, and if one follows their assumed gaze (as similarly to the previous photo, the eyes of the police officers are hidden from view), they have an unrestricted field of view over the goings-on at the dock. While this is necessary for the supervisory role that they are 51 assigned to, their presence on horseback and their clean white uniforms - as opposed to the unkempt, partially clothed workers - imply a sort of strong masculine, pseudo-European presence that the readers could have sensed and respected.
This surveillance over the coffee - and thus over the Brazilian economy generally - is maintained in the second to last photo in the set, where the ship makes its way to the dumping area off the coast. The hull of the bow of the ship makes an elegant curve in the lower half of the photo, beginning from the lower right corner and terminating at the midpoint on the left side of the frame. Entrapped within this arc is not only a significant amount of loose coffee beans in a holding vessel, but also a lone police officer. The officer is not facing the camera, but instead seems to be looking out at the shoreline of a headland visible in the upper right half of the photo. One cannot help but notice this police officer, a representative of the government of Brazil - a symbol of order - as his bright uniform contrasts sharply with the relative darkness of the ship, the coffee bean hold, and the ocean.
Furthermore, Munkacsi composed this shot in such a manner so that the eye would be drawn to the police officer simply by following the natural curve of the bow. Also noteworthy is that the rigging, which comes down from the top left of the photo, attaches to the hull almost precisely where the police officer is standing. The end result of this composition is that no matter what line the eye attempts to follow, the viewer is always brought back to the figure of the police officer.
Perhaps this police officer, in addition to representing order and control over the economic activities, would have been seen as evidence of an attempt to maintain the normal exploitative economic relationship that likely existed between countries such as Brazil and 52 those highly "developed" European capitalist/industrial states such as Germany. Although
Brazil at this point was no longer a Portuguese colony - in fact, it had gained independence from Portugal over 90 years before this photo was taken - it had obviously not reached the level of economic development enjoyed by the countries of western Europe or North
America, a fact alluded to by both these photos and the article itself The presence of the almost military-styled police indicates a strong desire by the government of Brazil to ensure that its economy does not collapse as other economies around the world were doing at the time. This way, Brazil could maintain its coffee exports at a level that the demand warranted, so as not to saturate the market with oversupply and send the price of coffee into a nosedive.
These implied masculinities and their associated power dynamics could have made the reader question any opinion that they had about the assumed femininity or weakness of the foreign other; more importantly though, they might have tweaked at the crisis of masculinity in Weimar Germany (Prickett 2008, 73). Masculinity was essential to the national character of Germans, as propagandists consistently lauded the "maleness of
Germany" (Timm and Sanborn 2007, 120), though this defining characteristic had been in crisis since fin de siecle (Prickett 2008, 73). This crisis stemmed from several high-profile scandals involving insinuations of homosexual affairs within Kaiser Wilhelm's court, as well as ongoing questions about homosexuality in the military. Prior to the outbreak of the
First World War, German soldiers were seen as being signifiers of masculinity, and of a strong and healthy nation; symbols of Germany's strength that had to be safeguarded against effeminization (Prickett 2008, 68-9, 84). Germany's surrender in 1918 served only 53 to worsen this crisis of masculinity, as German soldiers returned to their homes as not only defeated, but broken men. Many had lost body parts, their minds, or their libido, in effect
"traumatized and effeminized them" (Prickett 2008, 84), and made the anxiety that foreign males could dominate German males more plausible.
This anxiety was not unfounded, as the terms of the Treaty of Versailles allowed for the forcible separation and occupation of parts of pre-war Germany by the Allies. In the case of the former, much of eastern Prussia was lost to form Poland, while in the case of the latter the Ruhr Valley and the Rhineland were occupied by the French Army so as to extract war reparations in the form of coal and steel. This occupation was particularly troubling for not only the residents of the regions in question but for the German population at large (especially German men), as by the summer of 1920 anywhere between 16-47% of the French occupation army was made up of "coloured troops," recruited from French colonies in Africa (Campt 2008, 35). This was intended as a form of "subtle psychological warfare," on the part of the French, as to the Germans, these "coloured troops" were a
"schwarze Gefahr" ("black threat"), a racialized danger to German culture and civilization
(Campt 2008, 32, 34).
Thus, the occupation forces were not simply foreign males, but males who were
"symbols of barbarous savagery" to contemporary German sensibilities (Campt 2008, 35).
As the occupation continued, claims were made both from within Germany and from the
United Kingdom that "coloured troops" were responsible for alleged rape and other sexual misconduct in the occupied Rhineland. This in turn led to the "inextricable coupling of
Black sexuality with the threat of interracial sex and miscegenation" becoming the primary 54 discourse in the "campaign against the post-World War I Black occupation troops" (Campt
2008, 36-7). Thus, it is fairly obvious that traditional German masculinity was threatened not only by the question of sexual orientation in the military and the loss of the First World
War, but also by the occupation of the Rhineland by non-German, non-white troops.
The perception of masculinity in Germany was further threatened by the rise of the neue Frau - the "new Woman". Although there existed a male-generated, media-promoted mythology of the "new Woman" - whereby she was vampish, glamourous, and "too independent to be true," working by day and partying at night - that eventually took on a life of its own, the reality was somewhat different (Peukert 1991, 99). The neue Frau was a new and unprecedented creation of the First World War in German society, as for the first time it was necessary for women en masse to replace their male counterparts in the workplace (Peukert 1991, 97). This experience of work outside the home gave a taste to
German women of social emancipation, whereas previously their role was limited to the maintenance and propagation of the Volk and the family (Peukert 1991, 96). As German men returned from the frontlines many of them found that their private lives had changed immeasurably, as women demanded the continuation of this role outside the home as well as greater social (and sexual) emancipation. Women continued to work in administrative, welfare and education jobs in addition to other areas in which they had previously been employed; the proportion of women with jobs tended to stay constant at roughly one-third
(Peukert 1991, 96).
An additional feature of these photos lends itself to greater discussion in this section
- the contrasts between light and dark in the aforementioned photos. While these contrasts 55 make for dramatic, memorable photos, they also allude to another enduring feature of
German-ness and German identity - whiteness (Poiger 2005, 120). Whiteness is about more than skin colour; it refers to a way of thinking and existing that has been developed since Europeans began exploring outside the boundaries of the European continent (Dyer
1997, 19). It is a supremely flexible concept founded on a series of paradoxes: White is at once a variety of race and the human race (whiteness assumes individual and universal subjectivity); whiteness is a "vivid, corporeal cosmology that values bodily transcendence" by a spirit; a stress upon display of that spirit while maintaining invisibility (the "need to be everything and nothing at the same time"); and that whiteness is committed to reproduction to promulgate itself, though it requires the suppression of male sexual desires and the absence of female sexual desires (Dyer 1997, 39-40). In a few choice words, then, whiteness is purity, chastity, enterprise, civilization, and transcendence.
An important point to make in the context of Munkacsi's reportages is that photography is a medium that lends itself to the "privileging white people," designed to be more sensitive to lighter contrasts than darker one (Dyer 1997, 83). This is certainly evident in Munkacsi's photos, as more detail can be picked out from light/white coloured areas of the photo than darker, shadowed ones. In terms of these contrasts, most notable in this reportage is that between the shirtless worker carrying the sack of coffee beans in the first photograph of this section, and the bright, almost white uniforms of the police officers in the second and third photos.
Using the discourse of whiteness to inform this section brings up another important point related to the insecurity of German masculinity discussed earlier. As white males 56 were supposed to suppress their sexuality to attain whiteness, this sexuality was often projected upon non-whites to further increase their non-whiteness (Dyer 1997, 28).
Darkness is thus seen as a signifier of masculine sexuality, while whiteness is a means to control it (Dyer 1997, 28). In conjunction with the flexibility of the category of whiteness, the photos could be interpreted in the following manner: As mentioned above, the shirtless worker might have represented a kind of unrestrained, uncivilized, sexualized masculinity that is kept under control by the orderly, civilized and non-sexually charged appearance of the white-clad police officers. This difference in clothing colour could also be interpreted as identifying the police officers as possessing a degree of whiteness. Even though the police officers in question were not white-skinned, they could be made "honourary whites" through the discourse of whiteness (Dyer 1997, 49), as they control the unrestrained, sexualized masculinity of the workers on the dock as representatives of European colonial power. Their presence in white uniforms acts as a further signifier of whiteness; in other words, although they are not white, there is still a tacit "civilization" despite the absence of people possessing true whiteness, in this case Germans.
Coffee Tragedy!
This brings the discussion to the final two photos in the coffee-dumping sequence.
These photos highlight the workers who are engaged in the actual physical labour behind the effort - shoveling the coffee onto the ship, and shoveling the coffee into the sea. The first of these two photos is third in the sequence, and follows the photo of the mounted police officers supervising the loading of the coffee sacks onto the ships. This photo is accompanied by the caption, "...in die Laderaume geschaufelt und auf hohe See 57 hinausgefahren" ("...shoveled into the cargo holds and taken out onto the high seas")
(Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 834). Munkacsi chose a vantage point for this photo from some place on board the ship itself, likely an elevated section near the bow. From this angle, the hull of the ship runs diagonally from the bottom right to the top left corners, splitting the photo evenly between the ship and the dock.
The final photo of this set dominates the lower half of this page, and illustrates the workers shoveling the coffee beans overboard. As it is the largest picture on this page, it is likely that the editors of the BIZ thought that it was the most important picture of the set, and needed particular highlighting. Of the aforementioned photos in the set, this photo is certainly the most dramatic, as all three of the workers in the focus area of the camera are caught mid-shovel, with the offending beans frozen in their flight from ship to sea. This photo also has the most informative caption attached to it: "Der Kaffee wird ins Meer geschuttet. Man will durch diese Verringerung des Vorrats verhuten, daJ3 die Preise unter die Entstehungskosten sinken, was den Zusammenbruch der brasilianischen Wirtschaft zur
Folge hatte" ("The coffee is dumped into the sea. It is hoped that this reduction of the supply will prevent the price from sinking below the production costs, which would mean the collapse of the Brazilian economy") (Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 834).
Again, Munkacsi makes use of the hull of the ship to separate two distinct areas of the photo - running from bottom left to top right corners, the hull separates the photo evenly between sea and ship. The view of the camera is only slightly elevated this time, and lacks any of the subjugating gaze of some of the previous photos. The most compelling 58 aspect of this photo is that here one finally sees the act of coffee dumping take place, whereas it was previously only tantalizingly alluded to.
