Abstract
This excellent book traces the development of the use of photographic images in newspapers in Weimar Germany. At first sight the subject of the book may appear somewhat narrow and especially so when the focus is placed on newspapers in Karlsruhe, the capital of Baden, rather than on the German press as a whole. However, Dussel does an exceptional job of contextualizing his subject. The second chapter details the pre-history of use of photographs – development of the use of illustration in newspapers – in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The third chapter provides an economic, social and media history of Karlsruhe and explains the rapid expansion of newspaper reading after the First World War and the development of pluralism before the Third Reich put an end to it. The fourth chapter presents the results of an extensive content analysis of images in newspapers (for instance, exploring the relative frequency of educational, political, sensational and entertainment images) and provides examples to illustrate and interrogate the quantitative research. Such analysis is subdivided by genre of newspaper (comparing, for example, business and party newspapers). There is also analysis of precisely which events were represented by images in the 1920s and 1930s granting us an indication of the perceived importance of various subjects during that period (wars, national events, sporting events and so on). The extent to which women are represented by images and the type of images used is laid out, providing a stark contrast with the increased use of sexual images in the present. The final chapter steps back from the empirical evidence to discuss its significance, placing the use of photographic images as part of the secularization of German newspapers that increasingly step outside traditional subjects and representations in the Weimar period. In conclusion, Dussel places the use of images in newspapers as part of the development of a new visual culture that Béla Balász had identified in 1924 with reference to cinema. The Weimar Republic was indeed the first period in which a multiplicity of image-worlds with all their accompaniments (the growth of a consumer society, the performance of the political and so on) were available to a broad cross-section of the German population.
In the book’s final pages Dussel argues that the use of photographic images in newspapers can be divided into four phases: 1924–1939: development and rapid expansion; 1939 to mid-late 1940s: drastic reduction due to economic rather than ideological factors; late 1940s to end of twentieth century: use of one to two images per page, establishment of Bild Zeitung in 1952; late twentieth/early twenty-first century: significant expansion of the use of photographic images. While Dussel’s periodization goes well beyond the empirical evidence presented in this volume, it is suggestive of further comparative research and Dussel’s work provides more than a useful starting point through its careful provision of data and analysis of newspaper photographs in the Weimar Republic.