Photography in Service of Racial Politics / Anna Koppitz's Works for Reich Minister R. Walther Darre

Photography was Reich Minister Richard Walther Darré’s medium of choice for illustrating and disseminating his “blood and soil” ideology. His models, staged before the camera at his request, consisted of athletic youths from the Bauernschaft farming community and specially educated at the Burg Neuhaus Law School. It was on to their bodies that he projected his utopian notions of the “Nordic Race” and Germany’s genetic future. Viennese photographer Anna Koppitz, the widow of the renowned photographer Rudolf Koppitz, worked for Darré. Her photographs were modeled both on the body studies perfected by her husband, and on the sports photography of Leni Riefenstahl, creating a highly explosive mix, perfectly suited for propaganda purposes. Serving Radical Politics is part of the ongoing series “Contributions to a History of Photography in Austria,” taken from the Albertina’s,Photographic Collection, which investigates the controversial images that formed part of the Third Reich’s doctrine. The authors are Monika Faber, Photoinstitut Bonartes, Vienna and Walter Moser, The Albertina, Vienna. With essays from Elke Fuchs, Gesine Gerhard and curator Magdalena Vukovic.