Keri Mongelluzzo SA+AH Honors Thesis April 9, 2012

Weimar Faces: August Sander’s Man of the Twentieth Century and the Nazi Ideal

August Sander’s oeuvre, while extensive, serves predominantly as a compilation of works from a singular project: documenting everyday occupational and socio-economic “types” that pervaded German society in the early twentieth century. As Sander worked within the same period that the Neue Sachlichkeit, or the New Objectivity, gained popularity within avant-garde photography circles, his images of German society during the Weimar Republic embody various ideals set forth by the “new vision" movement.1 Throughout his career, Sander persisted with his ambitious project Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, or Man of the Twentieth Century, until a slim volume of his photographs titled Antlitz der Zeit, or Face of Our Time,2 was banned under the authority of the new Nazi regime in 1934. Despite maintaining a nonpolitical stance in his photographs, Sander’s life-long artistic project was interrupted at the close of the Weimar

Republic as he was sensed to be a danger to the rule of the Third Reich.

Within the scope of this essay, I wish to examine the multitude of reasons as to why

August Sander and his sociological artistic project were deemed threatening to the Nazi regime.

More specifically, in what ways did Sander’s images conflict with the Third Reich’s definition of

German society? With particular attention to the documentary nature of his photography, the existing parallels between Sander’s project and the New Objectivity will be explored to highlight

Sander’s proliferation of landscape photographs after 1934 as well as his motivations for producing such images. In a holistic sense, focusing on the career of August Sander that spans both World Wars will provide insight into the effects of ever-changing political climates on the general production of art and the type of art produced.

1 Van Deren Coke, Avant-Garde Photography in Germany, 1919-1939 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 8. 2 Beaumont Newhall, preface to August Sander : Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959 : Man of the Twentieth Century, Rhineland Landscapes, Nature Studies, Architectural and Industrial Photographs, Images of Sardinia, by Robert Kramer, (Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1980), 8-9. 2

Born November 17, 1876, the son of a mining carpenter, August, and his wife, Justine,

August Sander lived out his childhood in Herdorf, Germany.3 Raised with modest means, Sander left the Protestant public school in Herdorf in 1890 to assist his family financially by means of working in the iron ore mines. It was indirectly through laboring in the mines that Sander caught his first glimpse of a camera and became exposed to photography in 1892 upon meeting landscape photographer, Heinrich Schmeck.4 In the same year, Sander was able to purchase his first photographic equipment when aided monetarily by his uncle, David Jung.5 While serving as a reservist in the military, Sander apprenticed in various studios across Germany until he began his professional career in Linz, Austria at the Greif Photographic Institute of Art. As Sander grew financially stable, he married Anna Seitenmacher in 1902 and welcomed the birth of his first son, Erich, two years later. Sander and his wife had three more children, one of whom died from dysentery in 1911.

At the turn of the century, Sander, like other prominent photographers, dabbled in pictorialist photography and produced his first color photographs through the gum bichromate process.6 Upon moving his family to Cologne, Sander sold the Greif Photographic Institute of

Art and opened his own studio in 1910 in his city of residence. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Sander was called up to the “Landsturm,” and thus left his wife, Anna, to run his studio and support their three children. Able to return to Cologne in 1918, Sander resumed his photographic practice and began producing portraits of nearby residents in the town of

Westerwald. It was while he began capturing portrait images of peasants and farmers in

Westerwald that Sander developed his ambitious sociological project, Menschen des 20

3 Susanne Lange and Alfred Döblin, August Sander, 1876-1964 (Köln; New York: Taschen, 1999), 243. 4 J. Paul Getty Museum and August Sander, August Sander: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, California: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999), 140. 5 Lange and Döblin, August Sander, 1876-1964, 243. 6 Getty Museum and Sander, Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, 140. 3

Jahrhunderts, or Man of the Twentieth Century. It wasn’t until 1929 that Sander released his first volume of photographs from the Man of the Twentieth Century project titled Antlitz der Zeit, or

Face of Our Time. Five years after the publication of his first book, August’s leftist son, Erich, was denounced and sentenced to ten years in prison under the authority of the Nazi regime.

Coinciding with his son’s imprisonment in 1934, Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit was seized by the National Socialists and many of his photographic glass plate negatives were destroyed.7 It was this point in Sander’s career that witnessed a shift in subject matter from predominantly portraits of societal types to landscape and architectural images. For fear of further destruction of any additional plates, Sander attempted to store negatives in the cellar of his Cologne home, within housing quarters in Westerwald, and in Kuchhausen; unfortunately, over 30,000 negatives were destroyed in a fire that decimated his old Cologne residence leaving only 10,000 of

Sander’s most precious negatives in his possession.8 Although Sander continued to run his photography studio with the help of his younger son after the conclusion of World War II, most of the works produced during this time period were prints of old plates.

