Wirtschaftswunder: Germany after the War 1952-1967 by Josef Heinrich Darchinger, Klaus Honnef & Frank Darchinger
oblong folio. pp. 288. English, French & German text. colour & b/w illustrations. chronology. biography. index. hardcover. dw. (near fine - foot of spine bit bumped). Koln: Taschen, [2008].
ISBN-10: 3836500191 / ISBN-13: 9783836500197
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Germany after the war 1952 - 1967 It was no more than eight years after the surrender of the Nazi government when Josef Heinrich Darchinger set out on his photographic journey through the West of a divided Germany. The bombs of World War II had reduced the country's major cities to deserts of rubble. Yet his pictures show scarcely any signs of the downfall of a civilization. Not that the photographer was manipulating the evidence: he simply recorded what he saw. At the time, a New York travel agency was advertising the last opportunity to go and visit the remaining bomb sites. Darchinger's pictures, in color and black-and-white, show a country in a fever of reconstruction. The economic boom was so incredible that the whole world spoke of an ""economic miracle."" The people who achieved it, in contrast, look down-to-earth, unassuming, conscientious, and diligent. And increasingly, they look like strangers in the world they have created.