Preparing and Training the Occupier’s Gaze.
Photobooks as Tools of Political Propaganda in WWII

Whenever Germany tried to expand its territory under the National Socialist regime, the according political and military actions had to be prepared by a fitting propaganda. This can be traced even before WWII with the annexation of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia and it becomes evident with the countries occupied during the years 1940 to 1944, especially with Scandinavia and Greece. Part of these propagandist attempts are books with photographic illustrations, from the small pieces of the so-called ‘Rucksackliteratur’ (backpack literature) to large coffee-table volumes for the officials in higher ranks. Combined with a well-organized amateur photography, these books formed the vision of the average soldier who was accompanied on his travels with a camera and collected his memories in personal albums. The lecture will follow several examples of these complex relations with a concentration on the author’s research in Greece.

Rolf Sachsse is an art and photography historian and curator based in Bonn. The son of a photographer, he trained at the studio Schmölz+Huth in Cologne and holds a PhD in architectural photography. He was part of the curatorial team for "Color in Photography” in Cologne in 1981. From 1985 to 2004, he was Professor of Photography and Electronic Image Media at the Design Faculty of the Hochschule Niederrhein, in Krefeld. Since 1995, he has been Associate Professor at the Karlsruhe State College of Design; from 2004 to 2017, Professor of the History and Theory of Design at the Saar University of Fine Arts, in Saarbrücken; and from 2018 to 2025, Lecturer in Digital Curation for Museum Studies at the University of Bonn.

His publications include (selection): “Perception, Propaganda and Photography. Notes on the Image Policy of the National Socialist State”, in: Filter – for fotografi Copenhagen/Berlin #8/2026, pp. 38-47; “Assailants’ Gazes. Photographs of German Occupation Soldiers in Thessaloniki and Macedonia”, in: Xenia Eleftheriou (ed.), Occupiers‘ Snapshots 1941-1944, The Assael Collection, exhibition catalogue: Jewish Museum, Thessaloniki, 2024, pp. 24-49; Fotografie. Vom technischen Bildmittel zur Krise der Repräsentation, Cologne 2003; Die Erziehung zum Wegsehen, Photographie im NS-Staat, Berlin/Dresden 2003.

For further details, see: https://www.rolfsachsse.de/english/