01. Unemployment

01.03.01 / Queue of unemployed people stamping in the yard of the Hanover Employment Office (Votes Hitler)

This picture with the diagonally intersecting, ascending snake of the unemployed and this wall inscription seems like a synopsis of the time shortly before the seizure of power. [...] The queue of the unemployed captured photographically by Ballhause reflects the situation of the unemployed in Germany and in Hanover in several ways. We see the unemployed not in front of the employment office as they were in the 1920s, but in a courtyard of the former barracks complex, which had been opened in view of the enormous number of people waiting, endangering traffic on Königsworther Platz. The fact that the unemployed formed such long queues at all was due to the general increase in the number of unemployed in the crisis year of 1932, who had to report to the labour office every day since 1930, separated according to workers, employees, men, women and young people. Only the stamp that one received there entitled one to receive the benefit [...]. In addition to this, all unemployed persons were obliged to report to their competent employment agency at least once a week [translated from German].
(Boström, Jörg: Arbeitslos – Die Wirtschaftskrise in den Fotografien Walter Ballhause, in: Das Jahrhundert der Bilder 1900 bis 1949: Paul, Gerhard/ed., Göttingen 2009, pp. 404–411)

[Photo taken: Employment Office, Königsworther Platz 1, Hanover, March/April 1932]

01.03.02 / Queue of unemployed stamping in the yard of the Hanover employment office

[Photo taken: Employment Office, Königsworther Platz 1, Hanover, May 1932].

01.04 / Unemployed people in front of the employment office - stamped for doing nothing

[Six unemployed people] on a street bench, four are looking out of the picture to the right, but one is holding his head in his hands and looking at the ground, the other two are sitting in the opposite direction. At the top left, the wheel of a cart pulled by a man, of whom only the legs can be seen. Tram tracks running parallel to the upper edge of the picture, cobblestones, an empty square. The point of view is that of a viewer looking down from above, but from a natural perspective, that of one who is standing. The unrelated sitting, staring, the isolation clearly reflect the lot of the unemployed. The picture remains without a horizon, but the expectation of the men looking out of the picture is towards such a horizon. In terms of content, in terms of composition, the picture speaks about change. It goes beyond social documentation when it adds to the factual the necessity of a search for perspective, a possibility of change [translated from German].
(Beicken, Peter, in: Solidarisches Sehen oder Weimars Ende in Hannover. Der Arbeiterfotograf Walter Ballhause, in: Die Horen, 27th year, vol. 2 (1982), Issue 126, pp. 63–70)

[Photo taken: Labour Office, Königsworther Platz 1, Hanover, July/August 1930]

01.05 / Unemployed spectators during road construction in front of the employment office

Picture 18 of the commissioned reportage "One in a million. 22 pictures from the everyday life of the unemployed locksmith Karl Döhler in Hanover".

[Photo taken: Königsworther Platz, in the background the employment office, Hanover, June/July 1932]

01.06 / Unemployed spectators on changing tires

[Photo taken: Hanover, May 1932]

01.07 / Unemployed carpenters meet

[Photo taken: Neues Rathaus, Trammplatz 2, Hanover, between March and June 1933]

01.08 / Killing time

[Photo taken: Neues Rathaus, Trammplatz 2, Hanover, March 1933]

01.09 / Slept through the time

[Photo taken: Neues Rathaus, Trammplatz 2, Hanover, March 1933]

01.10 / The time doze off

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

01.11 / The extra income of the unemployed (Imi advertisement)

"The people covered by the advertisements were unemployed. They were trying to earn a few pennies on top of their support. Why did they make themselves available? Because they were not recognised and could not expect any reduction in their benefits. To the owner, this seemed very expedient, because this kind of lively advertising gave him the opportunity to continue his business, because it was the time of mass bankruptcies."
(Walter Ballhause 1987, in: Interview with Ernst-Michael Stiegler (excerpts published in: Niedersachsen 6/87, p. 296 ff.))

When there is advertising in costume, one is far removed from the experiments of the Bauhaus artists: the image tells the viewer that no better work could be found. This masquerade is like a mockery.
(Fries, Fritz Rudolf, in: Überflüssige Menschen. Fotografien und Gedichte aus der Zeit der großen Krise, Leipzig 1981, p. 272)

[Photo taken: Hanover, March/April 1932]

01.12 / Hopeless old employee

[Photo taken: Neues Rathaus, Trammplatz 2, Hanover, March 1933]

01.13 / Turn your fingers

[Photo taken: Hanover, March 1933]

