Josef Breitenbach

Josef Breitenbach (April 3, 1896 in Munich, Germany – October 7, 1984 in New York City) was a photographer whose manipulated images and stark photographs were part of the Surrealistic movement.

Josef Breitenbach was born into a middle-class wine-merchant family of Jewish descent, and came of age during the chaotic years of the First World War and its troubled aftermath. He attended technical high school from 1912–15 and trained as a salesman for an instrument firm and later as a bookkeeper for an insurance firm. He attended Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich (philosophy and art history, 1914 to 1917) and became active in the Youth Section and later the Pacifist wing of the Social Democratic Party. In 1918, he took part in the Soviet-inspired Bavarian coup d’état, which was the first spark of the revolutionary fire that swept over Germany in the wake of the armistice. For a few months, Breitenbach also occupied an official position in the new government. Although the revolution was short-lived, the ties he forged with the radical circles of Munich’s intelligentsia later helped him establish his reputation as a photographer.

In 1932, after several unsuccessful years at the head of the family business—during which period he was mainly engaged with perfecting his use of a camera—Breitenbach opened his first photographic studio. His clients were prominent members of Munich’s bohemia, including actors and actresses performing in the Munich theater. Munich was a stronghold of libertarians and refined peoples, whose spirit Breitenbach captured in theatrical portraits of his friend, the journalist Theo Riegler. This world vanished in 1933 with Hitler’s takeover.

More than his Jewish roots, the photographer's political past made him a target for persecution. In August, 1933, a band of Sturmabteilung (SA) storm troopers, members of Hitler’s private army, banged on the door of his studio. Using a portrait of German nobleman Franz von Papen he’d taken the year before when he was Chancellor of Germany, and a letter of thanks he’d received, Breitenbach convinced the troopers that he was under Papen’s protection. With his passport about to expire, Breitenbach made his way to France a few days later, joining other German exiles seeking refuge in Paris.

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