Wirtschaftswunder

About this book

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 countrys 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. Darchingers 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.