More Wandering and a visit to the Mémorial de la Shoah

Hard to believe but Sunday October 14 was another very warm sunny day with the high of 26C. We walked over to the Right Bank and had coffee at Le Peloton Café, a coffee shop on Rue du Pont Louis-Philippe, which also organizes bike tours of the city.

I had forgotten to take a picture- but got this from the internet--- we sat outside and had our coffee

We headed to the museum of the Mémorial de la Shoah to see a very interesting exhibit entitled August Sander: Persécutés/ Persécuteurs, des Hommes du XXe siècle (Persecuted/Persecutors, People of the 20th Century). August Sander (1876-1964) was a German photographer born near Cologne in 1876. He was a miner's son who quit school to work in the pit. At 16, he acquired his first camera. He went into business for himself as a professional photographer in 1904 in Linz, Austria. In 1910, now married and a father, he joined his parents in Cologne, opening a professional portrait studio. After entering the army in 1914, his wife, Anna, ran the studio on her own until 1918. Sander was a pacifist and socialist. Rejecting the deliberate blurriness characterizing early 20th century art photography, Sander instead stressed contrasts which brought out the traces that hard work left on his model's hands and faces. In the early 1920s, Sander grew close to the circle of Cologne's avant-garde artists.

Following the end of WWI, Sander undertook the task of creating a photographic portrait of German society entitled People of the 20th Century. He classified the thousands of photographs into seven groups and 45 portfolios. The seven groups were: "The Farmer", "The Craftsman", "Woman", "Classes and Professions", "The Artist", "The Big City" and "The Last People". He photographed people in 600 professions. After the war, he added the "Political Prisoners" portfolio, including photographs taken by his son Erich, jailed in 1934 for his political opinions (he died in prison in 1944), and portraits of Cologne's Jews made for identity documents in 1938-39 as they tried to flee Nazi Germany. His life's work was not published during his lifetime, but continues to be pursued by his descendants.

In 1927, Sander had a highly successful show of over 100 photographs at the Cologne artists' league. He also had an enthusiastic response to his first book (Face of Our Time) released just after the exhibit, in 1929, which featured 500 of his photos. He was encouraged to pursue his People of the 20th Century project, of which the book was just an introduction. However, Sander's views of human beings did not fit into the Nazi ideology. In mid-1936, his publisher, Transmare, informed Sander that his book had been withdrawn from sale and confiscated. Even the printing plates were destroyed.

Translation of letter from his publisher 1936

I have seen a number of photographs taken by Sander of German society under the Weimar Republic. He is widely recognized as one of the founders of the documentary style. This particular exhibit focused on a fragment of his work: his series of portraits taken during the Third Reich, including photographs of persecuted Jews, portraits of National Socialists (the Persecutors) and some taken by his son Erich in prison. This particular grouping are exhibited at the Shoah Museum for the first time along with contact prints (with photos not selected for the portfolios), letters and details about the lives of those photographed.

Anna, his wife, (1878-1957) worked with him since their marriage in 1902. Later his sons Erich (1903-1944) and Gunther Sander (1907-1987) were employed in the family business. His daughter Sigrid (1911-2001) went abroad in 1929 and her twin brother Helmut died soon after birth.

Entrance to the Exhibit

The first section of the exhibit focussed on Sander's life and family.

August Sander in Kuchhausen 1956/58- taken by his son Gunther

August Sander at his desk. Behind him, five photos of his son Erich and the photograph of Erich's death mask 1946 (photographer unknown).

August Sander 1925

Erich Sander had contracted polio in 1909 and was left with a slight paralysis of his left food. During high school Erich began to take an interest in socialist ideas under the influence of his teacher. He joined the Young Communist League in 1922. August, a dedicated Social Democrat, did not approve of this decision. However, they were both keen photographers. Erich later became a member of the Communist Party of Germany and in October 1932 was appointed head of the Cologne group of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. After the Nazi's came to power, Erich worked in the resistance and was arrested by the Gestapo in September 1934. In May 1935, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. From 1936 on, he was the prison photographer which enabled him to document everyday prison life and to carry on his work in the resistance, smuggling letter and photographs out of the prison. Erich and his parents carried on a lengthy correspondence. Erich died in prison in 1944 after coming down with appendicitis.

