Contributions to a History of Photography in Austria, volume 12

Edited by Monika Faber for Photoinstitut Bonartes, Vienna, and Walter Moser for the Photographic Collection of the Albertina, Vienna

“I have confirmed to your minister that I am happy to work with him on the blood issue, and I hope I do not disappoint him. It makes no difference to me whether the work involves portrait or nude photographs; the only difficulty is finding the right people.”
Anna Koppitz, 1940

Photography was Reichsminister Richard Walther Darré’s medium of choice for illustrating and disseminating his ‘blood and soil’ ideology. The protagonists staged before the camera at his request consisted of athletic youths from the Bauernschaft farming community specially educated at the Burg Neuhaus Reichsschule. It was onto their bodies that he projected his utopian notions of the ‘Nordic Race’ and of farmers as Germany’s genetic future. Working for him was Viennese photographer Anna Koppitz, the widow of the renowned photographer Rudolf Koppitz. Her photographs were modelled partly on the elaborate body studies perfected by her husband and partly on the contemporary sports photography in the style of Leni Riefenstahl: a highly explosive mix that was ideally suited for propaganda purposes.

Magdalena Vuković is curator of photography at the Photoinstitut Bonartes in Vienna.