Burning Coffee for Heat?
In the text of the reportage, Munkacsi informs the reader that dumping was only one of the three options the Brazilian government utilized to attempt to cut back on the supply of coffee beans. On the opposite page, Munkacsi illustrates another of options: reallocation. Munkacsi apparently did not need quite so many photos to show this process though, and instead of the five needed to demonstrate the ship option, Munkacsi makes use of two, with very straightforward captions. In retrospect, it would have been interesting to see this process in greater detail,11 though the photos that were published are still enough to show generally what was happening. In the larger of the two photos, four Brazilian workers shovel coffee beans from a mountain of coffee beans (presumably) into hoppers; one of these hoppers - at least a meter high with a diameter of about the same - is being loaded on the ground in the lower left of the photo, while another is apparently suspended in the air, likely by some sort of crane. Compositionally, this photo is interesting because the camera looks on at the same eye-level as the workers in the photo. There is thus no power discrepancy implied in the view of the lens, and there is no one occupying a more elevated position in the photo either. The viewer is for all intents and purposes on the same level as the workers.
11 It should be noted that there are actually more photos that could have been used to illustrate the reallocation option. These photos are available in the Ullstein Press Archive in Berlin, although most of them were unpublished. 59
Similarly to the previous photo of the workers shoveling the coffee into the sea, the editors of the BIZ seemed to think that this particular photo - whether due to the content or the composition - deserved a grander position than its neighbour, as it takes up more than half of the page. That is not to imply that the photo itself is not interesting - on both the levels of the studium and the punctum, this photo intrigues. The studium is the general interest that surrounds coffee itself - many drink it, but how many people actually have seen it in any other form than a sack of beans, or a pleasant brown liquid? Or, perhaps even more to the point, would one have assumed the apparent level of industrialization needed to produce (or destroy) the coffee? This photo seems to create the impression of an industrial operation rather than an agricultural one. This leads to the punctum - here, the viewer is shown not a sack of beans, but a mountain of them. This amount of coffee seems to change the relationship of the workers to their crop, as instead of appearing to be agricultural workers - which they are - they instead look like they are heavy industrial workers, and the coffee looks rather like a pile of some valuable mineral.
Munkacsi misses the intermediate steps in this particular process though, as the next photo is of the finished product: coffee heating briquettes, stacked six high and more than twenty-two long on what looks to be a rail cart, pushed by three workers in hats (but without shoes). For the first photo, Munkacsi writes "Eine andere Verzweiflungs-methode:
Die Kaffeberge werden mit Teer vermischt und..." ("Another desperate measure: the coffee-mountains are mixed with tar and..."), a sentence that he finishes in the caption for the second photo, with "...zu Briketts gepreBt und als Heizmaterial verwendet" (".. .pressed into briquettes and used as a heating material") (Munkacsi, "Kaffee-Tragodie" 1932, 835). 60 Again, the camera seems to have been on nearly the same eye-level as the workers in the picture, making the implication of any sort of power discrepancy other than the inherent class distinction problematic.
I find this photo to be intensely fascinating and captivating, far more so than the photo discussed above for a number of reasons. Here is another instance in which Sontag's reminder that photos should not be viewed in isolation from their captions proves important. Were it not for the caption attached to it, one could easily mistake this scene for one from any number of heavy industrial operations, in this case mining especially, from around the world. If one did not know that this was coffee that had been pressed into briquettes, and was being transported on a rail cart by these workers, one might well assume that this is in fact anything other than coffee, such as coal or bricks.
Secondly, the clothing of these workers causes me to take greater interest in this photo. Their shirts and pants are unremarkable in the realm of working attire, so far as I can tell - it is functional, ragged, dirty, and layered, as if they simply wore whatever was available for them that morning. Although they all seem to have similar clothing, they seem to have no particular uniform, coveralls, or standard garment that identifies their profession.
This photo possesses a particular punctum though in relation to the clothing of the workers depicted, namely their hats and shoes. In most of the photos in both the coffee dumping and coffee burning sets, the workers are shown wearing varying styles of hat, ranging from the pseudo-boater's hat and fedora worn by the two workers on the front page of the reportage to the bucket hats, pseudo-pith helmets, and toques worn by workers in the later photos of the reportage. In the last photo of the coffee burning set, the three workers guiding the rail 61 cart all wear different hats: from the right, a soft-looking, perhaps military cap, a fedora, and most surprisingly a bowler hat. The hats are particularly striking, as they seem to follow no logic of social distinction or class, and for that reason are incongruous. Similarly, the complete lack of footwear on any of these workers makes it impossible for the reader to assign any distinctions of class or social standing to them. This lack of footwear could also fall under the category of punctum, as it is unusual that the workers are either unwilling or unable to wear shoes despite working in a heavy industrial setting.
Images of industrial workers similar to these would likely have been common in
Germany. Munkacsi had previously done a reportage for the BIZ on an industrial disaster in the Ruhr (Kaufhold 2006, 217), and would have been able to bring the skills he had honed photographing that event to this reportage. The corollary would have been hard to miss though, through captions such as the one under the latter photo that informs the viewer that the coffee is turned into heating briquettes. The Brazilian worker toils at a mountain of coffee to produce heating materials, whereas a worker from the Ruhr toils in the mines to produce coal to be turned into a heating material. The process of adding tar to the coffee can even be seen as a corollary to the coking process required for coal to burn properly.
Although Munkacsi shows the production of these coffee briquettes, he does not specify what their purpose will be, beyond that they will be used as a heating material.
The Power of Coffee
More importantly is what the coffee itself may have stood for in the minds of
Weimar Berliners. Ever since the adoption of coffee by Europeans as the drink of the
Enlightenment, of sobriety, and clarity (replacing wine and beer as staples in the European 62
drink cabinet), it was sought after to the same degree as spices previously were in the
medieval period. However, unlike spices, this new drink was not limited to the aristocracy
- coffee became the drink of the bourgeoisie to a great extent, and across Europe
coffeehouses appeared to offer the bourgeoisie the same opportunities that the salon offered
the aristocrats. Thus, in the coffeehouses of Europe, especially France and to a lesser extent
England, coffee consumption became linked to trade and learned discussion (Schivelbusch
1992, 34, 38, 52, 57).
Although Germany did have coffeehouses, they lacked the public, institutional
nature of their counterparts in England and France. Rather, coffee became more of a private
experience for Germans, linked to Gemutlichkeit and family than public endeavour.
However, that is not to say that Germans did not associate coffee with political or economic
power. As Germany had no overseas colonies at the time of this coffee explosion (the 17
century), it had to import its coffee from French or Dutch traders, often for an exorbitant
amount of money. As a result, it was declared a prohibited substance, as continuing imports
would have kept Germany poor, seeing as coffee was a government monopoly in Germany.
In an attempt to produce a local, cheaper, more "German" option, chicory coffee was
introduced in Germany, and available for all. However, despite the illegality of real "bean"
coffee, wealthy Germans still managed to acquire it, and as a result those with "bean"
coffee gained more status in society (Schivelbusch 1992, 71, 73-9).
In the context of this history, the destruction of coffee appears to be a tragedy
uniquely relevant to the social and political moment of Munkacsi's photos. It implies a judgement about the system of capitalist exchange, which seemed to be collapsing after the 63 stock market crash of 1929. This impression is given greater credibility by the collapse of two of Germany's largest banks, the Darmstadter und Nationalbank and the Deutsche
Bank, in July 1931 (Wehler 2003, 262).
These photos also comment on the ideas of and connections between wealth and trade. This photo reportage was an excellent example of a people who had too much coffee and little need for it, versus a people with too little coffee who likely wanted, but could not afford it. Nothing illustrates this complete breakdown of normal economic relationships better than the coffee dumping discussed previously. Although it is from a grand perspective a complete reversal of the normal human/sea relationship, it seems as though it would have made great use of systems that already existed. The workers needed to put the beans into sacks would have still had their usual jobs, as would those tasked to bring it down to the harbour to be loaded onto the ships that would have taken the beans ordinarily to overseas markets.
The cases of the German economic collapse and the Brazilian attempt to stave off financial collapse indicate a massive breakdown in the usual trade relationships between have and have not states. But what this reportage showed in particular also showed was an attempt to remodel an economy to suit a global condition where international trade was severely depressed; to produce a simulacra of normal economic processes. Despite the hardship alluded to in the article, the captions, and the photos themselves, it shows a group of people determined not to drown in the tide of small, tasty beans. By finding other uses for their primary export item domestically, the Brazilians saved their economy from collapse and in the process even managed to create jobs, albeit temporary ones. It would 64 seem, then, that Brazil was more or less successful in their attempt to remodel their economy, at least as far as the reportage can inform the reader.
More than that though is the theoretical significance of the coffee in this reportage.
Coffee in this case is totally separated from its normal ontology - no longer is coffee simply beans with which to make a popular drink, but it is instead waste to be dumped unceremoniously into the sea, and a mineral to be mined and processed. The elusive nature of the coffee in this reportage alludes to an essential idea that seems to ride on the undercurrent of these photos - coffee in this case is not the product, but is in fact a signifier of the economic system itself. What these photos tell the viewer is that the concept of value within the capitalist economic system is not fixed, that at one moment the coffee could be the most sought after commodity and the next moment could be absolutely worthless.
These photos lay bare the truth of the fiction of economics: while one believes that it is the value of the products that drives the systems of value and exchange, it is in fact the process of commerce. Far from being a result of the economic crisis the world found itself in, this fact always underlies systems of trade.
Thus, from a commodity standpoint, the destruction of the coffee is indeed a tragedy; from a perspective of commerce however, this photo reportage shows a success story. As long as the organs of commerce in Brazil set up around the coffee trade kept working, i.e. the workers and the ships to load, sort, and distribute the coffee beans, the system continues to work. Even destruction can be productive in this reality of commerce versus commodity. These images seem to indicated that in establishing a simulacrum of 65 their previous economy, the Brazilians seemed to recognize that by maintaining the primacy of commerce over commodity, they had a chance of saving their economy. 66 Chapter Four: First Contact
Munkacsi's next reportage to be discussed in this thesis, "Berlin-Rio in vier Tagen:
Mit dem fahrplanmaBigen Zeppelin nach Sudamerika," ("Berlin-Rio in Four Days: With the Regularly Scheduled Zeppelin to South America") was published in issue 17 of the BIZ on April 30, 1932 and shows the encounter with the foreign in an entirely different manner than in the previous chapter.12 In "Kaffee-Tragodie," Munkacsi was already in Brazil; there were no photos or text which showed his means of travel, nor of any non-Brazilians who could have served as an m-reportage foil for German identity. This foil of foreignness would have been something interpreted entirely on the part of the reader, through their viewing of the photos and reading of the accompanying text and captions.