Upon Sander’s return to Cologne following World War I, he crossed paths with the

Group of Progressive Artists, joined the local photographers’ guild, and became acquainted with

Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, a painter “who felt that art should reflect society’s structure.”9 It was through his association with Wilhelm Seiwert and other artists that Sander began to alter his photographic process. Driven towards offering a representation of man whose physiognomy could speak of the attributes of a specific “type” in society, Sander eschewed his previous

7 Lange and Döblin, August Sander, 1876-1964, 246. 8 Ibid., 247. 9 Coke, Avant-Garde Photography, 36. 4 pictorialist tendencies during the 1990s of retouching the negative and producing atmospheric images in soft focus.10,11

Sander described his work in Man of the Twentieth Century as “straight photography;” a documentary form of photography that falls under the umbrella of the Neue Sachlichkeit. Coined initially by G.F. Hartlaub for an exhibition in 1923 of post-expressionistic painting12 that was preoccupied with objective artistic representation, the term in its original German “was not based so much on nonsubjective vision as on a concern with reality, with ‘thingness’ (‘Sache’ means

‘thing’).”13 Neue Sachlichkeit painting featured images of satirical social realism in response to the current state of Germany and the German people following World War I.14 Works by some proponents of Neue Sachlichkeit took this concept of realism to the extreme point of brutality and the grotesque which can be seen in Otto Dix’s painting, Three Women, from 1926 (Figure 1).

Although Sander’s photographs addressed his contemporary view of society and of man, they are void of any satirical critique and remain rather nonpolitical throughout his career.

Permeated throughout German culture and art making in the Weimar Republic was a pervasive interest in the factual and the real. While the notion of a photograph as an unmediated image or document is inherent within the nature of the medium, the “use of the term

‘documentary’ to describe photographs taken specifically to convey information of a sociological nature began in the 1920s.”15 Reminiscent of Sigfried Kracauer’s call for an analysis of surface- level expressions as they “provide unmediated access to the fundamental substance of the state of

10 George Baker, "Photography between Narrativity and Stasis," October 29 (spring, 1996): 81-82. 11 Robert Kramer, August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959: Man of the Twentieth Century, Rhineland Landscapes, Nature Studies, Architectural and Industrial Photographs, Images of Sardinia, (Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1980), 13. 12 Fritz Schmalenbach, "The Term Neue Sachlichkeit," The Art Bulletin 22, (September, 1940): 161. 13 Newhall, preface to Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, 8. 14 Ursula Zeller, "Neue Sachlichkeit," In Grove Art Online, accessed December 1, 2011. 15 Newhall, preface to Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, 8. 5 things,”16 Sander wished to communicate information about the lives of members of German society and the realities of their environments through the universal language of photography.

Heavily interested in Physiognomy upon his return from service in World War I, Sander began the ambitious project, Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, of documenting sociological types with the purpose of exposing the spirit of contemporaneous society in a universally understandable manner.17 Unlike spoken language, Sander argues that photographic literacy is not contingent upon sound or geographic origins; it is universal and can be comprehended by all.18 It was through the medium of photography that Sander believed he could represent a sociological truth about contemporary German society to a global audience.19

Serving as a continuation and expansion of a portrait series of farmers from Westerwald,

Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts relies on physiognomic characteristics of individual portraits to speak of the realities of collective societal types. Sander organized his images into groups based on occupations, ages, and socio-economic standings as a means to draw parallels between the physiognomies of one peasant, student, or physician to another. Sander integrates principles of natural science and physiognomy in his artistic project to legitimate the claims he asserts visually through his photographs.20 In essence, Sander sought to create a typology of Weimar society in photographic form through Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts.21

It is important to note that in modern texts and publications, the captions for Sander’s photographs have been edited to include the proper name of each sitter, if known, in addition to

