Avraham Pisarek

Avraham Pisarek
Born	December 24, 1901 Przedbórz, Congress Poland
Died	April 24, 1983 West Berlin, West Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Photographer
Known for	Photograph of Wilhelm Pieck and Otto Grotewohl shaking hands during the merger ceremony of the KPD and SPD

Avraham Pisarek (24. December 1901 in Przedbórz, Congress Poland; died 24 April 1983 in West Berlin) was a Jewish-German photographer.

Biography

Avraham Pisarek was born the son of the Jewish merchant Berek Pisarek and his wife Sara in Congress Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. In Łódź he attended religious and middle school. In 1918/1919 he moved to Germany and worked there in a factory in Herne. In 1924 Pisarek left Germany in the direction of Mandatory Palestine as Khalutz (Hebrew: Pioneer) and worked there as a stonemason. Four years later, he returned to Germany after a short stay in France and settled in Berlin-Reinickendorf. Here he completed a photographic education and has since worked as a photographer for image publishers and the Berlin theatre community. His photos were published in the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung and in the Jewish press. In 1929 he joined the Reich Association of German Press. Pisarek's contacts with the KPD resulted in a collaboration with John Heartfield. He also became a member of the Photography Group Berlin-Nord. As a friend of Max Liebermann he frequented circles of important artists and writers of the Weimar Republic.

Since Pisarek was officially banned after the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933, he was allowed to work exclusively for the Jewish community. From then on he worked as a photographer to 1941 existing Jewish newspapers as well as for the Jewish Cultural Association of Berlin (where he photographed, among others, the pianist Grete Sultan). During this time, among other things, the only photos of the funeral Max Liebermann. In addition, he participated in the illegal anti-fascist work, which led to repeated arrests and summonses to the Gestapo. In 1936 he, his non-Jewish wife Gerda and their two children Georg and Ruth were expelled from the Reinickendorf apartment. They moved to Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin-Mitte. In May 1944, this apartment burned down.

After the final dissolution of all Jewish organizations in Germany in 1941, Pisarek was unemployed. He was drafted for forced labor and was inter alia used as an interpreter for Polish and Soviet forced laborers. An emigration to the USA failed. He survived the Nazi rule thanks to the Rosenstrasse protest.

After the war he worked as an interpreter for the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. He also resumed his activities as a reporter and in this way documented the "anti-fascist-democratic revolution" in the Soviet occupation zone and the founding of the GDR and its first years of construction. The photo series of the handshake of Otto Grotewohl and Wilhelm Pieck at the foundation congress of the SED, in which the SPD and KPD merged to form the SED. is one of his most famous photos. Numerous artist portraits, for example, those of Helene Weigel, Thomas Mann and Hanns Eisler, were created during this time. Since the end of the 1950s Pisarek turned almost exclusively to the theater photography. Avraham Pisarek died in West Berlin in 1983.

His photographic works are part of several archives, such as the German Photographic Library, the theatrical collections of the Foundation Stadtmuseum Berlin, the Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts, the photo agencies akg-images and ullstein bild, and the image archive Prussian Cultural Heritage.