Henry Ries is leaving his native Berlin in 1938. Ten years later, the photographer documented the air bridge. He loved the city, says his widow. An encounter.
(Jewish General, June 19, 2008)
Photo: Henry Ries / DHM
Before she goes up, it pauses for a moment. She sits on the marble bench, which is embedded on the side wall and looks at white pillars, which lost in the six meters in height in the semi-darkness. Her right arm is on the back, the hand sweeps fondly on the marble. "Nice, no? Something precious is built today are no longer so, "says Wanda Ries, 62 "On the bench, Henry has picked a little boy, the roller skates. I think of often. "
Wanda Ries, the" R "the native of Munich rolls with an American accent, sitting in the lobby of an apartment building not far from Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. Here, Henry Ries, the "Photographer of the air bridge", born in 1917 as Heinz Ries. Up on the fourth floor had his father, a liberal Jew and linen manufacturer, a spacious apartment. The impressive Art Nouveau building survived the second world war almost unscathed. resided since 1987 in the 15-room apartment in Berlin AIDS Help.
is the former parlor of Ries' there events in the former children of Henry Ries HIV sufferers seek help. "He was very happy that his former home serves a charitable purpose," says Wanda Ries, as it is available later on the bright lime floor of the former smoking room. Today Sitting here, visitors to the counseling center at tables, drinking coffee or leaf through magazines.
Wanda Ries lives in New York. There she spent 29 years at the side of Henry Ries. Died in 2004, the photographer. His urn is on the Forest Cemetery in Berlin-Zehlendorf. Therefore, it is a regular on the Spree. Often they will search for the former apartment. "I feel very strongly his presence here," she says as she strolls through the rooms. "What draws me here is the idea, as Henry's romp through the house as a teenager. He was a very athletic man, actually to the last. "Often, they then think of the anecdotes he her told of his youth. "For example, he has played in the spacious corridors with his brother football. This once a precious vase was destroyed. There was no trouble, he recalls a tolerant home and a happy childhood. "
mind a little photo documentation that has organized Wanda Ries in the rooms of the AIDS Help. The exhibition spans the arc of his life. Since a picture showing the little Henry with the two siblings, another mother with pearl necklace and a fashionable 20's short hair cut. And the father is sitting with a cigar and fly on a garden chair. A normal German family, a Christmas tree with tinsel lined up in the salon, but also celebrated Passover.
The cultural symbiosis takes its end in 1933. Henry Ries, who played the piano well, has wanted to become a conductor. Nothing will come after the takeover by the Nazis. Like so many German Jews lived Henry the creeping marginalization and deprivation in their own homeland. Since 1937, he therefore attempted to leave Germany with the family. The entry to the U.S. succeeds but until 1938.
There beats Henry Ries by with odd jobs. When the U.S. declared the "Third Reich" the war, he wants to join the American army. But Ries is considered an enemy alien. In the end he will prevail, however. Ries fights but not in Europe but in the South Pacific - and without a weapon. He is the photo reconnaissance and bomb damage documented.
end of the war experience Ries in Calcutta. Soon he is ordered to Europe and gets a special order. In an Austrian salt mine 36 wooden boxes are displayed. The "secret archives" of SS chief Heinrich Himmler Henry Ries to sift with a team of translators to the Fund and travels to London in all cases, the reports of the SS doctors, Himmler on the. progress of their experiments on concentration camp prisoners informed. "This has upset him very much," Wanda says Ries. "It was inconceivable to him that there could be such a morass of moral depravity at all. "As Ries discovers that his grandmother deported to Theresienstadt and murdered his aunt in Auschwitz, is set for him, never go back to Germany.
But in the fall of 1945, added the soldier Ries to Berlin. "He had to come back then. When he saw the full extent of the destruction, all the wretched figures, he got sympathy. Henry was essentially a committed humanist, believed in the goodness of man. "And he realized that not all Germans were collaborators and conviction, says his widow. Himself I always felt it as a favor to be a Jew: "He could not be a perpetrator."
