LightBox Photographic Gallery

Hans Schaufus • Vestiges of East Germany

In September 1961 I was among 100,000 Army reservists called into active duty for the Berlin Crisis. Although our unit was never sent to Berlin, I decided upon my discharge to visit Berlin in the fall of 1963. I spent many hours tramping around the walled off Eastern Sector and was awed by the bleak landscape. I had not realized at the time that I would eventually return to Berlin to document the barren vestiges that still remained after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. During the winter months from 2006 until 2014 I had complete freedom to roam around the five eastern states and thereby bring a Cold War feel to the photographs. They capture the fast disappearing landscape of the failed regime. An accumulation of timely and diverse material was the result much of which conveyed the melancholy grayness of the former German Democratic Republic. This body of material led to a book published in Germany in 2015. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. I moved around in and around the US and Europe for a number of years, picked up an BA in History at the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico in 1972. Spent 25 years working at the Longview Public Library and was instrumental in creating the “Art at the Library” program. Retired in 2006. Spent the following six winters in eastern Germany as a street photographer documenting the changing landscape from the communist era. hans schaufus