Hanns Eisler in California and in East Berlin – Photos of Gerda Goedhart
Photographer Gerda Goedhart, who was born in Magdeburg (née Weimann, 1906-1993) spent more than three years in an internment camp in Japan towards the end of the Second World War before she was allowed to leave the country for California in 1946. There she met German emigrants Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler again, among others, whom she had previously met in exile in London. In California, she created a first series of photographs of Hanns Eisler, who at the time was going through a serious crisis as he was being investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC): Goedhart’s pictures show the composer pensive and weary outside the wooden house in Malibu on the Pacific coast where Hanns and Lou Eisler lived from 1945 to 1948.
