Friedrich Seidenstücker

Friedrich Seidenstücker (1882-1966) is the flaneur among Berlin photographers.  As a 22 year-old trained mechanical engineer, he came to the German capital where he worked as an airplane constructor with Zeppelin AG in Potsdam during the First World War.  He cultivated his eye for detail in another regard as well, as a precise chronicler with the camera.  At 32, he began another course of studies in sculpture, but always kept turning back to his other passion, photography, which he finally made a profession in 1930 upon signing a contract with Ullstein publishing.  From then on, he worked for magazines such as Der Querschnitt (The Profile), Illustrierte Zeitung (Iluustrated Newspaper), UHU, Die Neue Linie (The New Line), Die Dame (The Lady) and Die Woche (The Weekly).  Above all, Seidenstücker became famous for his awareness of every day life, pictures from the Berliner zoo and nude photographs.  Similar to Herbert List in Munich, Richard Peter in Dresden or Hermann Claasen in Cologne, he strikingly documented the post-war ruins of Berlin.  What interested him overridingly was the unspectacular, the charm of the second glance. 

Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch