Heinrich Hauser - Schwarzes Revier ("Black Ruhr Area") - 1930

VERY IMPORTANT and SCARCE GERMAN PHOTOBOOK by Heinrich Hauser (1901-1955), well-known German writer, journalist, sailor, globetrotter, farmer and photographer:

The Open Book, Hasselblad Center, page 96/97

Beside "Metal" by Germaine Krull, "Fabrik" by Jakob Tuggener, "Arbeit" by Paul Wolff, "Deutsche Arbeit" by E.O. Hoppe and "Eisen und Stahl" by Albert Renger-Patzsch one of the best books ever published with industrial photos.

Heinrich Hauser joined the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1925. He wrote numerous essays, travel reports and novels. He was particularly interested in the relationship between man and technology, city and country. He is considered a representative of the New Objectivity movement and was particularly successful with the public as a talented storyteller in the 1930s. He was awarded the Gerhart Hauptmann Prize for Literature in 1928 for his second novel Brackwasser. In the same year, he produced his photo reportage "Schwarzes Revier" on a 6000 kilometre car journey through the Ruhr region, which is characterised by industry and coal mining.

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S. Fischer Verlag, 1930. First edition, first printing.

Original red linen with black letters. 235 x 157 mm. 149 pages. 127 black and white photographs. Photos and text: Heinrich Hauser. Text in German.

Condition:
Inside fresh and flawless, clean with no marks (often with marks) and with no foxing (often foxed); at the rear side of the front cover with a small rest of a deleted paper/sticker, no other remarkable flaws or defects. the first of two blank pages is missing (cutted), no other remarkable flaws or defects. Outside with trace of use; small stains on the rear side, partly darkened on the front (see pictures). Overall fine condition.

Scarce German photobook - hard to find in any condition.

"Heinrich Hauser was the son of the Berlin paediatrician Otto Hauser (born 1862) and the musician Margareta Marta von Scheel (1875-1935), who came from a Danish aristocratic family. Heinrich Hauser grew up with his mother in Weimar after his parents divorced in 1911. He entered the Mürwik Naval School as a cadet in 1918 with his ‘Reifezeugnis für Oberprima’. There and then in Hamburg, he witnessed the events of the revolution. Back in Thuringia, he became a member of the Maercker Free Corps, which was initially ordered to Weimar to protect the National Assembly. In Halle, Magdeburg and Braunschweig, he was involved in the Freikorps‘ civil war against the fighters of the Workers’ and Soldiers' Council. He then worked as a trainee engineer in a steelworks in Duisburg-Ruhrort. Hauser had to abandon his engineering studies due to the consequences of an accident at work. At the beginning of 1920, he spent a few months on board Lieutenant Captain Lahs' “Iron Flotilla” and experienced the fringes of the Kapp Putsch, with which he sympathised.
From 1920 to 1922, Hauser worked in various fields and studied medicine for several semesters in Jena and Rostock. In the meantime, he was temporarily employed as a labourer at the blast furnace of the Rheinische Stahlwerke. From 1922 to 1924, Heinrich Hauser was a light seaman and sailor on merchant ships in the Mediterranean and on the Australia and East Asia voyages. In 1925, he moved from Wustrow to Frankfurt/Main, where he worked in the features section of the renowned Frankfurter Zeitung. There he was a member of the newspaper's inner editorial circle for some time. His first novel Das zwanzigste Jahr (The Twentieth Year) was published by Gustav Kiepenheuer in 1925.
He was married five times, including to two Jewish women whom he helped to flee Germany. In Wustrow in the winter of 1922/23, Hauser met Hedwig Zangen, Hedwig Woermann's foster daughter, whom he married shortly afterwards.
Hauser had two children. His marriage to Anna Luise, née Block, gesch. Duisberg (1896-1982), a daughter of Josef Block, had a daughter, Helene. Huc Hauser was born in 1933 from his marriage to Ursula Bier. Ulrich Hauser is his great-nephew.
In 1933, Hauser briefly sympathised with National Socialism. Shortly after the ‘seizure of power’, he demanded that S. Fischer Verlag preface his book ‘Ein Mann lernt fliegen’ with the dedication ‘Hermann Göring, dem ersten deutschen Luftfahrtminister, Sieg Heil!’ Heinrich Hauser's renunciation of National Socialism began with Adolf Hitler's dictate that Hindenburg should be buried in Tannenberg in 1934 rather than in his home town, as he had stipulated in his will. Hauser then shifted his writing activities to neutral topics such as travelogues and industrial reports. He went into exile in the USA in 1939, but his politically unsuspicious books continued to be published in Germany, such as The Last Sailing Ships.
Shortly before Germany's capitulation, he published The German Talks Back in the USA, a sensational attempt at the time to distance the ‘real Germany’ from the Nazi state.
Hauser returned to Germany in 1948 and became editor-in-chief of the magazine Stern, which had just been founded by Henri Nannen, for a few months.
In his science fiction novel Gigant Hirn (orig. The Brain, EVÖ Amazing Stories, October 1948, which was only published posthumously in Germany and is set in the USA in 1975, a machine is built that is simply called the ‘brain’ and is supposed to control all military and civilian life. However, the intelligence of the ‘brain’ takes on a life of its own and becomes a threat because it wants to ensure its own survival and found an empire based on the rule of machines. The scientist Semper Fidelis Lee finally succeeds in preventing the catastrophe.
Heinrich Hauser is known for his involvement with Adam Opel AG both before the war and during the period of the economic miracle. In three independent works as well as other reportages and book chapters, Hauser describes automobile production in Rüsselsheim and at the suppliers. In 1936, Am Laufenden Band was published as a reportage on Opel's automobile production, which had been under American ownership (General Motors) since 1929 and modelled on the American model. Opel, ein deutsches Tor zur Welt (Opel, a German gateway to the world), the commemorative publication for the 100th birthday of Adam Opel and the 75th anniversary of the Opel plant, appeared in 1939. The following year, he published Im Kraftfeld von Rüsselsheim (1940). In it, he describes the German automotive industry in its pre-war heyday. In Unser Schicksal - Die Deutsche Industrie (1952), he dedicates a chapter to Opel after reconstruction. Since the middle of the past decade, Hauser has experienced a renaissance in reception, which was partly due to the crisis at Opel and the parent company GM and resulted in several publications about the work as well as new publications of Hauser's works."
(Wikipedia)