16 Sigfried Kracauer and Thomas Y. Levin, The mass ornament: Weimar essays (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995) 75. 17 Ken Gonzales-Day, “Analytical Photography: Portraiture, from the Index to the Epidermis,” Leonardo 35, No. 1, (2002): 23. 18 August Sander and Anne Halley, "From the Nature & Growth of Photography: Lecture 5: Photography as a Universal Language," The Massachusetts Review 19, (winter, 1978): 675. 19 Allan Sekula, “The Traffic in Photographs,” Art Journal 41, No. 1, Photography and the Scholar/Critic (Spring, 1981): 18. 20 Ibid. 21 Baker, "Photography between Narrativity and Stasis,” 76. 6 the grouping label. For instance, if the portrait falls within the category of artist, the artist’s proper name is often included. In a sense, the inclusion of the sitters’ names turns the portraits into images of individuals in place of belonging to a collective type as the name recognizes each sitter as a distinct member of society. While Sander’s focus wasn’t solely on representing an individual, he was concerned with producing images that were sensitive to the facial expressions of each sitter. In regards to his project, Sander claimed that “his portraits simultaneously showed individuals and revealed their status as typical representatives of their trade or class or generation.”22 Rather than providing a detailed textual description of each type, Sander preferred to allow the viewer to experience the photograph visually and compare what they see with their preconceptions of the social grouping presented.

Within Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, Sander creates a visual narrative of the cyclical patterns evident in society tracing the origin of the earthbound man to his uprooted, industrialist counterpart and back. Ideally, Sander’s Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts project aimed at presenting a catalogue archive of Weimar society composed in forty-five portfolios of twelve images each.23 Printed on smooth-surfaced silver halide papers,24 Sander’s documentary images seek to render each detail and variation of a subject’s facial expression, posture, and environment. The images themselves are rather sharp in focus and strive to be pure configurations of light free of retouching and painterly additions. In voicing his own purpose for embarking on such an ambitious photographic project, Sander remarked “Nothing seemed to me more appropriate than to project an image of our time with absolute fidelity to nature by means

22 Matthias Uecker, "The Face of the Weimar Republic Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany," Monatshefte 99, No. 4, (winter, 2007): 473. 23 Baker, "Photography between Narrativity and Stasis,” 76 24 Newhall, preface to Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, 8. 7 of photography.”25 Instead of placing figures from nobility at the height of hierarchical order,

Sander deemed the peasant to be the foundational figure upon which society was structured. His overarching project was released in series of portfolios beginning with Antlitz der Zeit, Face of

Our Time. Arranged in groupings beginning with The Earthbound Man and ascending up the social ladder to revolutionaries, artists, and writers, Sander presented a remotely unbiased

“sociology without words.”26

A collection of sixty photographs published in 1929, Antlitz der Zeit presents German faces in place of figures in gaudy portrait studio costumes and disguises typical of early twentieth century portraiture. Mostly devoid of detailed backgrounds, Sander relies upon noticeable differences in appearance of each social type that would reveal the conditions in which they lived.27 Alfred Döblin, a Berlin physiatrist and celebrated literary figure,28 lends his words to suffice as an introduction to Sander’s iconic collection of photographs. Not paying favor to any particular subset of society, Sander ascribed to the young farmer in Westerwald the same sense of dignity in their work as the dwellers of cities including artists, industrialists, and politicians.29 Astutely aware of the camera’s gaze, each portrait sitter is indelibly shaped by their environment, dons the costume of their trade, is provided with the opportunity to pose, and serves as “witnesses of their own time.”30

Juxtaposed with images of other individuals from the same social and occupational strata, each figure serves to represent their class and profession to such a degree that they are able to be viewed as the entire collective group. However, a farmer seen side by side with another allows

25 Kramer, Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, 24. 26 Anne Halley, “August Sander,” The Massachusetts Review 19, No. 4, (winter, 1978): 667 27 Thomas Zeller, “On August Sander’s Rhine Landscapes,” Environmental History 12, No. 2, (April, 2007) 395. 28 Kramer, Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, 24. 29 Lange, August Sander, 1876-1964, 106. 30 Ibid., 110. 8 for the viewer to ascertain certain particularities of each figure, thus evoking the sense of an individual. The iconic 1914 photograph, Jungbauern, or Young Farmers, (Figure 2) taken by

Sander in Westerwald first appears to be a snapshot of three youthful farmers en route to a somewhat formal event; at closer inspection, the viewer becomes aware that the figures are in fact posed in manner they selected to communicate some reality about themselves, their work, or their class. Removed from the clothes of their trade and dressed formally, the figures discerned as farmers gaze towards the viewer while travelling to a nearby event, possibly a rural dance.

Although dressed in their “Sunday-best,” the three figures display their connections to the land.

The figure farthest to the left, and arguably most apprehensive of the three, is possibly the closest bound to the earth with his unkempt hair, wrinkled attire, and backward positioning of his cane.31

The leftmost farmer’s body language contrasts with that of his companions who raise their eyebrows in a bourgeois manner and lean forward, further away from their country roots.32 In a general sense, the associations made between the figures within Jungbauern and the modern city can be seen as manifestations of the dichotomy between the traditional country and the industrialized metropolis present in Weimar society.

