‘Die neue Frau on April Fools’: Photography, Photomontage, and the Rhetoric of Objectivity in the Weimar Illustrierten

Each April 1st in Weimar Germany, the popular glossy German tabloids known as Illustrierte published a series of mischievous April fool jokes. In this annual game of discerning the real news from the fake, prominent magazines tricked readers unable or unwilling to exercise their critical faculties by interspersing manipulated photographs amid the familiar array of advertisements, serialized novels, puzzles, and articles of the Illustrierten. Often critiqued as manipulating their naïve readers, the magazines’ use of fake photographs and the mixed message of their satirical sight gags astutely comment on the notion that “the camera does not lie.” Their interweaving with serious photojournalism pieces complicates the arguments of critics that the Illustrierten were exclusively naïve purveyors of distraction. Far from being trivial, April fool jokes reflect and refract the obsessions of Weimar popular culture with such modern themes as the proliferation of mass entertainment, changes in gender identity, and the emergence of the media figure of the New Woman.

MagilowProfessor Daniel Magilow is Associate Professor of German at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Dr. Magilow’s research interests include Holocaust Studies, Weimar Germany, and the History of Photography. He is the author, editor, and translator of four books: Holocaust Representations in History: An Introduction (co-authored with Lisa Silverman, Bloomsbury, 2015) The Photography of Crisis: The Photo Essays of Weimar Germany (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Culture and Cinema (co-edited with Elizabeth Bridges and Kristin T. Vander Lugt, Continuum Books, 2011) and In Her Father’s Eyes: A Childhood Extinguished by the Holocaust (Rutgers University Press, 2008). He has also published several articles about atrocity photography, Holocaust memorials, exile literature, and German film. He serves as Managing Editor of the Journal of Jewish Identities.

November 9 at 4:15 PM | 241 Hollander Hall

* Sponsored by Department of German and Russian, History, and Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures & Cultures