From Documenting War to Celebrating Life: The Story of a German-American Immigrant Who Photographed Three Generations of Chicagoans

Join us live as American filmmaker John Heinsen offers insights into the spectacular photographic legacy of his grandfather Walter A. Heinsen at the DANK Haus in Chicago.

Walter A. Heinsen (1899–1984) began his career at the age of 16 as a German war photographer in France. He fled the turmoil of the Weimar Republic and finally emigrated from Hamburg to the USA in 1923. Over the following 50 years, with his patented “Bunnygraph” he established himself as one of Chicago's most successful children's photographers.

For John Heinsen, presenting his grandfather's 100-year-old war photos symbolises honouring all veterans of the First World War. In doing so, he continually searches for the families of the first American prisoners of war captured in 1917 during the Battle of Cambrai. In 2018, for example, he located relatives of a British soldier shown in one of Walter A. Heinsen's prisoner-of-war photographs and gave them the photograph. Through John Heinsen's commitment, Walter A. Heinsen's war photographs thus take on new meanings – those of visual memory and of human connection.

The event will be held in English as a live stream via Zoom.

Please send us an email to info@amerikazentrum.org with the subject “Walter A. Heinsen” if you would like to take part in the live stream. We will then send you the Zoom link.

A cooperation event with the DANK Haus.