This is not the case though in "Berlin-Rio." In this reportage, Munkacsi shows the trip he took on the Graf Zeppelin from Friedrichshafen to Rio de Janeiro (via Pernambuco), and in so doing takes the reader along on the journey. This reportage is particularly involved with questions of mobility and travel, as the reader moves slowly from a familiar place of German-ness to one of foreignness. At the same time, the reader still has signifiers of German-ness - for example Germans, the Graf Zeppelin, and a floatplane - depicted within the reportage to act as foils against the foreignness of the Brazilians. Far from the
"economic encounter with the foreign" of the previous chapter, "Berlin-Rio" engages the reader with the discourse of travel to this place of foreignness and contact with the foreign.
This reportage, then, is a close encounter with the foreign of a drastically higher degree than that of the previous chapter; it documents the attempt to reach out and touch the world.
12 This reportage appears in its entirety in Appendix C. 67 It is of course worthwhile to point out that the previous "close encounter" was also means of contact with the foreign, though actual physical contact between white German and native Brazilian was not explicitly shown nor implied by the photos. Regardless, both the previous reportage and this one are in their own way a sort of contact zone. In her seminal work, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transcultration, Mary Louise Pratt borrows the term contact zone from linguistics and applies it to political geography. In this context, the contact zone is a place where "peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict" (Pratt 1995, 4). These zones exist on the periphery of empire, in what she calls the "colonial frontier". Although
Germany at this point had no formal, physical empire to speak of, it can be argued that
Germany had at this point an "informal empire," in which the German government had far more economic and social interest in particular areas of the world - especially South
America and Africa - than political or military clout (Poiger 2005, 118). Thus, the term can still be used appropriately to describe these sorts of interactions.
A strong indicator of the attempt to build "informal empire" is the trip reported on in this particular reportage. This interpretation gains further credence when one considers the prominence afforded to this reportage by the BIZ, as Munkacsi was given front-page billing. Moreover, the means of transportation that Munkacsi took to Brazil insinuates the importance of the destination. As reported in the April 30, 1932 edition of the BIZ, Martin
Munkacsi boarded the Graf Zeppelin for a four-day flight to Brazil - a zeppelin of particular prestige and fame due to its round-the-world flight of August, 1929. Since this 68 feat, the Graf Zeppelin and its captain, Dr. Hugo Eckener, had been conducting regular flights carrying passengers and mail from Germany to North and South America, particularly to Brazil (Jullig 1998).
Aside from the prominence afforded the reportage in the BIZ, there are two other factors that would seem to place Brazil as a target possession of the informal German
Empire. Firstly, the fact that fahrplanmdfiig - or, regular - zeppelin service existed between
Germany and Brazil tells one a great deal; it says that Brazil was important enough for such a service. Furthermore, as noted by Bonker, U.S. Navy intelligence reports from the early
20 Century indicate that there was a large expatriate German population in Brazil, which made the United States consider Brazil to be an obvious spot for a colonial foothold for
Germany in South America (Bonker 2001). Establishment of regular travel means that this enclave would have (more or less) guaranteed access to Germany and vice-versa - Kultur could be disseminated from the metropole and brought to the natives, while the frontier experience from the pseudo-colony could be disseminated back to the metropole. Although it is possible to have contact zones in the absence of zeppelins, the quick travel that the zeppelin provides increases the frequency of contact between the pseudo-colony and the metropole. In effect, the zeppelin enables the greater functioning of the contact zone.
Secondly, economic considerations had to come into the equation of informal empire as well. Having a regularly scheduled zeppelin service to Brazil, and having it so prominently featured in a widely read magazine like the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, would have increased public awareness about Brazil and the zeppelin service; this in turn may have increased ridership on the service and German tourism to Brazil generally. 69
Considering how in the reportage discussed in the previous chapter Munkacsi illustrated the Brazilian economy as being in desperate need of diversification, increased tourism would likely have been welcomed by the Brazilian government. Seeing Munkacsi's reportage may also have increased interest or demand for products from Brazil - perhaps even coffee. In turn, with a greater influx of Germans into Brazil, demand for German products might have increased as well, boosting the failing German economy. Furthermore, increased tourism would have helped the German political situation as well. As noted in the first chapter of this thesis, although Weimar politics - especially in the late Republic - was extremely polarized on a majority of issues, one issue that many across the political spectrum could agree on (to some extent or other) was that Germany should acquire colonies again, either old ones or new ones (Poiger 2005, 122). Under the auspices of
"informal empire," increased tourism to areas of informal imperialist interest could have been seen as furthering this goal. In any case, though, it is obvious that the required social and economic interests for informal empire were present in Germany's relationship to
Brazil in the early 1930s, and that such involvement would have been seen as positive by both the German and Brazilian governments. But what does the reportage say beyond that?
Role Model for the Republic?
Although 1932 brought political instability at a level not seen in the Weimar
Republic since the end of World War I and the German economy was suffering drastic shocks from economic collapse, Martin Munkacsi continued to travel on assignment for the
Berliner Illustrirte, sending back his photos and reports for an eager public in Berlin. On
April 30, 1932, the BIZ featured the first report from Munkacsi's trip to Brazil, awarding 70 one of Munkacsi's shots the title page. With the caption "Zw dem Beitrag 'Berlin-Rio de
Janeiro in 4 Tagen' von Martin Munkacsi in dieser Nummer" ("Concerning the Report
'Berlin-Rio de Janeiro in 4 Days' by Martin Munkacsi in this issue") and the image of the famous zeppelin commander Dr. Hugo Eckener holding court around his table in the dining room of the equally famous Graf Zeppelin, BIZ readers were able to experience vicariously the grand adventure of travelling to South America via this prestigious method of transportation, something that few could likely have afforded at this point in 1932.
Despite the fact that other issues of the BIZ had included sets and articles from
Munkacsi's previous travels, a travel report by Martin Munkacsi had rarely been so prominently featured. From this, in addition to the many advertisements in the BIZ that feature foreign and/or travel themes one can safely assert that despite the dire economic and political straits of 1932 Germany, Germans retained their fascination with images of the foreign and of travel reportages (Hardt 2000, 60-1). Although this image of Dr. Eckener is not necessarily one that would be considered "foreign" to the eyes of a Weimar Berliner, the idea of travel is both expressly stated in the caption, and implied in the choice of the subj ect of the photo.
More important in this case than the "why" is the "who", as the cover of issue 17 of the BIZ features one of Munkacsi's photos of the prominent Dr. Hugo Eckener, the commander of the Graf Zeppelin. The figure of Dr. Eckener would have been instantly recognizable to much of the population in Germany at the time for many reasons. Dr.
Eckener had gained great renown in Germany through his participation in developing and popularizing the zeppelin as a safe and efficient mode of transportation. Furthermore, he 71 had commanded the Graf Zeppelin on flights to the Antarctic, South America and around the world, all of which were dubbed "spectacular" and attracted considerable media attention, especially in the case of the latter trip. For Berliners and Germans of the Weimar
Republic, Dr. Eckener was a figurehead not only for air travel, but also for two important aspects of German national pride - technological prowess and innovation (Eckelmann
1998, Jttllig 1998).
Dr. Eckener was also an important political figure in the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s. He was a staunch adversary to the Nazi Party, which in 1932 was gaining in strength, both on the streets of Germany and in the Reichstag. His celebrity and his political views prompted the Prussian Interior Ministry to petition him to run for the presidency of the Weimar Republic against Adolf Hitler, as the candidacy of Paul von Hindenburg was initially uncertain. Although Eckener had agreed to run for the position, he later withdrew his candidacy bid after Hindenburg decided he would in fact run in the election (Eckelmann
1998).
Despite the fact that he withdrew his candidacy, it is more than likely that there was still a great deal of political currency tied up in both Eckener's name and image at the time that he appeared in this cover photo, as the 1932 presidential election had concluded its second ballot only three weeks prior to publication. It is not irrational to presume that by including such a prominent image of Eckener on the cover of this particular issue, the BIZ may have been making a political statement, possibly against the Nazis, Hindenburg or both. This is suggested not only by the fact of Eckener being on the cover, but also by the composition of the shot, and how it appears on the cover page of the issue. 72 When it comes to the composition of the photo, one can understand how so many implicit messages could be tied up in it. The photo shows Dr. Eckener surrounded by three other individuals, at least two of whom are well-dressed men. The third person is facing away from the camera, and is also for the most part cut out of the frame. Although Eckener is centered on the vertical axis of the photo, he is elevated on the horizontal. This elevation, combined with the fact that he is standing while all those around him are sitting, places him on a visual level above all of the others. Even though one is looking directly at the page, one gets the impression that one is actually looking up to Eckener.
This impression is further strengthened by how the image is cropped and arranged on the page to draw the eye to Eckener's head and face - his head cannot be contained by the frame of the image, and actually occludes part of the title "Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung".
The focus on his face and head is further cemented by the triangle formed between his head and the heads of the men seated on his right and left sides. The eye is also drawn to the large, dark wine bottle placed almost equidistantly between the three men; while examining it, one's eye is drawn back to the smiling face of the man to Eckener's left. When one looks at the faces and heads of these men around Eckener, the eye cannot help but be drawn instantly back to the face of the latter as a result of this compositional triangle. Although all around seem relaxed and happy, none seem more so than Eckener himself, gazing down smiling at something on his table - perhaps the bottle of wine - while nonchalantly holding his cigarette as if in mid-sentence. This scene in the composition of its elements gives off a warm, almost paternal impression to the viewer, as if one can almost sense the civilized cordiality of the occasion. 73
Also noteworthy about the composition is the generally even lighting tone across the photo. There are no major darks that draw the eye other than the wine bottle, and no highlights other than the white suits of the three men; midtones seem to be the primary tonal element of this photo, creating a calming, neutral feel to the photo. The major dark and light areas simply draw one back into the subject triangle discussed above.