August Sander- Erich Sander-student of philosophy 1926

August Sander's photo studio in Cologne 1940

Air-raid shelter of the Sander house where most of his negatives were stored - 1942

The next section focussed on some of photographs that Sander took for his Face of Our Time book.

Proletarian Intellectuals [Else Shuler, Tristan Rémy, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Gerd Arntz- ca. 1925
(works of Seiwert and Arntz were included in the 1937 Degenerate Art exhibit organized by the Nazis)

Shepherd 1913

Country Girls 1925

Engaged farming couple 1911-14

Revolutionaries 1923

Bohemians 1922-1925

Sculptress 1929

A section of the exhibit dealt briefly with a history of the Jews of Cologne. Jews lived in Cologne since 321 A.D. They were expelled in 1424, allowed to return in 1798, but only received equal civil and political rights in 1871. In 1920, there were 16,000 Jews living in Cologne that were an integral part of the city's life (about 2.3% of the population of Cologne). In 1938-39, Sander made many pictures of Cologne's Jews who were compelled to have their identity papers re-issued with the letter "J" stamped on them. Even though the portraits were made for a functional purpose, Sander treated them with care. The first deportations took place in autumn 1941 and the last in spring 1945. There were almost no survivors.

The next room had one wall with a series of pictures of Foreign Workers (1941-45)

The second wall had 12 pictures of "The Persecuted" ca. 1938. The pictures from Sander's portfolios did not have names with them. However, in the last room there were a series of large contact prints from which the 12 photos in the portfolio were chosen. A number have been identified.

Miss Oppenheim (identified as being related to Arthur Oppenheim and Margarete Oppenheim
(whose pictures were only in the contact prints) who emigrated to Great Britain in 1939.
Their property was requisitioned by the Third Reich in 1943).

Mme Levysohn (?) 1938

There were also pictures of political prisoners taken by his son Erich in prison.

Portrait of Erich's death mask 1944

Finally, there was a wall with pictures from Sander's portfolios called "The National Socialist" ca. 1935-1941.

Identified as Ewald Gehrsohn- National Socialist Member of SS Panzer Division Liebstandarte, a Waffen SS unit that provided a personal guard for Adolf Hitler taken ca 1940

National Socialist member of Hitler Youth ca 1938 (unidentified)

Head of the Culture Department- 1938

The last room had a series of large contact prints taken of members of Cologne's Jewish community in around 1938. It was from this series of images that he selected the 12 photographs that made up his "The Persecuted" portfolio of his People of the 20th Century project. Five individuals whose images were included in the portfolio were identified. Some of the images of political prisoners, taken by Erich Sander at Siegburg Prison between 1936-44 have also been identified by research conducted by Cologne's Documentation Centre.

Benjamin Katz- 1938. He was born in 1879 and was a master butcher. On April 1, 1933, the first large-scale anti-Semitic demonstration was organized in Germany. A boycott began of Jewish owned shops and businesses. Benjamin and his son Arnold were forced to walk the streets with defamatory slogans

Philipp Fleck- contact print- businessman born 1893, part of circle of progressive artists. On October 22, 1941, he and his wife were deported to the Lodz ghetto where he died on June 4, 1942. His wife Bertha as deported to Auschwitz and then September 1944 to Stuthof concentration camp where she died on Jan 4, 1945.

It was a fascinating exhibit of a piece of August Sander's work. In 1939, the outbreak of the war prompted Sander to move to the Westerwald, taking 10,000 negatives with him for safe-keeping. Unfortunately, the 30,000 negatives that he left behind in the cellar of his Cologne house were destroyed by a fire in 1946. His grandson Gerhard Sander wrote in 2016: "Photography was much more than a job for August and his son Erich. It reflected their view of the world and of people as they are". Sander really captured the essence of his sitters.

After our visit to the Shoah Museum we headed into the Marais, which is mostly car-free on Sundays and filled with people as most of the stores, cafés and restaurants are open.