THE LANGEWIESCHE ARCHIVE

A further strong point of the collection is formed by the archive of the German publishing house of Karl Robert Langewiesche, taken over on permanent loan from the Austrian Ludwig Foundation for Art and Science. The publishers, who continue to exist to this day, set new book publishing standards with their series of photo books, "The Blue Books" ("Die Blauen Bücher") and "The Iron Hammer" ("Der Eiserne Hammer"). The main point of emphasis here, apart from art reproductions, lay on landscape and architecture photography of the 1920s to the 1940s. In the main what becomes visible is an outline of a, in part, German Nationalist ( deutschnational) imaginary geography.

The roughly 13,000 photographs that make up this part of the collection also embrace the period up to the late 1950s and comprise many books never published, such as, for example, a photographic documentation by Ruth Hallersleben of life in the industrial region of the Ruhr. In addition, the archive also offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the publisher’s work with images. The photographs served as templates for printing and are, accordingly, marked with copious instructions to the retouch artist . Among these photographs may be found works by such representatives of the New Sobriety as Albert Renger-Patzsch, Paul Wolff and Lucia Moholy.