HUMSS - Sabine Hake

On Arbeitsfreude (Joy in Work): The Worker in Nazi-Era Industrial Photography

Arbeitsfreude (joy in work) was a key term in the reorganization of labor and industry after 1933. It played a central role in the discourse of Arbeitertum and informed many initiatives by the Office “Beauty of Labor.” But how was joy in work made visible and readable? How did the image of the worker establish joy in work as both a requirement of productivity and an expression of community? And how did industrial photography contribute to the biopolitical project of the Nazi racial state and its obsession with joy and pride in particular? Last but not least, what is the significance of beauty in the containment of labor and class? Two photobooks will be used to address these larger questions: Paul Wolff’s Arbeit! (1934), an homage to the beauty of the machine typical of Nazi Sachlichkeit, and Erna Lendvai-Dirksen’s Arbeit formt das Gesicht (1938), a physiognomy of work in line with Weimar-era approaches to social photography.