Beyond these considerations though, Dr. Eckener stood for prestige and respect that the Germans had lost in World War I, regained to some measure during the later years of the 1920s, but then had lost again as a result of the German banking system collapse of the early 1930s. Although discourses of German-ness may have been problematic in a period of such destitution of economy and national identity, this image seems to offer part of the solution. In the figure of Dr. Eckener lay hope for rebuilding international prestige, and the feeling of German technological prowess once again being something to admire and respect. Dr. Eckener may therefore have provided a sort of ideal German role model for the reestablishment of stable discourses of national identity. In other words, if existing discourses of German nationalism and national identity faced threats to their integrity, these images represented an encounter with the rest of the world that might provide a new, stable framework for the construction of national identity.
A Year in Three Days
Although Kurt Korff, the editor of the BIZ, wrote that in the age of the illustrated newspaper it was possible to use the photo itself as news (Korff 1927, 290), in this case of this reportage such an approach would not have worked well, as the text that accompanies this reportage is indeed invaluable to contextualizing Munkacsi's photos: „Am Morgen des Montag "On Monday morning at my nahm ich in meinem Hotel zu hotel in Friedrichshafen I Friedrichshafen ein warmes took a warm bath and Bad und flog rasch nach spontaneously flew to South Sudamerika. Ich miifite mich America. I had to hurry, as beeilen, denn fiir einen for people of class it is Kulturmenschen schickt es suitable to bathe only every sich, alle drei Tage zu baden. three days. To do so more Haufiger ware ungesund, frequently would be denn die im warmen Wasser unhealthy, as the musculature weichgewordene Muskulatur requires three days to regain braucht drei Tage, um ihre its elasticity after being Elastizitat weakened by the warm wiederzugewinnen. Das water. The next time I bathe nachste Mai konnte ich schon will be in South America. in Sudamerika baden. Wenn Should the air be mich die Luft anwandelte, disagreeable to me, I could konnte ich morgen die board the return flight the Riickfahrt antreten und am next morning and be in Sonntag das Fuflball-Match Berlin to see the soccer in Berlin sehen. Das vom match on Sunday. I saw the vorigen Sonntag habe ich one last Sunday. One can buy gesehen. Man kann eine hin= a return ticket. To get to und Ruckfahrkarte losen. South America and back one Nach Sudamerika und zuriick needs no longer than six braucht man nicht langer als days. By ship it would take sechs Tage. Zu Schiff wahrt one and a half months. es anderthalb Monate.
Ich muB den zu Anfang I must qualify the phrase meines Berichtes "flew to South America" that gebrauchten Ausdruck "Flog I used in the beginning of my nach Sudamerika" report. Upon boarding the richtigstellen. Beim zeppelin, Dr. Eckener made Einsteigen in das Luftschiff me aware that: "You are not machte mich Dr. Eckener flying, you are t a k i n g aufmerksam: "Sie fliegen (travelling) the zeppelin to nicht, Sie f a h r e n mit dem South America". Thus, I Zeppelin nach Sudamerika." went on the zeppelin to South Ich fuhr also mit dem America. Zeppelin nach Sudamerika.
Dieses Fliegen mit dem Zepp This flying with the Zepp is ist nicht mehr Bravour, nicht no longer an act of bravery, Abenteuer, nicht Ausflug... nor an adventure, nor a trip... Das ist einfach ein Betrieb! It is simply an enterprise! A Ein richtiger real transportation enterprise. Verkehrsbetrieb. Mit One departs with peinlicher Piinktlichkeit fahrt embarrassing punctuality, man ab, mit angenehmer and arrives with pleasant Piinktlichkeit kommt man an. timeliness. There is a printed Es gibt einen gedruckten schedule, a printed ticket that Fahrplan, eine gedruckte one can buy at every ticket Fahrkarte, die in jedem office. Fahrkartenbiiro fur Geld zu haben sind.
Wir machten uns bei einer We started on our way at a Temperatur unter Null auf sub-zero temperature and den Weg und kamen bei arrived to thirty degrees in dreifiig Grad in Schatten an. the shade. The amount of gas In den Ballons wurde das in the balloons lessened Gas immer weniger, dafiir continually, and due to the dehnte sich infolge der rising heat the remaining gas steigenden Warme die was able to expand zuriickgebliebene Gasmenge ceaselessly. At the Tropic of unablassig aus. Am Cancer a passenger Wendekreis des Krebses remarked: "When we arrive, bemerkte ein Passagier: we will have twice the "Wenn wir ankommen, amount of gas as we had at werden wir doppelt soviel departure". Gas haben wie bei der Abfahrt."
Drei Tage aus dem Tagebuch Three days from the journal eines Mitreisenden, der eine of a fellow traveler, who is poetische Seele hat: 21. possessed of a poetic soul: Marz. Kalter, scheuBlicher March 21. Cold, hideous Winter. Nach Mitternacht winter. Departure from Abfahrt aus Friedrichshafen. Friedrichshafen after Unter unsern Sohlen knirscht midnight. The snow crunches der Schnee, wahrend wir dem under our soles, as we Hangar zustreben. Der attempt to reach the hangar. Zeppelin erhebt sich. Unter The zeppelin rises. Under us uns die schneebedeckten the snow-capped Swiss SchweizerBerge. mountains. Schaffhausen, Schaffhausen, Basel schlafen Basel sleep underneath us in unter uns in der Winterkalte. the winter cold. The icy Die eisigen Winde des winds of the Rhone Valley Rhonetales begleiten uns auf accompany us on our travel unserer Fahrt gegen near Gibraltar. If only this Gibraltar. Wenn nur dieser winter was at an end...! Winter schon zu Ende ware Gibraltar, Tangier, ...! Gibraltar, Tanger, Casablanca... Casablanca...
22. Marz. Warmes March 22. Warm spring Friihlingswetter. Die Sonne weather. The Sun smiles Lachelt mild. Wir verlassen mildly. We leave North Nordafrika. Das Luftschiff Africa. The airship passes zieht liber der over the West African coast. westafrikanischen Kiiste How lovely is spring! Near dahin. Wie schon ist der Rio de Oro we leave the Friihling! Bei Rio de Oro shores of Africa and move verlassen wir die Gestade out to sea towards the Cape Afrikas und ziehen iiber das Verdi Islands... We are offene Meer nach den getting closer to the Equator. Kapverdischenlnseln... Wir nahern uns dem Aequator.
23. Marz. Furchterliche March 23. Horrible heat. A Hitze. Ein teuflischer hellish summer! Behind us Sommer! Hinter uns liegt die lies the island of St. Paul, at Insel St. Paul, urn Mittag noon we saw Fernando de sahen wir Fernando de Noronha, the "Island of Noronha, die "Insel der Sinners". Here Brazilian Sunder." Hier verbuBen criminals serve out their brasilianische Verbrecher sentences. At five in the ihre Strafe. Um fiinf Uhr afternoon we landed in nachmittags landeten wir in Pernambuco, on a blistering Pernambuco, an einem Brazilian summer's day... gliihenden brasilianischen What a fairy-tale world this Sommertag... Was fur eine zeppelin is, where a year is Marchenwelt ist dieser but three days. Zeppelin, bei dem das Jahr aus drei Tagen besteht.
Mittwoch nachmittag um We landed in Pernambuco funf waren wir in Wednesday afternoon around Pernambuco angekommen. five. We slept in a hotel and Wir schliefen im Hotel und transferred aboard a tri- steigen auf einen engine floatplane. This dreimotorigen Hydroplan aircraft operates in um. Diese Flugzeuge conjunction with the zeppelin 77 verkehren im AnschluB an to provide transportation den Zeppelin zwischen between Pernambuco and Pernambuco und Rio de Rio de Janeiro. Our pilot is Janeiro. Unser braver Pilot good, and manoeuvres laviert dauernd zwischen between rainclouds. These Regenwolken. Diese Wolken clouds are so small; sind so klein; zuweilen sometimes it rains on a patch regnet es auf eine Flache von of ground no larger than one nicht mehr als hundert hundred square meters, Quadratmeter, zuweilen gieBt sometimes it is raining es auf den linken Fliigel der buckets on the left wing of Maschine wie aus Scheffeln, the machine, and on the right und auf den rechten Fliigel wing the Brazilian sun shines strahlt die tolle brasilianische its glowing heat. Sonne ihre Gliihhitze.
In Rio stiegen wir wieder zu In Rio we climbed down Menschen herab. Unser back into humanity. Our Vogeldasein war zu Ende... bird-like existence was at an Berlin-Rio - vier Tage." end... Berlin-Rio - four days." (Munkacsi, "Berlin-Rio" 1932, 520-3)
While the text of the previous reportage simply reported information contained (for the most part) by the photos, this text is different. It constructs a narrative of events that the photos do not encapsulate in addition to reporting on the information contained in the photos themselves. Of the trip on the Graf Zeppelin, Munkacsi's photos show only an encounter with the Cap Arcona, the arrival in Pernambuco, and the trip via floatplane to
Rio; the departure from Friedrichshafen, and the majority of the flight are left visually unrepresented. Instead, Munkacsi turns to his fellow traveler, "der eine poetische Seele hat'
("who is possessed of a poetic soul"), who constructs the trip in the mind's eye of the reader through his prose. In so doing, Munkacsi leaves the construction of the details of the flight in the hands of his readers, in a sense permitting them greater leeway for the trip itself to become whatever his readers wanted it to be. To be succinct, Munkacsi's use of 78 prose to describe the trip instead of photos allows the creation (and propagation) of an idealized, romanticized form of travel. Both of these forms give rise to complex, different interactions with the reader, and for this reason they complement each other well. However, it should be noted that one does not free the mind more than the other.
This perspective is substantiated by many passages in the reportage. Through the use of phrasing such as "Was fur eine Marchenwelt ist dieser Zeppelin, bei dem das Jahr aus drei Tage besteht" ("What a fairy tale world this Zeppelin is, for which a year is but three days"), as well as "...zuweilen gieBt es auf den linken Fliigel der Maschine wie aus
Scheffeln, und auf den rechten Fliigel strahlt die tolle brasilianische Sonne ihre Gluhhitze"
("...sometimes it is raining buckets on the left wing of the machine, and on the right wing the Brazilian sun shines its glowing heat."), and "In Rio stiegen wir wieder zu Menschen herab. Unser Vogeldasein war zu Ende... Berlin-Rio - vier Tage." ("In Rio we climbed down back into humanity. Our bird-like existence was at an end... Berlin-Rio - four days")
(Munkacsi, "Berlin-Rio" 1932, 523), a discourse of a fantastical reality of travel is constructed by the text, where up is down, black is white, and storms and sunshine can exist contemporaneously.
