Leo Rosenthal: A Court Reporter of the Weimar Republic

by Bernd Weise, Janos Frecot (Contributor), Bianca Welzing-Bräutigam (Contributor)

People on trial - in the days of the Weimar Republic this was a fruitful topic for pressmen. At the end of the decade they increasingly involved high-ranking Nazis, spectacular murder cases or art forgeries with prominent figures on the witness stand, not to mention increasing instances of petty theft as the result of unemployment and inflation. And the general public lapped it all up. Leo Rosenthal (1884-1969) was a legal expert, initially worked as a court reporter for left-wing Berlin newspapers and then took up a camera and produced highly atmospheric pictures of the trials of his times. He has yet to be discovered as a chronicler of the Weimar Republic, a collegue of Erich Salomon. Unlike Salomon, he escaped the Holocaust, emigrated to the United States and began a second career as a photographer at the United Nations in New York. The Berlin State Image Archive, which acquired his Weimar works in 1968, is presenting Leo Rosenthal's court photographs for the first time in a lavishly illustrated publication.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2011

Reviews

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gelungener Bildband mit mir bislang unbekannten Fotografien aus dem Berlin der 20er Jahre. Im Mittelpunkt stehen berühmte Prozesse, wie zum Beispiel der Eden-Prozess, in dem Hitler aussagen musste. Viele der Verteidiger und der Beklagten wurden später von den Nazis verfolgt, mussten ins Ausland fliegen oder wurden ermordet.