Equally prevalent throughout Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts are images of the “Artist.”

Encompassing visual artists, musicians, actors, composers, and architects, this portfolio grouping of Sander’s larger project presents the artists as the pinnacle of society.33 His 1929 photograph of

Raoul Hausmann originally titled “Dadaist” (Figure 3) places Hausmann outside of the categories of painter, draftsman, or monteur; he is placed in a group entirely its own with distinct characteristics. Unlike other artist portraits by Sander, the image of Hausmann displays his

31 Michael Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay in the Late Weimar Republic,” October 93, (summer, 2000): 36. 32 Ibid. 33 Lange, August Sander, 1876-1964, 151. 9 singular figure before a stark backdrop and ground. While other artists pose in a seated position framed by Sander’s camera lens and cropped to display only a partial figure image, Hausmann stands, hands unclasped and positioned expressively at his sides. Hausmann is photographed shirtless and barefoot, only clothed in trousers and accessorized with a monocle. In contrapposto form, the Hausmann’s body presents his figure in a straightforward manner while his head is in profile. Although Hausmann’s theatrical posing and facial expression suggest he is fully aware of the camera’s gaze, Sander’s portraits typically capture the facial expressions of the sitters straight-on, engaging with the viewer in an act of voyeurism. Not only does Hausmann refrain from addressing the camera with his eyes, he contorts his face in an expression that implies an audience and is unseen in other portraits by Sander; eyebrows raised, jaw tense, and mouth almost snarling.

But why is Sander’s portrait of Raoul Hausmann so distinctive in comparison to images of other artists? Perhaps reasoning can be found in drawing parallels to Hausmann’s involvement with Dada during the Weimar Republic. Preoccupied with rewiring the body through traumatic simulation and questioning what physically counts as human in the aftermath of World War I,

Dadaists turned to new forms of art making to address modern society and advocate for revolution. Employing photomontage as a politically charged mode of art making, Dadaists like

Hausmann shouted claims such as “Art is dead!” in its traditional sense and referenced the modern need for art to be used as a weapon. It is possible, with Dada considered to be such a radical movement, that Sander sought to convey to the German people the physiognomies which are representative of artists, inventors, and intellectuals with such revolutionizing preoccupations as Hausmann. 10

Through his presentation of the farmer ‘type’ outside his work environment, Sander strives to provide the viewer with a well-rounded representation of a societal subgroup without verging on the cliché. Received extraordinarily well in both Germany and abroad after its release, Antlitz der Zeit was championed as a groundbreaking photographic study until the Nazi ideal image of man was put forth in 1934. As the Weimar Republic drew to a close and Adolf

Hitler was named Chancellor by aging President Hindenburg,34 Sander feared for his eldest son for his political activism and affiliations. Erich, a doctoral student and member of the Communist party,35 unintentionally brought political suspicion upon his father in the 1930s.

Shown in August Sander’s 1926 photograph titled Werkstudenten36 (Figure 4), Erich

Sander, Richard Kreutzberg, Hans Schoemann, and Georg Hansen appear to be jointly asking something of the viewer as they each directly gaze into the camera’s lens. All four young men depicted were left-wing radicals and dedicated members of the Communist party whose political affiliations led to their ill fates; Erich was arrested, imprisoned, and died before his release,

Kreutzberg committed suicide in 1933, Schoemann participated in the underground resistance during World War II, and Hansen was imprisoned on a charge of espionage in London in 1932.37

While he was away forging underground routes for escape with Socialist Worker Party leaders, the Gestapo frequented the Sander residence in Cologne inquiring about Erich. Despite the danger of arrest, Erich returned to Cologne. As the party’s press was dully seized by the

Gestapo, August assisted Erich with the photographic production of Communist leaflets. Lacking a drying machine, the Sanders placed the prints on the roof of their home where they were subject to gusts of wind and were scattered within the neighboring courtyard. A few of the

34 Kramer, Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, 30. 35 Ibid., 28. 36 Jill Quasha, Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs, (New York: Quillan Co.: Distributed by Rizzoli International Publications, 1991), 140. 37 Ibid., 141. 11 displaced leaflets were found by a Nazi sympathizer, reported to the Gestapo, and ultimately resulted in the raid of the Sander’s home and Erich’s arrest.38 Soon following, Erich was tried, sentenced to imprisonment for ten years, and stripped of all academic honors and credentials.

