Getty Museum

Sander's studio/home, Cologne: Workroom (Sander's Studio/Wohnung, Köln: Arbeitszimmer)

Date

about 1930–1942

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Culture

German

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> On September 1, 1939, World War II broke out. August Sander and his wife, Anna (1878-1957), gradually moved their belongings to the safety of Kuchhausen, a small village in the Westerwald, to avoid food rationing and the threat of Allied bombs. In 1944 their son Erich (1903-1944) fell ill in prison and died shortly thereafter of “unknown causes.” During the same year, their Cologne apartment was completely destroyed in an air raid. Sander's forty thousand negatives survived the war, having been stored in the Cologne basement (see [84.XM.152.222](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/35957/august-sander-sander's-studiohome-cologne-archive-in-the-air-raid-shelter-sander's-studiowohnung-koln-archiv-im-luftschutzkeller-german-about-1943/) and [84.XM.152.223](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/35958/august-sander-sander's-studiohome-cologne-air-raid-shelter-sander's-studio-wohnung-koln-luftschutzkeller-german-about-1943/)), but all but ten thousand of them were subsequently lost in a fire. > > Before the move to Kuchhausen, Sander created an album of photographs documenting his household and studio in Cologne-Lindenthal (see [84.XM.152.160 - 84.XM.152.223](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/search/?pg=1&view=list&query=YTozOntzOjU6InF1ZXJ5IjtzOjExOiJzdHVkaW8vaG9tZSI7czo4OiJtYWtlci5pZCI7YToxOntpOjA7aToxNzUwO31zOjQ6InNvcnQiO3M6NjoiLXNjb3JlIjt9)). Carefully mapping room after room, he recorded what he feared to be on the brink of destruction. The image reproduced here represents a corner of his workroom. It is filled with mementos of a life gone by. On the walls are two of Sander's portraits of his close friends Franz Wilhelm Seiwert (1894-1933) and Heinrich Hoerle (1895-1936) (see [84.XM.152.158](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/35895/august-sander-heinrich-hoerle-at-a-carnival-heinrich-hoerle-auf-einem-lumpenball-german-about-1930/)), members of the Cologne Progressives. Below an old-fashioned peasant clock hangs a photograph Sander had taken as a youth in the San Fernando mine. On the right, above a small built-in cabinet and two silhouettes, is an oil painting by Seiwert from 1923. A set of triangles and a T square are suspended from the wall above the stove. Next to the doorframe, Sander's cat naps comfortably on a small, wooden chest. > > Far from being a simple inventory of possessions, this photograph can be seen as a page in Sander's emotional autobiography. It traces his story from the mines near Herdorf to the sophisticated avant-garde circles of Cologne. Oscillating as it does between tradition, represented by the peasant clock, and innovation, suggested by the graphic design tools, the photograph acknowledges intellectual debts and celebrates friendships enjoyed. It is a document of melancholic introspection and commemoration, a physiognomy of the self, created at a time of great danger and uncertainty. > > Originally published in *August Sander*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Claudia Bohn-Spector (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 98. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.

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