Albert Hennig, Children picking up leftovers on the site of the Leipzig wholesale market
1928, Negative, black-and-white-photography, 9 x 6 cm
Inv. no. 2008/507/37/K2, acquired in 2009 from the community of heirs Albert and Edit Hennig
Albert Hennig grew up in a working-class family. His father-in-law was an active social democrat and established a contact with Richard Lehmann working as a journalist for the ‘Leipziger Volkszeitung’ and dedicated to the so-called ‘Kinderfreundebewegung’. This association organized lectures in order to propagate their progressive education ideas. Thus, Hennig was commissioned with his first assignment resulting into his well-known photo reportage ‘Kinder der Straße’ (children of the street). Sadly most of these pictures got lost in 1933 when the Nazis destroyed the Leipzig office of the Social Democratic Party. Nonetheless a few originals survived as part of the artist’s estate. When he applied at the Bauhaus he submitted these photos showing children of the street as well as further pictures illustrating the Leipzig working-class district. He convinced the admission committee with his experiments of New Vision, for example inclined perspectives or close-up.