Published within Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit, Werkstudenten proved to be a contentious image of leftist radicals set within a controversial book according to Nazi officials. An amateur photographer in his own right, Erich produced his own self-portrait as well as portraits of fellow inmates in their cells while imprisoned by Nazi forces from 1934 to 1944; fortunately, the portraits were smuggled to August Sander and included in later versions of Menschen des 20

Jahrhunderts under the series title “Political Prisoners.” Along with Erich’s images of political prisoners, Sander published a few somber portraits of “Victims of Persecution” later on in his career to illustrate the collective physiognomies oppressed by the Third Reich. As extensive as

August’s œuvre is, his works sometimes feature multiple figures repeatedly throughout a series;

Sander’s son Erich served as a student, political prisoner, revolutionary, and scholar within the overall Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts project. Rather fittingly, an image of Erich’s death mask, as he died during imprisonment, serves as the final plate in “The Last People” portfolio.

Following Erich’s arrest in 1934, copies of the 1929 publication Antlitz der Zeit were confiscated by Hitler’s Ministry of Culture and the plates used to produce each photograph were destroyed.39 Despite his efforts to remain politically neutral throughout his career, Sander’s artistic project was brought to Nazi attention due the resistance affiliations of his son. In the midst of political suspicion and the beginnings of World War II, Sander’s Menschen des 20

Jahrhunderts was halted. Needing a source of income to support his studio and family, Sander

38 Kramer, August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 30. 39 Quasha, Quillan Collection, 141. 12 looked away from the German people and towards their physical environments of landscape and architecture to serve as the subject matter of his photographs.

Rather than being driven by topographical motives, Sander was more keenly interested in how landscape was reformed, particularly by the hands of man who was bound to the earth.40

Aside from landscapes, Sander produced images of industrial architectural spaces and photographs for advertisements. In terms of style and subject matter, Sander’s work during this period in the 1930s can be compared to that of Albert Renger-Patzsch. Proposed in his publication Die Welt ist schön, or The World is Beautiful, Renger-Patzsch defined his own style as documentary in producing straightforward photographs of objects. Similar to the way in which

Sander incorporated repetition of physiognomies to point to key types in German society,

Renger-Patzsch relied on repetition of forms as a pictorial device.41 Without repetition of types in Sander’s projects, each image would serve as a portrait of an individual, not a representative who embodies the traits of a social group. In analyzing Sander’s 1930s image titled Spiral Light

Bulbs (Figure 5), one can rightfully compare the coiling composition to that of Renger-Patzsch’s

1929 photograph, Stairwell (Figure 6).

Although he mostly refrained from capturing German society directly, Sander presented landscape imagery not as divine nature, unpolluted by man but as a cultural product as it is transformed by its inhabitants. As a result, his images included routes of transportation and evident traces of human presence; “In a radio address, Sander expressed his interest in the way

‘man leaves his imprint [on landscape]. ... In landscape, we can recognize the human spirit of an era, which we can capture with the help of a photographic apparatus.’”42

40 Zeller, August Sander’s Rhine Landscapes, 395. 41 Coke, Avant-Garde Photography, 18. 42 Zeller, August Sander’s Rhine Landscapes, 395. 13

The repressiveness of the Third Reich not only resulted in the censorship of photographic works by August Sander, but works by numerous artists who challenged the ideals set forth by

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Made in 1937 at the opening of the German House of Art,

Sander was scorned along with other artists deemed to be miscreants by Hitler:

“Cubism, Dadaism, Futurism, Impressionism, etc., have nothing to do with our German people. For all of these concepts are simply the affected stammer of people to whom God has denied the grace of a true artistic talent, and instead has bestowed on them the gifts of loquacity or downright deception. An art that cannot count on the most joyful and heartfelt assent of the healthy, broad mass of the people, but that is supported by only small cliques - partly interested and partly blasé – such an art is intolerable. It attempts to confuse the healthy, sure, instinctive feeling of a people instead of joyfully supporting it.”43

Sander’s photographic depictions of German society were sensed as a threat to the concept of a pure Aryan race, as they did not coincide with the responsibilities of the German artist during the Third Reich. Instead of publishing portraits of leaders, heroic warriors, and beautiful German citizens, Sander’s Antlitz der Zeit strived to be representative of the diverse

German population. Browsing through Sander’s portfolios of images, one will find social types ranging from the earthbound man to the city resident which were prevalent throughout Weimar

Germany and condemned under the rule of the Third Reich.

