To the person

These notes by Heinrich von der Becke exist about his life, his professional career, as well as the photographic equipment, photographic production and photojournalism of the time.

At the end of the so-called “Golden Twenties” – it was in the spring of 1928 – I was hired as a commercial apprentice at the sports picture agency Max Schirner in Berlin-Charlottenburg. It was my goal to become a press photographer.

My father had insisted on signing an apprenticeship contract and I also had to register for the commercial vocational school. The apprenticeship fee: 15 marks in the first year, 30 marks in the second year and 50 marks in the third year. Schirner, incidentally one of the co-founders of the Sportclub Charlottenburg, already had a good name in the illustration business at that time. He was not only a good (not trained) photographer and a good businessman at the same time.

He employed numerous staff in the photo lab, in the office permanently and freelance photographers, who were called “operators” at that time. He not only supplied Berlin daily newspapers and sports magazines, but made a daily dispatch all over Germany and also abroad. There were also already relationships with foreign picture agencies. Schirner only had competition in Berlin from a few independent sports photographers, the best known of whom is the name Riebcke.

I took my first pictures as an apprentice at a sporting event, the Berlin championships in forest running. I was handed a 9/12 plate camera with an interchangeable cassette containing 12 glass plates and was guided by an older, freelance “operator” who took pictures with a 13/18 Contessa-Nettel.

By chance I managed to get a relatively sharp photo, although the lighting conditions were exceptionally poor. The reasons: my 9/12 camera had a rather lame focal plane shutter that worked slower than the set speed of 1/350th of a second. The photo was taken at a point on the course that was somewhat uphill, forcing the runners to move slowly. After developing in the lab, it turned out that the shots my older colleague had taken were very underexposed and not printable. My negatives were usable.
The next morning I could see my first sports photo printed in the newspaper. It had come about through a chain of fortunate circumstances.

In the first months of my apprenticeship, I mostly had to work in the photo lab. The enlargement of 9/12 plates on 13/18 paper was done by the lab assistant. In the darkroom I learned to develop the pictures, had to put them in the fixing bath and then rinse them. The pictures were dried in a cupboard with gas heating on black lacquered metal plates. Often pictures got stuck on them. The plates had to be cleaned with benzene. At that time, no one knew about harmful benzene fumes. It was not until the end of the 1930s that the first electrically operated drying drums made of metal were available.

At that time, photographers were still using large-format plate cameras of the formats 18/24, 13/18, 10/15, 6 ½ by 9 and 4 ½ by 6. But the 35 mm cameras – especially Leica and Contax – were becoming more and more popular. At the Olympic Games in Garmisch Partenkirchen they even had an advantage over the plate cameras because their focal plane shutters worked better in very cold weather. Our chief lab technician at the time at the Pressebildzentrale Berlin, who was a trained master photographer, did not think much of 35mm film at first. When I brought him my first 35mm film, he scolded me: “What are you doing with a flypaper already?
At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, all the colleagues who used 35mm cameras with long focal lengths had an advantage. The coveted indoor special passes were issued in very limited numbers. The majority of all photographers had to work from the stands.

After the end of the Olympic Games in Berlin, my next assignment was photo coverage of the Spanish Civil War. An interpreter from the Ministry of Propaganda accompanied me to Spain and stayed with me until I had my accreditation in Burgos, the seat of Franco-loyal northern Spain. I stayed in Spain for nine months, got to know the Madrid front and the southern front as far as Marbella.

From 1928 to 1935 I worked for the Schirner company, then until the beginning of the war in 1939 for the press photo centre in Berlin, which was completely bombed out in the last year of the war. From the first day of the war, I was a tank destroyer with Infantry Regiment 68. After the Polish campaign and the West Wall, I was transferred to the propaganda company. After several wounds and rehabilitation, I went to war school in Potsdam and became an infantryman again. Because I had no intention of becoming an officer, I left the war school in Schwerin on Good Friday 1945, 1 April.

I had previously arranged with three very good comrades to leave our unit. But we each had a different goal. We were all members of propaganda companies. First Lieutenant Krafft – until that time NS commanding officer – had managed to get the necessary papers for himself and three others, including my friend Otto Kunkel, also a radio reporter, to enable me to come to Berlin – and with a marching order, with which I could also get ration cards.

I was the only one to go to Berlin, the other three to Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. According to our calculations, the war could last another 14 days or three weeks at most. That same afternoon I visited Neue Kantstr. 9 in Berlin Charlottenburg. My PK comrade Henne had given me this address. He knew that my flat in Berlin-Lichterfelde had been bombed out and practically put his at my disposal.
A friendly young lady opened the door for me at Neue Kantstr. 9. It was Fräulein Thea Wabra (his later wife – editor’s note) who was in charge of this flat. I put down some of my luggage and said goodbye again to visit friends in Berlin. I was given the keys to the flat and did not report back until a few days later.

Until the capitulation and the occupation of our district, there were still many exciting situations for Thea and for me, but with a lot of luck we survived everything safe and sound. After the Russians had entered Berlin, I started working with Klaus Kindermann, with whom I had spent my apprenticeship at Max Schirner. He still had his intact office and laboratory and took private photos of Russian soldiers who paid with food.As early as spring 1945, there was the Soviet-licensed “Berliner Zeitung”. I was allowed to work for this paper after a short time and also soon made reporting trips within the Soviet-occupied zone. When the four sectors were officially established in the summer, there were also American, French and British newspapers. The Russians meanwhile published the “Illustrierte Rundschau” and the “Berliner Illustrierte”. Gradually it became more and more difficult to work in the eastern sector, and then came the blockade period and the almost complete separation from the East.

There followed a period of good cooperation both with the Berlin daily newspapers and with Time-Life and with the numerous West German illustrated magazines. Our small company then had employees in the office, in the laboratory, a representative who brought the pictures to the editorial offices and now and then freelancers and permanent volunteers. My wife did all the work in the office and in the archives, plus the household and looking after the children. (Note: Without the grandmother this would probably not have been possible).

There were plenty of trips to West Germany and abroad. By visiting 13 Olympic Games, including Helsinki, Stockholm, Rome, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Melbourne, Squaw Valley, Tokyo, Sapporo and Innsbruck (2) and Montreal, the circle of vision expanded quite a bit. But there was not only sports photography. Everything important that happened in Berlin from 1945 to 1992 was captured in pictures:

• the activities of the Allies in Berlin, a complete documentation of the Berlin Wall from the first stone to its demolition
• numerous political events
• visits by great statesmen
• international congresses and exhibitions
• the Berlin Film Festival
• important artists, painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, dance tournaments, concerts, jazz and rock’n’roll

in fact everything that seemed important to me in Berlin and elsewhere completed my archive.