“This Can Only Come to a Bad End”: Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s Critique of National Socialism in Her Reports and Photography from Europe

Abstract

During her first European journey in the spring of 1937, the Swiss photographer and writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach traveled to Berlin, East Prussia, and Danzig, where the influence of National Socialism was spreading. About a year later, she visited several cities in Austria, which had been annexed by Nazi Germany. This article discusses Schwarzenbach’s travel writings and photographs depicting the areas of Europe governed by the Nazis just prior to the Second World War. My approach to this visual and verbal material benefits from a theoretical discussion of Alfred Opitz’s notion of the “traveling subject” as well as Walter Benjamin’s ideas concerning the guilt that photography can capture and represent. In her reports, Schwarzenbach creates a narrative subject who functions as a neutral observer of political developments. The subtle details and unusual perspectives of her photographs draw attention to the dehumanizing activities of the National Socialists. Schwarzenbach’s reports and photography provide further evidence of her interest in the exile cause and in her contribution to the “spiritual defense” of Switzerland prior to the Second World War.