Eyes gazing onward, hair neatly combed back, a stern brow, and broad shoulders serve to define the ideal Nazi physiognomic type. Illustrated on Nazi political propaganda throughout

Germany, the face of an Aryan hero and his smiling female counterpart were regarded by the

Third Reich as the ideal. One poster in particular (Figure 7) features a portrait bust of an Aryan

43 Kramer, August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 13. 14 man, rather handsome with chiseled facial features, accompanied by a textual slogan reading in translation, “German bearing, German Achievement prove the Nordic racial inheritance!”44

The physiognomies depicted within such propagandistic materials were upheld as the ideal, but they were not predominantly shared by the German people of the twentieth century.

While a figure or two coinciding with the Nazi concept of pure race might have infiltrated

Sander’s photograph portfolios from Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, the majority of figures fall into categories of “other.” Sander’s faces were those that made up society; they could be seen across professions, social classes, and geographic regions. They could be seen daily, in the country or in the city. They were the common German people who composed the various niches of contemporary society at the time.

Attempting to ground their concept of the ideal German prototype within their nation’s history, the Nazi’s placed emphasis on the Stämme,45 or native peoples entangled with the land.

It was through this metaphor to the Stämme that Nazi empiricism derived the image of the transcendent being “whose natural heritage was his superiority.”46 In place of photographing uncorrupted peasants, heroic warriors, and smiling young women who all belong within the realm of a utopian society, Sander represented government officials, the unemployed, lawyers, physicians, revolutionaries, blind children, and brick layers in a straight photographic manner that allowed each facial expression to recount its own history. Aside from the individuals who lent their portraits to Antlitz der Zeit and the overarching Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, those who contributed textual introductions and prefaces to Sander’s photographic work did not match the Aryan model. Alfred Döblin, author of the introduction to Face of Our Time, was Roman

44 Ibid., 13. 45 Baker, "Photography between Narrativity and Stasis,” 76 46 Kramer, August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 13. 15

Catholic by conversion but of Jewish descent. Despite severed Semitic ties, his name was still condemned in Nazi Germany as was Sander’s publication to which Döblin contributed.

“Even-handed in its political comment, and sympathetic to every segment of the society,”47 Sander’s presentation of photographs was still rooted in the concept of physiognomy as was the Nazi pure race myth.48 However, fundamental differences lie in both party’s views of physiognomy. Whereas Sander believed that an individual’s face could reveal their profession, economic standing, and social class, the Nazis relied on one’s physiognomy to speak of their

German rootedness; “they had created the mask of the Aryan hero and his female consort, and they struggled to fit these visages upon the “faces” of Germany.”49 Equally important, Sander devised his categories of types based on their trade, social standing, and surrounding environment; he didn’t use race to delineate social types. Nevertheless, the use of physiognomy by the Third Reich was to advance their claims of a superior society unified by a pure race and achieved by the extermination of racial outliers such as the Jews. The mere inclusion of figures like gypsies (Figure 8) and individuals with Semitic lineages would be seen as troubling to aestheticians of the Nazi ideology.

Following the decline of the Third Reich and end of World War II, Sander continued operation in his studio with the aid of his son, Günther.50 Although politically free to resume the ambitious Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, Sander retreated to printing images from a group of older negatives that survived WWII and Nazi destruction. In older age, Sander withdrew to arranging and rearranging previous material for publications during the remainder of his career.51

Having suffered from a stroke, August Sander died April 20, 1964 at the age of 87 and left

47 Jennings, “Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay,” 36. 48 Kramer, August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 13 49 Ibid. 50 Getty Museum and Sander, Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, 143. 51 Lange, August Sander, 1876-1964, 247. 16 behind his legacy of Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts to be published posthumously by his son

Günther in 1980.52

In summation, August Sander’s project Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts, while not politically vocal, was deemed a threat to the Third Reich as it presented images of German society which challenged the Nazi ideal of the Aryan hero. Brought to Nazi attention via his eldest son’s leftist political activities, Sander was forced in his mature career to halt his project of documenting German society in favor of producing images of the German landscape as it was shaped by the hands and labor of its inhabitants. Practicing photography in a straightforward manner, Sander strived for objectivity in allowing his sitters from Weimar Germany to present themselves as they were, indelibly shaped by their trades, class, environment, and generation.

Works Cited

1920-1945 : The Artistic Culture between the Wars / [Valerio Terraroli, Editor of the Work ; Translation, Leslie Ray ... [Et Al.]], edited by Valerio Terraroli. 1st ed. ed. Milan : London : New York, NY: Skira ; Thames & Hudson [distributor] ; Distributed in North America by Rizzoli International Publications, 2006. http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF003996176.

From this text, I drew drawing information on the historical context of the period within which New Objectivity takes shape. This source also presents a decent account of the notion of photography as a universal language in the Weimar Republic.