It is especially fascinating that Munkacsi chose to create this discourse of romanticized, idealized travel in his reportage, when at the beginning of the text he writes,
"Dieses Fliegen mit dem Zepp ist nicht mehr Bravour, nicht Abenteuer, nicht Ausflug...
Das ist einfach ein Betrieb! Ein richtiger Verkehrsbetrieb." ("This flying with the Zepp is no longer an act of bravery, nor an adventure, nor a trip... It is simply an enterprise! A real transportation enterprise") (Munkacsi, "Berlin-Rio" 1932, 522). These comments 79 completely contradict this discourse of the romantic and fantastic zeppelin trip constructed at the end of the reportage, robbing zeppelin flights of any mystique. Indeed, he goes to great lengths to point out how with the regular schedule of zeppelins departing for
Pernambuco, a zeppelin trip is far more like taking a train; in other words, the adventurous had become the banal. The quote by Dr. Eckener would seem to back up this point, as he commented that "Sie fliegen nicht, Sie f a h r e n mit dem Zeppelin nach Sudamerika"
("You are not flying, you are t a k i n g the zeppelin to South America") (Munkacsi,
"Berlin-Rio" 1932, 522).
By invoking this discourse of banality, equating zeppelin travel with rail travel,
Munkacsi insinuates that German technological prowess is such that a means of travel that for some is fantastic and extraordinary is now an everyday, ordinary occurrence for German travelers. However, by invoking the discourse of the fantastical, romanticized travel experience, Munkacsi invokes a discourse of travel that has existed in Germany since the
19th century, perpetuated through cultural productions and traditions. These images are a representation of that discourse that comments on this tradition of travel literature in a new way - in these images, the fantastical becomes the mechanical, the spirit becomes the machine, and the extraordinary and very modern becomes banal. This banality of the high- tech zeppelin trip, coupled with the romanticized and idealized vision of travel are thus elements that could shape a discourse of German national identity within the framework of the reportage. 80 Flight and the Imperial Gaze
In photos from the previous reportage discussed in the last chapter, it has been noted that the camera may be elevated or not, and that this camera angle seems to have power dynamics inherent in it - should the view be straight on, the viewer may feel as though they have been put in a position of equivalent power to the subject. However, should the camera angle be such that the viewer seems to be looking up or down at the subject matter of the photo, the power dynamic inherent in the photo can be one of diminished or increased power over the subject matter. In other words, a subject can be made to look more or less imposing depending on the camera angle.
As the majority of the photos of this particular reportage were taken while onboard the zeppelin, looking down at the world, it would make sense to discuss this dynamic in more detail. There is a case to be made for perspective in this scenario being related to that of surveillance. Michel Foucault wrote in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison about the concept of the Panopticon, which in the opinion of its designer Jeremy Bentham - and apparently of Foucault as well - represents the pinnacle of prison design. The
Panopticon's design emulates a wheel, with a singular guard tower where the axle would be and cells arranged around the circumference of the wheel. The cells would be totally open facing towards the tower, while the tower itself would have sufficient windows to enable a guard to look directly into any cell that he so chose. By making sure that the tower's windows were covered by blinds that would permit surreptitious observation of the prisoners at any given time without the knowledge of the prisoners - and of course dependent on the prisoners knowledge that they were being observed - the resulting power 81 dynamic in favour of the guards would result in the prisoners policing themselves for fear of reprisal from the observer (Foucault 1979, 200-2).
However, Bentham was quick to note that this design had implications outside of the penal system. The Panopticon could be applied to many different types of endeavour, ranging from education to fabrication and beyond. This panoptic schema, Foucault argued,
"arranges power...mak[ing] it more economic and more effective", with the aim of such power being "the strengthening] of social forces - to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply"
(Foucault 1979, 207). The Panopticon achieves similar aims to that of European colonialism; that is, European colonial powers saw their colonialism as a sort of civilizing mission to some extent or other (Timm and Sanborn 2007, 97).
Munkacsi's images for this reportage also function with this panoptic schema, whereby the Graf Zeppelin becomes the tower of the Panopticon, furthering colonial aims.
The world around the Graf Zeppelin emulates the wheel of the Panopticon - there are little to no obstructions to block the view of the observer. For the passengers of the zeppelin, the altitude and the anonymity and perspective that it provides make it the perfect analogue for the watchtower of the Panopticon - one knows that its presence is hard to miss for outside observers, and there can be any number of people occupying it and using its large picture windows, or no one. Most important to note, though, is the fact that zeppelin passengers are looking down on the world, and can remain invisible (or at the very least anonymous) while doing so. The Graf Zeppelin becomes - in these images - the center of an all-powerful eye. 82 White Men Looking Down on the World
The reportage begins with a series of three photos on the first page. The first photo that catches the eye is the one on the top right, which features two well-dressed gentlemen glancing at a map beside a large window with the caption "On the regularly-scheduled zeppelin to South America: Studying the map is a favourite pastime of the travelers". The left third of the photo is taken up by this large window, whose frames and panes are on a diagonal slant from the top left into the middle of the photo. The two gentlemen, meanwhile, occupy the center and right thirds of the photo. Of these two, the older, balding man stands closest to the camera on the right of the photo, pointing with his left pinky finger at a point on a map which is laid out on a roughly waist-height ledge while the second, younger man leans in from behind the first man and looks on disinterestedly.
The lighting in this photo is of a very even tone - no intense darks other than the countertop and the black eyepieces on the countertop, and intense highlights are limited to the almost pure white light from the windows, and the refraction of this light from the skin of the two men. Otherwise, the majority of this photo is limited to very calming midtones, as if to suggest a civilized atmosphere of safety and tranquility.
The composition of this photo is strangely compelling due to both the expected and unexpected directions that the eye is drawn. As a result of four distinct elements, the eye is drawn to the point of the photo that one would initially expect it to be - the center of the photo, which is occupied by the map. These elements are, namely, the diagonal slope of the windows on the left side of the photo, running from the top left corner to the center of the photo; the edge of the counter which sits under the window, running from the bottom left 83 comer to the center of the photo; the left arm of the gentleman closest to the camera, which
runs from the midpoint of the photo on the right side to the center; and the gaze of the two
gentlemen, which seems to imply another diagonal running from the top right corner to the
center. The map that they are ostensibly studying, meanwhile, occupies the center of the
photo. These lines through the photo make sense then, as they are directing the eye of the
viewer directly to what some may see as the most important part of the photo - the map.
However, having reached the map at the center of the photo, the viewer's eye is sent
somewhere totally unexpected - the face of the second, younger man leaning on the counter
to get a better view of the spot on the map to which his companion is pointing. One may try
to determine why exactly the eye is drawn there - perhaps as a result of the small, black
device resting on the map beneath the man's head, as it is angled upwards towards his face;
or perhaps it is because his is the only face that one can see straight on. Perhaps this is just
another example oipunctum - an unexpected, detail that pricks slightly, that one is unable
to ignore. Whatever the reason though, the eye is drawn there, and one cannot help but
scrutinize the man's expression, which appears to be one of supreme, haughty
disinterestedness. Although one cannot entirely be sure due to the angle of his companion,
it appears that the older gentleman has a similar look on his face. These seem to be the look
of men who are very certain of their powerful status as older white German males.
After looking at this photo for a period of time, one comes to realize what the true punctum of this photo is - although these men have a birds' eye view of all around them
through the large, magnificent windows, both choose instead to be captivated by the
impersonality and infallibility of the map. Perhaps, this is a latent reflection of the previous 84 mapping tendency of Europeans described by Pratt in Imperial Eyes. Pratt notes that
Europeans had a need to classify and identify; that by naming and identifying these foreign locales, flora, and fauna (and people), Europeans could "familiarize and naturalize" them, and assert dominance over the foreign (Pratt 1995, 27-31). What these men seem to be engaged in is a process of familiarization and naturalization - by seeing the sights outside the windows and identifying them on the map, they are integrating these new, strange lands into their system of order.
For this reason, this photo is also an excellent example of whiteness as discussed by
Richard Dyer in White. Looking at the map as these men are doing signifies the ultimate effect of the imperialist project (which in and of itself was the best vehicle to display qualities of whiteness) - that a map has been made, with its accompanying borders and boundaries, which signifies that order has been brought to the area through or into which they are travelling (Dyer 1997, 31, 36).
Perhaps as interesting as this particular photo is by itself is how it is positioned on the page to the largest photo on the page - a birds' eye view of the Brazilian city of
Pernambuco (now Recife). In the top right quadrant of this photo one can see the dark underside of the Graf Zeppelin as Munkacsi more than likely hung himself out the side of the gondola to take this shot, while the rest of the photo is taken up by the sweeping, breathtaking vista of - as the caption informs the reader - the "Ankunft in Pernambuco, dem brasilianischen Venedig" ("Arrival in Pernambuco, the Venice of Brazil") (Munkacsi,
"Berlin-Rio" 1932, 520). 85 These two photos - one of the two men examining the map, and one of the vista underneath the Graf Zeppelin - are arranged on the page so that the former overlaps part of the upper right corner of the latter. This seems to almost suggest that the former shows the activity going on inside the Graf Zeppelin, while the latter shows what is happening outside the vessel contemporaneously. As a result of this arrangement, it seems as if the viewer is being invited by the editors to make the intuitive leap that these two photos could in fact be interpreted as one photo. Accordingly, should one extend the line of sight of the two gentlemen in the former, it seems as if it is Pernambuco - a signifier of the developing world - is being gazed down upon by the benevolent German bringers of Kultur.
Looking Down at the Past
Particularly interesting is that this declinated camera angle - and the accompanying diminutivization of the subjects depicted - is not limited only to signifiers of non-white civilization. Munkacsi extends this viewpoint to subjects of German origin as well, as illustrated in the next photo of the Berlin-Rio reportage. This particular photo takes up an entire page of the reportage, and features the once famous - now infamous - German passenger liner Cap Arcona. The photo illustrates the Cap Arcona - likely on her route from Germany to South America for the Hamburg-Sudamerika Line - travelling from the lower right corner of the photo to the upper left corner.
