Walking with The Murderers Are Among Us: Henry Ries’s Post-WWII Berlin Rubble Photographs

Vivien Green Fryd

doi:10.3390/arts9030075

Abstract

Henry Ries (1917–2004), a celebrated American-German photojournalist, was born into an upper-class Jewish family in Berlin. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 to escape Nazi Germany. As a new American citizen, he joined the U.S. Air Force. After the war, Ries became photo editor and chief photographer for the OMGUS Observer (1946–1947), the American weekly military newspaper published by the Information and Education Section of the Office of Military Government for Germany (OMGUS). One photograph by Ries that first appeared in this newspaper in 1946, and a second, in a different composition and enlarged format, that he included in his 2001 autobiography, create significant commentaries on postwar Germany. The former image accompanies an article about the first post-WWII German feature film: Wolfgang Staudte’s The Murderers Are Among Us. The photograph moves from functioning as a documentation of history and collective memory, to an individual remembrance and personal condemnation of WWII horrors. Both reveal Ries’s individual trauma over the destruction of Berlin and the death of family members, while also conveying the official policy of OMGUS. Ries’s works embody a conflicted, compassionate gaze, conveying ambiguous emotions about judgment of Germans, precisely because of his own identity, background and memories.

Highlights

Henry Ries (1917–2004), a celebrated American-German photojournalist, was born into an upper-class Jewish family in Berlin
While the article condemns the Germans as complicit in the Nazi horrors or refusing to accept responsibility, Ries’s response was more nuanced because of his liminal identity as a German and an American, reflecting his conflicted compassionate gaze that forms the basis of the photographs he took for the OMGUS Observer
Given that Ries’s first photograph taken in 1937 was of the Brandenburg Gate (Figure 4), it is not surprising that in war-torn Berlin he took a number of pictures of the damaged structure riddled with bullet holes, which appears in this spreadsheet, as well on two covers of the OMGUS Observer

Summary

Henry Ries in Pre-World War II Berlin

Heinz Ries was born into a wealthy, liberal German-Jewish family in 1917, while the European continent was engaged in the first major war of the 20th century. Conservatorium, National Socialists stymied Ries’s goals of becoming a conductor when they passed an employment ban for Jewish musicians (Schneider 2017).11 Despite these restrictions, Ries was able to wander the streets of Berlin because, with his blue eyes, straight nose and blond hair, he passed as an Aryan in the eyes of some Germans.. Asian theater of operation (1943–1945), perhaps because the military knew he had some experience with photography The letters he wrote while living near Kharagpur, India, indicate his frustration in not fighting on the European front, Ries improved his photographic techniques and worked on a variety of military assignments. He took snapshots of Indian people, important generals, and formations of B-29 bombers flying across the Himalayas. These experiences prepared him for becoming a photojournalist, a new profession that he would soon embrace

Henry Ries in Post-World War II Berlin

Henry Ries

20 October

The Murderers Are Among Us and Postwar German Cinema

Conclusion