Art in Berlin, 1815-1989, edited by High Museum of Art. Atlanta, Ga. : Seattle: High Museum of Art ; distributed by University of Washington Press, 1989. http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF001565402.

This text served as a basis for my introduction to the artistic climate of the Weimar Republic in which the aims of New Objectivity take shape.

August Sander : Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959 : Man of the Twentieth Century, Rhineland Landscapes, Nature Studies, Architectural and Industrial Photographs, Images of Sardinia : [Exhibition] / Preface by Beaumont Newhall ; Historical Commentary by Robert

52 Ibid., 249. 17

Kramer ; Accompanied by Excerpts from the Writings of August Sander and His Contemporaries, edited by August Sander. Millerton, N.Y: Aperture, 1980. http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF000458127.

This text was highly influential in the shaping of my thesis. The preface to the text written by Beaumont Newhall raised questions regarding Sander’s shift in subject matter mid-career due to Nazi censorship and political suspicion. The text also provided an in depth description of Sander’s Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts in relation to the study of physiognomy.

Baker, George. "Photography between Narrativity and Stasis: August Sander, Degeneration, and the Decay of the Portrait." October 76, (Spring, 1996): pp. 72-113. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/778773.

Baker’s text incorporated a detailed discussion of the societal types which Sander was interested in recording within Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts and Antlitz der Zeit.

Coke, Van Deren. Avant-Garde Photography in Germany, 1919-1939. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.

Serving as an extended catalogue for an exhibition on New Vision Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1980-81, this text was helpful in drawing comparisons between the work of Sander and contemporary photographers such as Albert Renger- Patzsch.

Gonzales-Day, Ken. "Analytical Photography: Portraiture, from the Index to the Epidermis." Leonardo 35, no. 1 (2002): pp. 23-30. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/1577071.

This text written by Ken Gonzales-Day served as a source of general information on the overarching aims of Sander’s photographic project of documenting the social types of Weimar Germany titled Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts.

Halley, Anne. "August Sander." The Massachusetts Review 19, no. 4, Photography (Winter, 1978): pp. 663-673. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/25088899.

This essay written by Anne Halley served as an excellent source of information related to the biography of August Sander and the evolution of his life-long ambitious project of photographing the German society during the Weimar Republic.

J. Paul Getty Museum, and August Sander. August Sander: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles, California: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999.

This book provided insight into the biography of Sander. As Sander was not educated in a university setting, his life experiences outside of education (worked in the mines as a young adult) proved highly influential in his choice to become a professional 18

photographer. Equally important, Sander’s modest upbringing had a role to play in the development of Sander’s straightforward photographic style.

Jennings, Michael. "Agriculture, Industry, and the Birth of the Photo-Essay in the Late Weimar Republic." October 93, (Summer, 2000): pp. 23-56. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/779156.

This essay written by Michael Jennings proved to be extremely helpful in providing a descriptive formal analysis and interpretation of Sander’s iconic 1914 image titled Jungbauern, or Young Farmers.

Kracauer, Siegfried and Thomas Y. Levin. "Photography." Critical Inquiry 19, no. 3 (Spring, 1993): pp. 421-436. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/1343959.

------. The mass ornament: Weimar essays. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995.

From his essays on photography and the mass ornament, Kracauer’s discussion of the medium in relation to time while aid in supporting various claims about the changing meaning of photographs when examined in varying points in time.

Misselbeck, Reinhold. "Sander, August." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T075638 (accessed December 1, 2011).

The biography of August Sander provided by Reinhold Misselbeck was the first source I perused through. I was able to developed a more extensive bibliography of works pertaining to August Sander through exploring the sources cited by Misselbeck at the end of his biography.

Quasha, Jill. Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs. New York: Quillan Co.: Distributed by Rizzoli International Publications, 1991.

This catalogue of the Quillan Collection published by Sotheby’s was helpful in forming a visual description of Sander’s 1926 photograph of his son, Erich, and his left-wing friends titled Werkstudenten.

Sander, August. August Sander, edited by Robert Delpire. Millerton, N.Y: Aperture, 1977. http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF000198499.

This book serves primarily as a source for images photographed by August Sander. The brief forward within the text lays claim to the documentary nature of Sanders portraiture of Weimar society.

------. August Sander, 1876-1964 / ssa s b Susanne Lange ith a ortrait b A red Dob in Edited by Manfred Heiting, edited by Manfred Heiting, Susanne -. Lange. Köln ; New York: Taschen, 1999. http://uf.catalog.fcla.edu.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/permalink.jsp?20UF002456548. 19

This text has served as a resource on the biography of August Sander and detailed accounts of his explorations in photography from landscape compositions to portraiture in line with the New Objectivity. The introduction to this text was a translated version of Alfred Doblin’s original preface to Sander’s 1929 Antlitz der Zeit.