As Munkacsi took the photo from the Graf Zeppelin, the angle of view is naturally one that looks down upon the liner, at an altitude such that a great many details of the ship are clearly visible. Readers of the BIZ would have been able to pick out the radio masts and lifeboats, as well as the tennis courts on the afterdeck and the passengers in white tennis 86 outfits making use of them. One can even make out the exhaust of the Cap Arcana's engines, billowing from the first of three stacks. Despite being enroute either to South
America or back to Germany, the ship does not seem to be in any great hurry; there is no readily observable wake from the stern of the ship, nor are there any displacement waves coming off of the bow. It is indeed possible that given the unusual happenstance of the meeting of the Cap Arcona and the Graf Zeppelin, both ships may have stopped momentarily to hail each other.
Under normal circumstances though, so incalculably improbable are the odds of such a random meeting at sea that it must have been pre-arranged by radio. Unfortunately,
Munkacsi does not say whether it was happenstance or planned, but instead describes the encounter this way in the caption for the photo: "Unser groBes Erlebnis: Begegnung mit der
"Cap Arcona". Am zweiten Tag unserer Reise begegneten wir dem deutschen
Passagierdampfer "Cap Arcona" (27 000 Tonnen). In Begeisterung lieB die Menge der
Schiffspassagiere die Taschentiicher in den Liiften wehen. Es war ein reizender Anblick.
Dennoch beneidete ich sie: wir fahren ein Schiff, sie einen Zeppelin." ("Our Great
Experience: Encounter with the 'Cap Arcona'. On the second day of our trip we encountered the German passenger steamer 'Cap Arcona' (27 000 tonnes). Many of the ship's passengers waved their handkerchiefs ecstatically in the air. It was a delightful sight.
However, I envy them: we are travelling on a ship, they on a zeppelin") (Munkacsi,
"Berlin-Rio" 1932, 521). From this last segment of the caption, it is apparent that Munkacsi is again invoking the discourse of fantastical travel: the sky is the sea, the zeppelin is a ship, and vice versa. 87 However prestigious the Cap Arcona was though, there can be little doubt that she represented the past. As Munkacsi said in the article, the crossing from Europe to the shores of South America and back would have taken one and a half months, as compared with the four days that it would have required on board a zeppelin. The elevation of the viewpoint in this photo further emphasizes the obsoleteness of the ocean liner - granted, the zeppelin could only carry about twenty passengers, and within a decade of this photo being taken were no longer in the skies for passenger transportation. For the time being, though, in looking down on the Cap Arcona this photo illustrates the eclipsing, figuratively and literally, of the steamer by the regularly scheduled zeppelin. This was indeed a truly modern and unique means of transportation that represented German companies, technologies, and Germany herself as being highly developed and worthy of envy.
This image also has in it implicit messages about the nature of zeppelin vs. ship travel. Previously, the most expeditious way of extending the German imperialist/colonialist gaze outside of the borders of Germany and Europe was by ship. The importance of the ship to the German government of the Wilhelmine period is obvious by way of the fact that prior to 1914 Germany had actively pursued the building of a large, effective deep-water navy (Orlow 2002, 51-2). A large navy is important when a nation wishes to have influence on global affairs, thus signifying a more expansive, perhaps imperial gaze of the world around them.
In addition to military considerations, ships were a highly effective and efficient means through which to transport large volumes of goods and people for trade, travel, or relocation. However, this means of travel and transportation had a very large limitation, 88 though - oceans have shores. It was not possible via ship to travel directly from, for example, Friedrichshafen to Pernambuco - as Friedrichshafen lies on the shore of the
Bodensee in southwestern Germany, one would first have to take the train to either the
Mediterranean or the North Seas, and from there take one of the liners headed for South
America. By using the air as a medium of transportation, though, the limitation of the shore is avoided. Unlike the ocean travel, there is no limit to the places that can be reached via air travel; all that is required is enough fuel and provisions for the journey. German travel and informal imperialist expansion were no longer limited by the same forces that limited the
Cap Arcona. The German imperialist/colonialist gaze could be extended anywhere the zeppelin or airplane could fly - the sky literally was the limit.
Contact Zone?
The majority of the reportage's photos appear on the third page, following the photo of the Cap Arcona. Although none are quite as large as the preceding photos - being arranged in the top two-thirds of the page - this does not mean that they are any less meaningful. On the contrary - within the framework of this thesis, these four photos, which document actual contact between the Graf Zeppelin and the Brazilians of Pernambuco, are very important. This is because up to this point in the reportages analyzed in this thesis, the viewer has been shown how these societies operate independently from any European or
German influence (save that of Munkacsi himself). In this reportage however, Munkacsi shows the viewer multiple moments of contact between Brazilians and signifiers of
German-ness such as the Graf Zeppelin and other aircraft. 89
The first of this series of four photos on the third page of the reportage is a downwards-looking shot of a group of four men in what appear to be dirty military uniforms seemingly excited beyond all measure by the arrival of the Graf Zeppelin. They are looking up at the camera and grinning from ear to ear, arms stretched out above them, and apparently jostling each other significantly in the process. The ground around them is covered by what appears to be very long grass, and the Brazilian sun is reflecting off of some of the blades as well as the uniforms of the men. Otherwise, this photo is rather dark, with strong shadows and darker tones. The eye is drawn into the photo by the outstretched left arm of the man on the far right of the photo; from there, the eye can follow the arms of the other men and thus move freely throughout the photo. As a result of their heads being on roughly the same line as their arms, one can scrutinize the faces of these men, all of whom share similar looks of absolute elation. Their faces seem to be dirty, just as their uniforms seem to be dirty and unkempt, though this appearance may be as a result of the high contrast between lights and darks.
In the caption for this photo, Munkacsi writes, "Landung des Zeppelin in
Pernambuco: Brasilianische Soldaten warten darauf, die Eisenstange der Fuhrergondel zu fassen" ("The landing of the zeppelin in Pernambuco: Brazilian soldiers wait to grab hold of the iron rails of the pilot's gondola") (Munkacsi, "Berlin-Rio" 1932, 522). Upon discovering that these men are in fact Brazilian soldiers, this caption opens up entirely new avenues of analysis. First and foremost among these is the perception of the military. The military has always had close ties with German society and identity in the past. Despite a crisis of masculinity in German society described in the previous chapter, the image of the 90 soldier remained a signifier of masculinity. This masculine, ideal soldier's body and uniform belonged to the state, while his uniform was also a signifier for his own, personal masculinity (Prickett 2008, 69). Additionally, this ideal soldier image was a signifier of a
"healthy and strong nation" in arts and sciences in Germany (Prickett 2008, 68).
Nevertheless, there was a genuine fear that this facade of masculinity was more fragile than many contemporary Germans cared to admit; as symbols of Germany's strength, image of the soldier had to be protected at all costs from feminine influences (Prickett 2008, 84). In sum, then, the German soldier was a figure of value and pride, representing to Germans something of themselves to be respected, safeguarded and encouraged.
The Brazilian soldiers in this photo construct a completely different discourse of masculinity. In this photo, the viewer is confronted with the image of these foreign soldiers, none of whom are possessed of any seemingly dignified, masculine or traditional military traits. Instead of being represented in an ennobling manner, with the camera looking straight at them at eye level or from a slightly elevated angle, they were looking straight up into the camera; an immense power discrepancy between viewer and subject would hardly have been appropriate when representing members of the German military. Indeed, the punctum here seems to be that the men in the photo are ostensibly soldiers, yet do not seem to be cultured, respectable or particularly masculine; perfect examples of the emasculated masculinity predicated by colonialist thought (Timm and Sanborn 2007, 101). Although there was an ongoing crisis of masculinity in Germany, here was an example of men who were significantly less masculine when compared even to the German male in crisis. 91
The second avenue of discourse that this photo seems to engage in is that of innocence. Orientalist theory describes the foreign other as being, amongst other things, childlike (Said 2003, 40). The soldiers depicted in this photo seem to be at a great loss for maturity; indeed, the photo seems to be constructed so as to remove from the subjects any inkling of adulthood. Instead of seeing the image of ideal soldiers - tall, proud and neatly uniformed - the viewer looks down on these four seemingly small, exicted and unkempt men with smiling faces and outstretched hands.
... Or Moderated Contact Zone?
The next photo in this four-photo sequence, moving clockwise, shows the closest contact between the zeppelin passengers and the Eingeborene ("natives") in this reportage.
As the caption that Munkacsi added to this photo indicates, this photo is depicts the scene as "Der erste brasilianische Zollbeamte besteigt das Luftschiff ("the first Brazilian customs agent board[ing] the air ship") (Munkacsi, "Berlin-Rio" 1932, 522). This photo is a very tight shot - the viewer can see only part of the zeppelin's gondola, and the sea of soldiers' hands grasping tightly onto the iron handrails that skirt the outer edge of the gondola. Meanwhile, a man in a stylish hat and white suit has been captured halfway up the only apparent ladder to the gondola, being helped on his way by a soldier in a bright uniform. The gondola takes up only the tiniest bit of space on the left-hand side of the photo, while the ladder attached to it descends from left to right. The customs agent is framed very nicely indeed in most of the remaining space - the crown of his hat almost skims the upper border, while his rear end touches the right-hand border of the photo. The 92 line of soldiers holding onto the gondola, meanwhile, stretches from the foreground to the background of the photo, roughly parallel to the vertical edge of the photo.
Similarly to the previous reportage, Munkacsi's photos seem to play two different varieties of masculinity off against each other. However, while this binary was one of hyper-masculinity vs. pseudo-European masculinity in "Kaffee-Tragodie," in "Berlin-Rio" this binary is one of hypo-masculinity vs. pseudo-European masculinity. As noted above, this hypo-masculinity was demonstrated by the photo of the four soldiers waiting to grasp onto the control gondola of the Graf Zeppelin as part of the landing procedure. In contrast, this image of the customs official shows him to be a representative of pseudo-European masculinity by his wearing a white suit. Like the police officers overseeing the loading of the coffee beans onto the ship in "Kaffee-Tragodie," the whiteness of his clothing seems to mark him as a signifier or simulacrum of whiteness in the crowd of black and mulatto soldiers holding onto the Graf Zeppelin. As a representative of the Brazilian government, the customs officer further signifies that there is at least some level of "civilization" and controlled masculinity to be found in Brazil, irrespective of the poles of hyper- and hypo- masculinity shown in "Kaffee-Tragodie" and this reportage, respectively.
