It was no more than 8 years after the surrender of the Nazi government when Josef Heinrich Darchinger set out on his photographic journey through the west of a divided Germany. The photographs portray a country caught between the opposite poles of technological modernism and cultural restoration, between affluence and penury. They show the winners and the losers of the 'economic miracle'.
Mit rund 600, großenteils nie zuvor veröffentlichten Farb- und Schwarz-Weiß-Fotos von Jupp, Frank und Marc Darchinger u. a. dokumentiert dieser prächtige Bildband 60 Jahre Arbeit der SPD-Bundestagsfraktion – einer der „politischen Werkstätten“ der Bundesrepublik. Man erhält auch Einblick in das, was normalerweise hinter verschlossenen Türen stattfindet. Ein Stück deutscher Demokratiegeschichte in großartigen Bildern. Dokumentiert werden die großen Momente der deutschen Nachkriegspolitik, die führenden Köpfe der SPD-Fraktion, ihre dramatischen Redeschlachten, die Wahl der Bundeskanzler und die Auslandskontakte der Parlamentarier, ferner der Fraktionsalltag im alten Plenarsaal in Bonn, der Umzug in den neuen Berliner Reichstag und die Arbeit im vereinigten Deutschland.
Germany after the war 1952 - 1967. It was no more than eight years after the surrender of the Nazi government when Josef Heinrich Darchinger set out on his photographic journey through the West of a divided Germany. The bombs of World War II had reduced the country's major cities to deserts of rubble. Yet his pictures show scarcely any signs of the downfall of a civilization. Not that the photographer was manipulating the evidence: he simply recorded what he saw. At the time, a New York travel agency was advertising the last opportunity to go and visit the remaining bomb sites. Darchinger's pictures, in color and black-and-white, show a country in a fever of reconstruction. The economic boom was so incredible that the whole world spoke of an "economic miracle." The people who achieved it, in contrast, look down-to-earth, unassuming, conscientious, and diligent. And increasingly, they look like strangers in the world they have created.