------. Anne Halley. "From the Nature & Growth of Photography: Lecture 5: Photography as a Universal Language." The Massachusetts Review 19, no. 4, Photography (Winter, 1978): pp. 674-679. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/25088900.

This essay was a translated version of one of Sander’s five radio lectures on photography. As I am not versed in German, I was able to read an account of Sander’s ideas about photography rather directly. In his essay, sander discussed the power of photography to convey information about a societal type through physiognomy.

Schmalenbach, Fritz. "The Term Neue Sachlichkeit." The Art Bulletin 22, no. 3 (Sep., 1940): pp. 161-165. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/3046704.

Schmalenbach’s essay served as background information on the aims and origins of the New Objectivity, or Neue Sachlichkeit. Although this article discusses the term as it relates to painting, parallels can be made to photography as well.

Sekula, Allan. "The Traffic in Photographs." Art Journal 41, no. 1, Photography and the Scholar/Critic (Spring, 1981): pp. 15-25. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/776511.

Sekula’s essay, focusing particularly on works by August Sander, questions and expounds upon the notion of photography as a universal language. The author goes rather in depth when describing what constitutes the language of photography. Also, Sekula’s discussion of the “hybrid construction” of photographic meaning will become useful when arguing the situation of photographs within text. Sekula’s discussion of Sander’s project in relation to the science of physiognomy was extremely beneficial.

Uecker, Matthias. "The Face of the Weimar Republic Photography, Physiognomy, and Propaganda in Weimar Germany." Monatshefte 99, no. 4 (Winter, 2007): pp. 469-484. http://www.jstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/stable/30154413.

From this source, I borrowed Uecker's generalized description of photography as a medium of documentation and an overarching "universal language" within the Weimar Republic.

Zeller, Ursula. "Neue Sachlichkeit." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T062031 (accessed December 1, 2011).

This selection from Grove Art Online was specifically helpful in providing information and further sources on the aims and participants of New Objectivity as exhibited in painting and photography. 20

------. “On August Sander’s Rhine Landscapes,” Environmental History 12, no. 2 (April, 2007): pp. 394-398.

This essay written by Ursula Zeller provided information on Sander’s landscape photographs taken directly prior to and after the banning of his 1929 publication, Antlitz der Zeit, or Face of Our Time. Zeller’s article stressed Sander’s presentation of German landscape as a cultural product.

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Cited Images

Figure 1: Otto Dix, Three Women, 1926. Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. http://www.artstor.org.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/index.shtml 22

Figure 2: August Sander, Jungbauern (Young Farmers), 1914, George Eastman House, (Rochester, New York). In August Sander, 1876-1964, Essays by Susanne Lange; with a Portrait by Alfred Dob lin; edited by Manfred Heiting. Köln; New York: Taschen, 1999.

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Figure 3: August Sander, Werkstudenten (Working Students), 1926. In August Sander, 1876- 1964, Essays by Susanne Lange; with a Portrait by Alfred Dob lin; edited by Manfred Heiting. Köln; New York: Taschen, 1999.

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Figure 4: August Sander, Dadaist (Raoul Hausmann), 1929. In August Sander, 1876-1964, Essays by Susanne Lange; with a Portrait by Alfred Dob lin; edited by Manfred Heiting. K ln; New York: Taschen, 1999.

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Figure 5: August Sander, Spiral Light Bulbs, c. 1930s. In Avant-Garde

Photography in Germany, 1919-1939, by Van Deren Coke. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.

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Figure 6: Albert Renger-Patzsch, Stairwell, 1929. In Avant-Garde Photography in Germany, 1919-1939, by Van Deren Coke. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.

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Figure 7: Nazi Propaganda Poster. In August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch, 1904-1959, Preface by Beaumont Newhall; Historical Commentary by Robert Kramer; Accompanied by Excerpts from the Writings of August Sander and His Contemporaries, edited by August Sander. Millerton, N.Y: Aperture, 1980, p 13.

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Figure 8: August Sander, Zigeuner (Gypsy), 1930. In August Sander, 1876-1964, Essays by Susanne Lange; with a Portrait by Alfred Dob lin; edited by Manfred Heiting. K ln; New ork: Taschen, 1999.

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Figure 9: August Sander, Der Photograph (The Photographer), 1925. In August Sander, 1876- 1964, Essays by Susanne Lange; with a Portrait by Alfred Dob lin; edited by Manfred Heiting. Köln; New York: Taschen, 1999.