German Photographer Hilmar Pabel
Hilmar Pabel (* 17 September 1910 in Rawitsch, Province of Posen) was a German journalist, photographer, and initiator of the Red Cross’s search for children after the Second World War. Despite his participation in the war propaganda of National Socialism, he can be regarded as one of the most important German representatives of humanistic, enlightened press photography.
The son of a merchant, he began taking photographs in 1924 at the age of fourteen. In 1929, he learned photography at the Agfa photo school in Berlin. From 1930 to 1935, he studied German language and literature, philosophy, and newspaper science at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin with Emil Dovifat. He then worked freelance for various newspapers, such as the Illustrirte Zeitung. German Passport Propaganda Photographer
NS Propaganda Photographer German Photographer Hilmar Pabel
During the Second World War, he worked as a war correspondent and photographer for a propaganda company. Among other things, he photographed in the Lublin ghetto. These photographs were also published with anti-Semitic captions. At the end of the war, he was a prisoner of war for a short time.
In 1945, he worked for the Bavarian Red Cross and was one of the initiators of their search for children. In this context, he himself photographed over 2000 children to locate their parents or relatives. In 1947, he took his series of pictures Heimkehrer, for which he accompanied a war returnee with his camera.
Post War
Pabel later worked for the magazine Quick, for which he traveled to the GDR, Nepal, Indonesia, Japan, China, Taiwan, numerous African states, the USSR, and the United States. By the 50s and 60s, his reputation had recovered, and his works were published by Life, Paris Match, and Stern.
In 1961, he was awarded the Culture Prize of the German Society for Photography. 1961-1970 he worked as a photographer for Stern. For the magazine, he created an impressive picture series during the Vietnam War (The Little Orchid, 1964 and Thuan May Live Again, 1968) and during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. After 1970, he worked again as a freelance photographer.
He married the author and journalist, Romy Schurhammer, in 1963. Andrea Pabel, riding instructor, children’s and horse book author, is one of his two daughters.
Pabel was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon and later the 1st Class, which he returned in 1987. The reason was a fine imposed on his daughter for her participation in a sit-in blockade of the access road to the American Pershing II depot on the Mutlanger Heide in the course of the peace movement. German Photographer Hilmar Pabel
Pabel passed away at age 90 in 2000.
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