09. Factory Apartments

Like hardly anyone else Ballhause has a sense of proletarian life as not only a deformed, negative one, but in the poverty and uniformity of the environment he tracks down forces and hidden reserves. [...] So he lets his gaze rest on a line of row houses or he takes in streets in symmetrical axes, which despite the smallness of the buildings have a peculiar charisma.

(Beicken, Peter, in: Solidarisches Sehen oder Weimars Ende in Hannover. Der Arbeiterfotograf Walter Ballhause, in: Die Horen, 27th year, vol. 2 (1982), issue 126, p. 63–70)

09.01 / Residential areas in the Ruhr region

[Photo taken: Ruhrort (Duisburg), August 1930]

09.02.01 / Residential area behind the Hanomag (Hanover)

[Photo taken: Göttinger Straße, Hanover, April 1931]

09.02.02 / The water supply (Hanomag factory apartments)

[Photo taken: Göttinger Straße, Hanover, April 1931]

09.02.03 / Backyard (factory apartments)

"This whole group of houses – which is practically a giant rectangle – was founded on the occasion of the cotton spinning mill and the mechanical weaving mill. So these were factory flats, just as the "Little Romania" district was created when Hanomag was founded. At that time there were not enough workers, so foreign workers were brought in and settled there. [...] And in the backyard it looked like this – that was the toilet facility for the entire settlement."
(Walter Ballhause in the documentary film "Linden – Ein Arbeiterlied", Wallat, Winfried / Jost, Wolfgang, Lumiére-Film Produktion, 1991)

[Photo taken: Fannystraße (Fannystraße was between Mathildenstraße and Fortunastraße. The workers' housing blocks of the Mechanical Weaving Mill and the Cotton Mill were demolished and the street was built over with high-rise buildings), Hanover, March 1931]

09.02.04 / A child is thirsty (Hanomag factory apartments)

Some images, however, have an inherent unsettling or biting quality that makes them individually sufficient. […] And one of Ballhause's most poignant portraits, that of a child whose survival seems dependent on the faint drip of a tap in the street, suggests a retrospective self-portrait. The atmospheric images of workers' housing deviate from the VdAFD's demand not to document conditions in an aestheticising and immediate way; they meet the need for effective images. Ballhause's photograph of the child sucking life from the well, or that of children playing in straight avenues, testify to the powerful combination of political and artistic consciousness. The resulting images are both compelling and touching, they are visually powerful as well as socially critical statements.
(Ollmann, Leah, in: A Vision of the Working Class. The Photographic Work of Walter Ballhause, 1987)

[Photo taken: Göttinger Straße, Hanover, June/July 1931]

09.02.05 / Thirst quenched (Hanomag factory apartments)

[Photo taken: Göttinger Straße, Hanover, June/July 1931]

09.03 / Lonely girl (Hanomag factory apartments)

[Photo taken: Hanover, April 1931]