Encounter with the "Natives"
The final photo for this reportage to be analyzed in the framework of this thesis is the second last photo on the same page as the previous two. This photo is about the same size as that of the customs officer boarding the Graf Zeppelin, and is directly beneath the photo of the four Brazilian soldiers waiting for the zeppelin to land. One can tell instantly by its composition that Munkacsi has moved from the Graf Zeppelin to a fixed-wing 93 seaplane, as the camera's viewpoint looks out and over the cowling and blade of one of this aircraft's propellers towards the nearby shoreline. The engine's components are visible in the lowest quarter of the photo, while one of the prop's blades juts out at about an eighty- degree angle from the center of the engine. This blade cuts across the entire field of view, neatly dividing the photo in half. Beyond and on either side of this blade is a throng of people on the shore, with some wading out into the water. Almost all of these people are dressed in various forms of white or light-coloured clothing, and are wearing hats. The crowd takes up most of the remaining three-quarters of the photo, though most of them are standing on the shore in the upper half.
Compositionally, one's eye cannot escape the propeller blade. It is large and black, and the positioning of the blade - diagonally across the photo from the engine cowling in the lower center-right of the photo - means that the blade is the primary line through which the eye can enter and explore the photo. By following the blade, one's eye moves from the engine cowling into the middle of the crowd. Naturally, since the crowd is so dense with so much to look at, it is difficult to prevent one's eye from moving back to the propeller blade and back to the engine, where the photo is far less busy. Another element that draws the eye to the propeller blade is its tone. The rest of the photo is very balanced, with the brightness of the water and the white/light coloured clothing of some of the crowd evening out the midtones and darker tones of the crowd. The propeller blade, however, is simply black, and because of this striking tone the eye cannot help but be drawn instantly back to it.
It is also interesting to note how the clothing of the crowd seems to highlight the fact that these are not white Europeans looking on in amazement, but rather darker South 94 Americans, something that increases the feeling of foreignness in this photo. In the way that Munkacsi has composed this shot - most specifically in the angle at which he chose to photograph the crowd at - all of the faces of the individual people are visible. However, in a similar manner to the photo of the tall, dark worker carrying the sack of coffee beans on his head from the previous chapter, one cannot make out the details of their faces. Looking at the reflections of some of the people in the water, it is possible that this photo was slightly backlit, which would account for a significant portion of the detail loss in the darker areas of the photo. This loss of detail in the darker areas could be accounted for by the inherent difficulties faced by early 20th century photographers in capturing accurate darks and shadows, a problem described in detail by Dyer in White (Dyer 1997, 89-96).
Whatever the cause, though, this crowd appears to be a mass of the foreign, accentuated not only by their clothing, skin colour and dark, featureless faces, but also by the caption
Munkacsi provides to accompany this photo.
This photo, as with the previous photos of the soldiers and the customs officer, show tantalizingly close contact between the passengers and the locals. It should be noted though that this contact is never actually shown by Munkacsi's photos, but is implied by the closeness of the local subjects and the captions that he provides to accompany his photos. For this particular photo, contact has already become a reality of the passenger's lives, though unfortunately Munkacsi only describes the trip from the Graf Zeppelin to the waiting seaplane by writing, "In Pernambuco stiegen wir vom Zeppelin in ein Flugzeug um, das auf dem Wege nach Rio mehrere Zwischenlandungen machte. Hunderte von
Eingeborenen staunten das Flugzeug an, sooft wir niedergingen" ("In Pernambuco we 95 transferred from the zeppelin into an airplane, which made many stopovers enroute to Rio.
Hundreds of natives marveled at the airplane whenever we descended") (Munkacsi,
"Berlin-Rio" 1932, 522). If there could ever be such a thing as apunctum that exists not in the photo, but in the caption for the photo, this would be it. Munkcasi uses the German word Eingeborene, or natives, to describe the Brazilians who crowd around to catch sight of the aircraft. This German word has the same connotations that the English equivalent is possessed of- that of foreignness, mystique, and primitivism.
This caption might seems to hearken back to colonial representations and discourses of so-called Eingeborene in depictions of life in colonial German Southwest Africa that were so common in the early years of the 20th century (Reagin, Sweeping the German
Nation 2007, 67). Something even more meaningful though is the choice of word that
Munkcasi makes to describe what the "natives" are doing: they "staunen das Flugzeug an" or marvel at the airplane. Using this word, staunen, certainly belongs to the same discourse as Eingeborene. As "natives," their sense of agency and comprehension seem to have been underestimated, as evidenced by this caption. As Dyer notes, one of the hallmarks of whiteness is the sense that only white people have the sense of enterprise and innovation that would make such a creation as an airplane commonplace and understandable (Dyer
1997, 31). Having "natives" marvel at such an everyday device as an airplane not only comments on discourses of whiteness, civilization and Kultur, but it is also one of the most common forms of non-white representation in the German press during the period in question, as evidenced by features and advertisements in publications such as the BIZ. 96 The final photo of this reportage is again taken from the air, over the portside wing of the floatplane that brought the Graf Zeppelin' % passengers from Pernambuco to Rio de
Janeiro. With a stunning, sweeping aerial view over the then capital city of Brazil,
Munkacsi writes: "Ankunft in Rio de Janeiro, der Hauptstadt von Brasilien. 10 000
Kilometer in vier Tagen, davon 8000 im Zeppelin und 2000 in Flugzeug" ("Arrival in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil. 10 000 kilometers in four days, consisting of 8000 by zeppelin and 2000 by airplane") (Munkacsi, "Berlin-Rio" 1932, 522). For this photo,
Munkacsi makes use of similar composition to that of his photo from the zeppelin over
Pernambuco: the structure of the aircraft is visible from one corner of the photo, while the rest of the photo looks down and out at the landscape below it.
The portside wing of the aircraft takes up the right third of the photo, and one can almost make out the identifying markings on the wing, though the framing of the photo cuts them off in a manner that makes them illegible. What is particularly important to note in this photo is the fact that the aircraft wing is superimposed visually across the scene depicted in the photo, in this case occluding part of the cityscape of Rio de Janeiro. As in the previous photo, where the propeller blade of the same aircraft was cutting diagonally across the scene, having this wing in such a position has a number of effects.
Firstly, the wing offers one's eye a way into the photo. By following the parallel lines made by the trailing end of the wing and the joint of the wing's aileron, the eye arrives at the silhouette of the large mountain just above the wing on the right side of the photo. By following the outline of the silhouette, one's eye travels down and to the left, arriving finally at the city itself and the long, curving waterfront that borders the Atlantic Ocean. By 97 following the line of the waterfront, one arrives back at the wing at practically the same point where there would be a slight gap between the aileron and the flap. This gap then leads up the wing to return the eye to where it started. In short, the wing is an integral feature to this photo.
Again, inherent in this view are the power dynamics of panopticism discussed above in relation to the zeppelin views from the first part of the reportage. The reader is treated to an almost unobscured vantage point, and can observe all that is going on beneath them. In this case, it is the airplane that becomes the tower of the Panopticon, though granted with the airplane's - more than likely - higher airspeed as compared with that of the Graf Zeppelin, there exists less time to make detailed observations. To revert to the
Panopticon-as-wheel analogy, the wheel would be spinning much faster around the axis of the tower. This speed vs. detail difference is quite apparent should one examine closely the level of detail of the photo of the Graf Zeppelin arriving in Pernambuco and that of the airplane's arrival in Rio de Janeiro. Due to the higher lateral speed of the airplane, an amount of motion blur would invariably occur. Regardless of the speed though, and as noted above, the same power dynamics apply. As a result of higher elevation, the subjects of the photograph are diminutized to the eye of the reader, in addition to the airplane-as-
Panopticon-tower effect, whereby the watched see the airplane overhead, yet are not able to tell who is looking at them, when or for how long. The passengers of the airplane, on the other hand, are free to partake in surveillance of the outside world if they so choose, and as a result of their altitude can see a much of what goes on around them. 98
Especially interesting to note here, and what for me is perhaps the punctum of this image, is the difference in tone between the landscape beneath and the aircraft's wing in the right third of the photo. Other than the sky, which is particularly light, the wing possesses the lightest tone in the photo; in fact, the wing is almost white. In this case, it would seem that the airplane - being lighter/whiter than anything else in the photo - could be a signifier for whiteness, just as the Graf Zeppelin was previously. Through the use of the airplane, the white person can transcend the usual spaces of existence by way of a product of the enterprising nature of whiteness. In other words, the cultural superiority of the industrialized nation over the colonial nation is expressed by way of technology.
Additionally, this photograph demonstrates that Munkacsi is tapping into the pervasive craze surrounding flight that dominated in the press on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1930s. Not only were aircraft being used for transportation, but as discussed above there was something inherently political about flight - aircraft demonstrated a degree of technical proficiency and superiority that were uncommon at that point in history, and their use could make powerful political statements. In fact, prior to the 1932 presidential election Hitler became the first political candidate to ever use an aircraft in his campaigning. Shortly thereafter, a book of aerial photography from this campaign tour entitled Hitler iiber Deutschland {Hitler over Germany) was published.
The Imperial Eye, and the "Native " Foil
To sum up, a quote from Richard Dyer's White about imperialism would seem to be quite apt in describing the views Munkacsi afforded to the reader in this reportage. For
Dyer, imperialism is the key historical form in which whiteness is realized; in fact 99 whiteness itself is the product of imperialism and enterprise. Imperialism "...displays character of enterprise in the white person, and its exhilaratingly expansive relationship to the environment" (Dyer 1997, 15). Although at this point in history the goal of German external relations with regard to South America seems to have been the establishment of a form of informal empire, which placed more emphasis on social and economic ties than political or military control, imperialist perspectives similar to those reported in contemporary advertisements by Poiger and those reported in earlier colonial-era documents by Reagin still seem to be at play in this reportage (Poiger 2005, 130-2, Reagin,
Sweeping the German Nation 2007, 67). This is especially evidenced by Munkacsi's use of the term Eingeborene, and by the elevated angles (with their panoptic connotations) utilized by Munkacsi in several of the photos.
This reportage, "Berlin-Rio in vier Tagen: Mit dem fahrplanmaBigen Zeppelin nach Sudamerika," demonstrates visually through Munkacsi's photography that there were still places in the world where Germans could be admired, despite the dire financial, revolutionary social and unstable political arenas that characterized the final years of the
Weimar Republic. Items that characterized everyday life in Germany, for example the airplane, could still amaze "natives." German innovation in zeppelin design and flight made it possible to traverse vast distances in a fraction of the time it would take the previous flagship mode of passenger transportation, objectified by the Cap Arcona, designs such as the Graf Zeppelin may have seemed to be the mode of transport for the future.
