(Universität Haifa)

Diese Arbeit wurde mit dem Herbert-Steiner-Preis 2024 ausgezeichnet.

Abstract:

This study investigates SS photographs in National Socialist concentration camps (KLs) and explores their intended meanings and functions. The focus is on institutionalized perpetrator photography, meaning the official photo production of the camp administrations. In the KL system, so-called identification services (Erkennungsdienste) were responsible for taking a variety of photographic motifs according to orders handed down to them. Originally, they were departments based on police institutions of the same name that had existed since the nineteenth century. However, when they became part of the standardized KL administration in the mid-1930s, their core tasks were expanded. My research shows that the SS photographers of the identification services utilized established photo genres that relate to the aims of the pictures— police photography, anthropometric photography, medical photography, and corporate photography. Therefore, I argue that the photos are unique historical sources for reconstructing the practical and ideological aspirations of the SS. Analyzing them exposes how the camps were supposed to function according to the perpetrators and how they imagined idealized versions of the KLs.

I have developed a methodological approach that I call integrated visual history for analysing these SS photographs as perpetrator sources. This method includes an adapted version of Ulrike Pilarczyk and Ulrike Mietzner’s serial-iconographic photo analysis. It further incorporates Saul Friedländer’s idea of an “integrated history” as a theoretical model for writing a narrative based on a variety of sources, including those by victims. Additionally, my method includes Amos Morris-Reich’s understanding of “economies of demonstration”, meaning the investigation of photographs in the complex process of their usage. In conclusion, I add another analytical step that asks for counter-images to the analyzed pictures, raising questions about visual or written testimonies that represent a contrasting visual narrative to the SS imagery. My study aims to introduce a step-by-step methodology to uncover the epistemological value of SS photos beyond the perpetrators’ gaze that is manifested on them. Consequently, this analytical model is designed so that it can be adapted to the study of other photograph types.

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