{"id":68343,"date":"2026-04-25T10:36:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T10:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/68343\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T10:36:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T10:36:17","slug":"colognes-museum-ludwig-explores-germany-before-the-berlin-walls-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/68343\/","title":{"rendered":"Cologne’s Museum Ludwig Explores Germany Before the Berlin Wall’s Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of the world\u2019s pioneering camera companies were located in Germany, where brands such as Voigtl\u00e4nder, Zeiss, Goerz, and Leica were all established before the First World War. But it wasn\u2019t until the creative chaos of the Weimar Republic that Germans really figured out what to do with their cameras. That period gave the still-emerging discipline of photography the giants August Sander, creator of analytical but humane portraits, and Albert Renger-Patzsch, who could make flowers look like animals and factory floors look like forests.<\/p>\n

Those Weimar masters bore fruit in the mature careers of Bernd and Hilla Becher, the postwar D\u00fcsseldorf duo who blurred the line between photography and conceptual art with their gray-on-gray depictions of industrial architecture. The Bechers, in turn, taught and inspired the next generation of German artists, greats of contemporary photography like Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Thomas Ruff. During the latter decades of the Cold War, before the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a divided Germany fostered a number of remarkable if lesser-known figures, and they are the collective subject of an exhibition that opened last week at Cologne\u2019s Museum Ludwig.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Enter your e-mail to read the full story for free
and to receive our weekly e-mail newsletter<\/p>\n

\n Subscribe to AIR MAIL<\/a> for full access.\n <\/p>\n

\n Already a subscriber? Sign in here<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of the world\u2019s pioneering camera companies were located in Germany, where brands such as Voigtl\u00e4nder, Zeiss, Goerz,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[9928,37409,37410,37411,37412,112,12708,37413,15514,37414,14294,7386,37415,30816,13679,190,37416,8888,37417,37418,37419,37420,37421,37422,1453,37423,195,37424,182,22940,37425,35924,37426,37427,37428,37429,37430,37431,37432,37433,37434,37435],"class_list":["post-68343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-adolf-hitler","tag-albert-renger-patzsch","tag-andreas-gursky","tag-august-sander","tag-barbara-engelbach","tag-berlin","tag-berlin-wall","tag-bernd","tag-buffalo","tag-christiane-eisler","tag-cologne","tag-communism","tag-derek-bennett","tag-dusseldorf","tag-east-germany","tag-germany","tag-goerz","tag-hamburg","tag-henry-maitek","tag-hilla-becher","tag-jeff-marcus","tag-karl-kugel","tag-leica","tag-museum-ludwig","tag-new-york","tag-pablo-picasso","tag-paris","tag-peter-ludwig","tag-poland","tag-pop-art","tag-the-cold-war","tag-the-holocaust","tag-the-reeperbahn","tag-the-soviet-union","tag-thomas-ruff","tag-thomas-struth","tag-ute-mahler","tag-voigtlander","tag-weimar-republic","tag-west-germany","tag-world-war-one","tag-zeiss"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}