The photos from this reportage are particularly important when it comes to the discourse of ersatz travel, as this reportage includes not only photos from the destination, 100 but also from the journey. They allow one to see a representation of the slow, but certain, trip from the familiar into the foreign; a trip into the contact zone. Unlike the photos from the previously discussed reportage, these photos illustrate not only the difference between polite German society (the photos of Dr. Eckener and the men onboard the Graf Zeppelin) and Eingeborene Brazilian society (the photos of the crowd watching the plane, the soldiers waiting to secure the Graf Zeppelin), nor the considerable technical achievements of
Germans; in depicting implied contact between the Germans of the Graf Zeppelin and the
"natives" of Brazil, these photos construct a discourse of what it meant to be German.
Although defeated in war, uncertain of the status of traditional German values such as masculinity, and lacking the economic clout that Germany had previously enjoyed, in comparison to the Brazilians they still possessed enterprise, technology, masculinity, and imperial ambition. In short, this reportage showed that they had not lost their whiteness. 101 Chapter Five: The Travelling Lens
"Zum Trost flir die, die nicht reisen konnen: Unser Photograph schreibt uns: "Hier ist es Hundekalt!" This was the caption for the title page photo of the March 24, 1929 edition of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ), and made apparent to the viewer the cognitive dissonance of this particular photo, and of photography generally. By its nature, photos and photography generally make a claim to represent reality that they cannot fulfill.
As photography can only represent the visual component of its subjects, it thus constructs an ersatz reality: ersatz, because it purports to be something that it is not, and makes claims that it cannot fulfill. Considering the connectedness of photography and travel, and the fact that this particular photo was taken during the course of one of Munkacsi's trips to produce travel reportage for the BIZ, this photo also makes a claim to represent travel. However, just as photography cannot represent reality, so to can it not make good on its claims to represent travel either; the travel represented by these photo reportages is thus an ersatz travel.
It has also been shown how travel and the representation of travel contributes to the construction of national identity, and was particularly important to the construction of
German national identity. In the new socio-political environment of the Weimar Republic, due to its inherent political and economic instability, travel itself was no longer a possibility for many. However, the new representations of ersatz travel found in photography in
Munkacsi's reportages such as "Kaffee-Tragodie: Eine Milliarde Pfund Kaffee ins Meer geworfen!" and "Berlin-Rio in vier Tagen: Mit dem fahrplanmaBigen Zeppelin nach
Siidamerika," and the context of lost experience gave the photos new meaning through 102 ersatz travel; Munkacsi's travelling lens was able to create and comment upon discourses of German national identity through the ersatz reality of the photo and its representation of the foreign.
Given the unmatched circulation of the BIZ in the Weimar Republic, it is apparent that a large part of the German population was exposed to these images and the discourses of German-ness that they utilized. Munkacsi's photo reportages for the BIZ constructed these discourses through their subject matter, their composition, and their context within the larger body of the reportage. In "Kaffee-Tragodie," these discourses of German-ness and German national identity were constructed around masculinity, whiteness, and economics. In particular, this reportage represented one of the Orientalist binaries that was common in the representation of the foreign, colonized male: the civilized, white, almost
German masculinity represented by the police officers vs. the wild, untamed and threatening masculinity personified by the dock workers. Also inherent in the subject matter and the composition of these photos - and similar in some respects to considerations of masculinity - were elements of whiteness, a larger discourse to which German national identity was linked during that period. In this reportage, the police officers appeared in white uniforms, which contrasted sharply with the darkness and blackness of the dock workers. These white uniforms seem to mark the police officers as signifiers of whiteness and pseudo-European "civilization," in contrast to the unrestrained, dark masculinity of the shirtless dock workers.
This reportage also commented on economics, in that the system of colonialist/pseudo-colonialist capitalist exchange is shown to have broken down as a result 103 of the worldwide economic crisis of the early 1930s. Munkacsi's photos show the
Brazilians turning a very large economy based on production into one based on destruction of commodities, in this case coffee. Though according to Munkacsi's reportage this desperate action contributed to saving the Brazilian economy, it would seem to contrast sharply with traditional capitalist economics and perceptions of value that had defined
German economics previously.
In "Berlin-Rio," Munkacsi's photos constructed a discourse of German-ness that was bound up especially in notions of whiteness and the controlling gaze of the Panopticon.
Involved in aspects of whiteness are the technological achievements of Germany, represented by the Graf Zeppelin and the Cap Arcona, in addition to the floatplane that
Munkacsi and the other zeppelin passengers used to reach Rio de Janeiro from
Pernambuco, which served as evidence of German enterprise and innovation, both of which are integral elements to whiteness. Whiteness was also established through photos such as that of two of the male passengers on the Graf Zeppelin examining a map, and its juxtaposition over the aerial view of Pernambuco. This alludes to the tendency of whiteness and the colonial gaze to establish frontiers, and to classify and define.
However, this whiteness was most effectively demonstrated by the photos of the
Eingeborene (natives) who marveled at the technological creations of the Germans at every opportunity. Using these terms in the captions, Munkacsi establishes a binary between natives and Germans that constructs discourses of German-ness and German national identity. Also telling in this reportage was the way the Brazilian military was represented as being very un-masculine and in fact rather child-like, in contravention of traditional 104 German portrayals of soldiering as a very strong, masculine pursuit. This would have indicated a military /masculine power dynamic in the favour of Germans, when compared to the Brazilians.
Another feature implicit in these reportages was that of informal empire. Although
Germany had lost its empire as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, colonialist sentiment and the colonial gaze did not vanish. Instead, the Weimar Government seemed to become more focused on establishing a sort of informal empire, based upon economic and social relations. These reportages document this process, as through his travels and reportages
Munkacsi showed readers of the BIZ what areas of German informal-imperialist interest were like, capturing visions of the foreign that sparked the interest of BIZ readers.
Considering that many of the discourses of German national identity that Munkacsi's photos create and comment upon seem to rely on imperialist/colonialist tropes for representation of the foreign, in the case of the Weimar Republic it can be said that informal empire is an accurate term to describe its view of the foreign, especially Brazil.
Although Munkacsi slipped into historical obscurity after his death, he was rediscovered in the 1970s (Ewing, "Natural Means" 1979, 4). This rediscovery has put
Munkacsi and his work at the forefront of popular and artistic attention for the last decade.
Today, Munkacsi's photography and Munkacsi as a historical figure do command a greater amount of attention and scholarly interest. This is evidenced by the recent exhibition of many of his photos - including those used in these two reportages - in Martin Munkacsi:
Think While You Shoot! and the accompanying catalogue of this exhibition, which is the most recent - and most exhaustive - work of scholarship about Munkacsi and his 105 photography.13 It was while this exhibition was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art that I first discovered Munkacsi and his work.
Nevertheless, in none of the scholarship consulted for this thesis are Munkacsi's photos analyzed in the manner that they have been in this thesis. Considering the amount and quality of material that Munkacsi produced during the course of his career, there exists an opportunity to examine, and to compare, and to postulate ways of looking at these photos that have not been explored. Perhaps future research could expand on the connection between travel, photography and national identity that this thesis showed, and apply the underpinning theory not just to photography by Martin Munkacsi, but also to that of other prominent professional and amateur photographers from many different nations.
On a broader scale though, this thesis demonstrates that when it comes to representation of the world around one, a great many different discourses from many different disciplines can be utilized to gain a new and unique insight into the nations and people that produced them. It also serves to demonstrate most importantly that although concepts may seem disparate, there may actually be very few concepts and disciplines that do not share some degree of interconnectedness.
These travel photo reportages show that media does matter. Not only did
Munkacsi's reportages reinforce old schemas of representing travel and the foreign, but they also expanded upon them and created new ones. The connection that this thesis demonstrates between travel, photography, and national identity is both an elaborated and
13 See Klaus Honnef and Enno Kaufhold, Martin Munkacsi, ed. F.C. Gundlach, (New York/Gottingen: International Center of Photography/Steidl, 2006). 106 new schema. With it in mind, it is possible to re-examine many sources used for this thesis, among them Koshar and Anderson, expanding their focus to arrive at new and important discourses on media and identity. This thesis shows that photos and mass media can create an entirely new cultural identity, as identities are both fluid and temporally fixed.
Albert Renger-Patzsch once wrote that "Die Photographie ubt einen ungeheueren
EinfluG auf die Massen durch Film und illustrierte Zeitschriften" ("Photography exercises a formidable influence on the masses through film and illustrated magazines") (Renger-
Patzsch 1928). We have seen through the comments of contemporaries such as Reichstag member Anna Siemsen that this was indeed the case - as a result of illustrated magazines, she believed that the German public was now more accustomed to the furthest ends of the
Earth. However, through his caption for the photo with the couple riding a camel at Biskra,
Munkacsi reminds the viewer that despite photography's inherent claims to show reality, this is a claim it cannot deliver on. Munkacsi's travel reportages could not actually acquaint one with the furthest ends of the Earth in reality; but, through its representations of ersatz travel, they could construct discourses of German national identity. In the context of the unstable political and economic climate that characterized the Weimar Republic - and its concomitant weakening of national identity - these constructed discourses of German national identity acquired particular significance. 107 References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 2006. Bonker, Dirk. "Admiration, Enmity, and Cooperation: U.S. Navalism and the British and German Empires before the Great War." Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (Project Muse Journals) 2, no. 1 (Spring 2001). Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980. Baum, Vicki. It Was All Quite Different: The Memoirs of Vicki Baum. Translated by H. Wolff. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company Inc., 1964. Beattie, Keith. Documentary Screens: Non-Fiction Film and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Behne, Adolf. "Diskussion uber Ernst Kallai's Artikel "Malerei und Fotografie"." HO 1, no. 6 (1927): 227. Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Translated by J.A. Underwood. Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008. Campt, Tina M. Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Dumont, Louis. German Ideology: From France to Germany and Back. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Dyer, Richard. White. New York: Routledge, 1997. Eckelmann, Susanne. Biographie: Hugo Eckener, 1868-1954. Deutsches Historisiches Museum. 31 December 1998. http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/EckenerHugo/index.html (accessed 14 January 2009). Ewing, William A. "A Natural Means of Expression." In Style in Motion: Munkacsi Photographs of the '20s, '30s, '40s., by Nancy and John Esten White, 4-7. New York: ClarksonN. Potter, Inc., 1979. Ewing, William A. "The Munkacsi Movement." In Spontaneity and Style: Munkacsi, a Retrospective, March 22 to April 30, 1978, 5. New York: International Center of Photography, 1978.
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