01.14 / The disgruntled

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

01.15 / Schwarzer Krauser

While the [...] negative has a homogenous-diffuse lighting mood, the upper half of the picture in the positive print for the album has been brightened considerably with the effect that the man's dark clothing stands out more clearly against the now overlit background. This greatly increases the contrast in the picture. As the background of the picture loses additional detail in this way, the viewer's gaze is drawn more strongly to the person. Such striking differences in the way the light is directed in the comparison between the negative and the photographic print are particularly noteworthy because Ballhause's photographic style has so far been defined in texts about him exclusively by parameters in the photographic situation, such as the use of the hard and sharply contrasting light of the low sun. A look at the negative as the raw version of the picture, however, reveals that such style-defining characteristics of the lighting in this and also some other cases were only significantly intensified in the darkroom or produced there at all. The handling and conscious design of light is a central characteristic of Ballhause's photographic style.
On the level of coherence of content, there is a close relationship of motifs to the idly waiting ones of the pages already preceding in the album. The serial multiplication of the theme of waiting unmistakably implies that what we see here is not a leisurely rest full of obligation, but - quite the opposite - impatience and dissatisfaction due to an acute lack of prospects in life. Without the multiple repetition, such a situation as that of the pipe smoker could well be misunderstood as an isolated single image. But the thematic linking in the album, which is created by the succession of the pictures, accomplishes this task, and further sources secure this form of picture exegesis. The connotation with the theme of poverty is also made clear by Walter Ballhause's commentary on this picture on an audio taken in 1987: "Schwarzer Krauser - Der billigste Tabak für einen Arbeitslosen" / "Schwarzer Krauser - The Cheapest Tobacco for an Unemployed Man" (tape recording of interview with Michael Stiegler, 1987).
(Naumann, Christoph, 2021)

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

01.16.01 / Unemployed and homeless (on the fairground)

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

01.16.02 / Unemployed and homeless (on the fairground)

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

01.16.03 / Jobless and homeless (on the fairground) apart

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

01.17.01 / The carpenter reading

The reading unemployed, a motif in Ballhause's work that also suggests the passing of time experienced differently from working, is like a self-portrait. Among the young Ballhause's "universities" was a book by Erich Knauf, published in 1928 with the title "Empörung und Gestaltung - Künstlerprofile von Daumier bis Kollwitz". Knauf, who was cultural editor of the social democratic newspaper in Plauen, was executed in 1944. If one wants to bring order to Ballhause's photographs, one can underlay them with what Knauf showed: in Millet, melancholy in accusation; in Daumier, the physiognomy of the fourth estate, the smouldering revolution; in Steinlen, sympathy with the victims of civilisation; in Käthe Kollwitz, the hope of mothers, the longing for a state of nature of the unexploited human being.
(Fries, Fritz Rudolf, in: Überflüssige Menschen. Fotografien und Gedichte aus der Zeit der großen Krise, Leipzig 1981, p. 271)

[Photo taken: Neues Rathaus, Trammplatz 2, Hanover, March 1933]

01.17.02 / The carpenter reading (hat off)

[Photo taken: Neues Rathaus, Trammplatz 2, Hanover, March 1933]

01.18 / The fish snake

[Photo taken: Hanover, April/May 1932]

01.19 / Locksmith Karl Döhler

Picture 1 of the commissioned reportage "One in a million. 22 pictures from the everyday life of the unemployed locksmith Karl Döhler in Hanover".

This avoidance of the direct gaze of the photographed into the apparatus reveals parallels to declared design principles of organised labour photography: It aims to preserve the impression in the situation not altered or even posed by the presence of the photographer, so as not to weaken the appearance of evidence and authenticity. […]
Even in his only posed series, a commissioned reportage for the magazine "Der Kuckuck" about the everyday life of an unemployed person, which he staged with his actually unemployed friend Karl Döhler, Ballhause consistently pursues the postulate of the "gaze ban". He discards two frontal portrait photos with camera gaze that can be made out on the negatives and does not make any paper prints of them.
(Naumann, Christoph, in: Das Auge des Arbeiters. Arbeiterfotografie und Kunst um 1930, Leipzig 2014, p. 98)

01.20 / Mrs Döhler

Picture 2 of the commissioned reportage "One in a million. 22 pictures from the everyday life of the unemployed locksmith Karl Döhler in Hanover".

01.21 / Son Herbert Döhler

Picture 3 of the commissioned reportage "One in a million. 22 pictures from the everyday life of the unemployed locksmith Karl Döhler in Hanover".

01.22 / The picturesque residential district

Picture 4 of the commissioned reportage "One in a million. 22 pictures from the everyday life of the unemployed locksmith Karl Döhler in Hanover".

[Photo taken: Rote Reihe, Hanover]

01.23 / Mountain air of the backyards

Picture 5 of the commissioned reportage "One in a million. 22 pictures from the everyday life of the unemployed locksmith Karl Döhler in Hanover".