Henry Ries also had feelings of guilt. "He wondered why he had survived, even though so many millions were murdered." Really he had dealt with this issue but only in his final years. Ries travels to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, seeking traces of his murdered relatives and documents that will be remembered as the Holocaust (Auschwitz, 1997). In another photo book (Farewell my generation, 1992) he portrayed the generation to which he belongs. Ries travels through Germany, meets former Wehrmacht soldiers, incorrigible Nazis and victims of the Nazi regime. With the camera, he records how the story has dug in their faces.
These photographs are still in the shadow of the images he created during the Berlin Blockade: In June 1948 the Soviets blocked access to the western sectors. Stalin wants to force the ruined city behind the Iron Curtain. The Americans respond with the airlift: Eleven months they fly, with British support, more than two million tons of food and fuels (see box).
Henry Ries, who works in April 1946 as a photo journalist for a news magazine of the U.S. Army rushes, between different locations the blockade back and forth. It scans takeoff and landing aircraft and friendly waving pilot. The large format images appear on the covers of magazines. He documented the construction of the airport Tegel, the wreckage of crashed planes shows the midst of ruined houses, and how the West Berlin to live with the blockade.
The air-bridge pictures substantiated Ries' fame as a press photographer. They found their way into the collective memory on both sides of the Atlantic. The German-American fraternity Myth: Henry Ries, the exiled German Jew, gave him his face. 2008, the year of the 60th Anniversary of the airlift, is thus also "Henry Ries year." Whenever something is being reminded of the airlift, there is Ries' image of the raisin bomber flying over a group of merrily waving children. Reproduced millions of times, it became an icon.
The image itself is like all his recordings have been a conscious snapshot says Wanda Ries. "He has never drauflosgeknipst simple, but long observed a situation and then composed. He was inspired by the moment, unique looking in the everyday. His goal was to identify the individual from the crowd. "On the raisin bomber picture is Henry was particularly proud of. He was the only one who climbed up on the piles of rubble around Tempelhof and have included such a motive. "When the candy bomber was served, he asked the children not to look in his direction. Only one man turns and looks directly at the viewer. This closes a circle. Maybe that makes the uniqueness of the image. "
1955, Ries pulls back from the Journalism and opened a studio in Manhattan for advertising photography. About 20 years will it take till he comes back to Berlin. He had actually signed with Germany, says Wanda Ries. "He felt as Americans, no longer spoke German." But in 1973 a letter arrives from Berlin. The 25th Anniversary of the blockade is planning an exhibition of State Image his photos, Henry Ries is invited. For the first time he sees the wall for him, an absurd, Kafkaesque monstrosity. Sun upfront numerous pictures of the "anti-fascist protective wall" that have drawn the SED Upper across Berlin.
For an exhibition of his wall-looking photos of the photographer as an assistant. Friends provide him with Wanda Ries. They eloquently today from Henry Ries' life reported as discrete as it is, when it comes to their private lives. "I do not like to stand in the center," she says gently but firmly. Everything she says is that her grandfather was an opponent of the Nazi regime in Dachau, and that she is not Jewish. It has art education studied art and later again in New York. Today it against the backdrop of the estate of her husband. The soon to be retained intact in the German capital. "It was Henry's wish. He wanted to know everything in Berlin. He loved this city. "
The Airlift 1948/49
few days after the currency reform in western zones of occupation, the D-Mark introduced in the Western sectors of Berlin. In the night of 24th June 1948 Soviet troops then blocked all access roads to West Berlin. But at the initiative of Military Governor Lucius D. Clay The USA and UK, via an air bridge to supply the city. With more than 270,000 flights, 2.3 million tons of cargo are transported. Every two to three minutes ends up a machine in Berlin. "Candy Bomber" is the name of the vernacular of the aircraft. The blockade ended on 12 May 1949.
Exhibitions:
"Focus on Berlin: The blockade of 1948-49. The photojournalist Henry Ries. Deutsches Historisches Museum, Unter den Linden 2, 10117 Berlin. Until 21 September, daily 10 - 18 clock
photo exhibition of Henry Ries in the rooms of the Berlin AIDS Help, Meineke Strasse 12, 10719 Berlin. Monday to Thursday 10-18 clock, Friday 10-15 clock
The autobiography
Henry Ries: "I was a Berliner. Memories of a New York photojournalist. Partha Publishing, 220 pages, 35 €
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