Erich Schutt

Erich Schutt (21 June 1931 – 19 November 2023) was a German photographer and photo-journalist. He was at his most prolific in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany: 1949–1989) during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Since German reunification in 1990, his work has continued to draw interest and to feature in exhibition displays, as many of the subjects that he photographed, from the lignite-fuelled power station Vetschauvast on the edge of his home town to the traditional Sorbian artefacts and costumery that were still relatively mainstream during the middle decades of the twentieth century, retreat rapidly beyond living memory.

Life and works

Erich Schutt was born at Vetschau in the flatlands west of Cottbus about eighteen months before the Hitler government took power. Fifty years earlier the region had been overwhelmingly Sorbian speaking, but in the German countryside, as in the remoter corners of France, Belgium, and Britain, the centralising nationalism of the age meant that use of regional languages was powerfully discouraged. Nevertheless, Schutt's mother Anna, who kept the house and looked after the little animals accommodated in the garden in case of special meals, is described as "Sorbian". His father, Alfred Schutt, worked at Vetschau station, where he was responsible for looking after the points on the track. As a school boy Schutt was already taking photographs round the town with the camera "Agfa Box" he had received as a particularly lavish birthday present,

Schutt's career as a photo-journalist began in 1952 when he was approached by a local newspaper editor and accepted an invitation to become a part-time photo-reporter for the . His first commission involved a visit to a garden festival at Forst, since 1945 a border town, some 35 km / 20 miles to the east, beyond Cottbus. The route was nevertheless relatively level, which was important for a photo-journalist whose sole means of travel was his bicycle. The recently launched Brandenburgische Neueste Nachrichten was a stand-alone and modestly equipped publication, and on getting home to Vetschau later that day Schutt went straight back to the photography department of "Spreewald-Drogerie Petzold", the specialist shop where he was employed, in order to develop his film and print off the pictures, which he was able to deliver to his editor's desk the next day.

In 1966, at the conclusion of a three-year distance learning course of study, Schutt obtained a degree in Journalism at the specialist attached to the University of Leipzig, widely seen as the most prestigious university-level institution for training journalists in a country which attached great importance to "training" its journalists. Commentators note that during his career Schutt consciously tried to avoid photographing carefully staged "press photograph" scenes.

Alongside published volumes of his pictures, Schutt's work continues to feature in public exhibitions. In 2012 more than eighty of his photographs were included in an exhibition at the Wendish Museum in Cottbus. Although his work occasionally also appears at international exhibitions, the entire body of what can readily be lumped together and categorised dismissively as the party sponsored photo-journalism of East Germany still attracts relatively little interest or recognition among commentators outside Germany.

Memberships

Schutt was a member of various organisations and associations, including the short-lived East German of leading East German photojournalists, the Photography Commission of the Cultural Association of the GDR,

Published output (selection)

Thomas Kläber, Norbert Krauzig und Erich Schutt: Cottbus – Schöne Seiten einer Stadt. ALfa-Verlag, Cottbus 2002, ISBN 3-935513-05-4 Erich Schutt: Cottbus 1950 – 1995. Steffen-Verlag, Cottbus 2011, ISBN 978-3-940101-94-5 Erich Schutt: Fotografien der Niederlausitz 1948–1991. Domowina-Verlag, Bautzen 2012, ISBN 978-3-7420-2214-1