Hans Gustav Casparius was born into a wealthy Jewish family in the textile trade in Berlin, Germany in 1900. A self-taught photographer, he originally worked as an actor, before collaborating with noted Weimar era director GW Pabst as a stills photographer; from the late 1920s Casparius made iconic photographic portraits of celebrated figures, including Sigmund Freud (1933), and travelled widely, creating short cultural documentaries. He immigrated to London in 1936 where he continued his film and photographic career.
Photographer Hans Gustav Casparius was born into a wealthy Jewish family in the textile trade in Berlin, Germany in 1900. Declining to join the family business after his father's death, Casparius initially worked in the Weimar film industry as an actor, appearing in small roles in several films (including Diary of a Lost Girl, directed by Weimar notable, GW Pabst, and starring Louise Brooks), while honing his photographic skills: he was largely self-taught behind the camera, aiming to capture action and the moment, rather than a staged pose. Through acting connections he gained photographic work, taking stills of Pabst's films, including White Hell of Piz Palu, starring Leni Riefenstahl, and Berthold Brecht's Threepenny Opera. He also created iconic portraits of contemporary film stars and cultural figures, including Louise Brooks (1928), Leni Riefenstahl (1929), Rabbi Leo Baeck, and Sigmund Freud (1933) – one of the few photographers to be granted a sitting with the great psychoanalyst. Casparius' own portrait was taken at this time by fellow German photographer, Gerty Simon, who emigrated to England in 1933 (Wiener Library Archives, London).
From the late 1920s Casparius photographed more widely, including capturing bustling Berlin in a series of striking black and white images. Visiting London to meet the editor of Close Up (1927–33), a progressive, international magazine 'devoted to film as an art', which wished to profile Casparius, he enthusiastically photographed street life in the capital. (British photographer, Humphrey Spender, of the British Mass Observation project in the 1930s cited Casparius as an influence on his work (Cosgrove, 2017). In the early 1930s Casparius was invited to accompany Berliner Tageblatt correspondent, Richard A. Bermann (alias Arnold Höllriegel) to west Africa to photograph and to make short documentaries. Casparius eventually made three trips with Höllriegel, including to Canada and the USA; most notably, during 1933, he worked on the film Nomads of the Desert, recording the expedition to the Libyan desert led by explorer and Sahara researcher, Ladislaus von Almásy (the character played by Ralph Fiennes in the film of Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient). On their return, Capsarius' photographs illustrated a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, London. With the election of Hitler as chancellor, Casparius decide not to return to Germany but relocated to Vienna, where he established a studio. Continuing to travel and photograph, in 1934 his images documenting the rise of Zionism in Palestine were published in Das Palestina-Bilder-Buch; he also revisited England, photographing Glyndebourne opera in Sussex, founded in the same year and which employed many émigré artistes.
Increasingly uneasy over the wider situation under National Socialism, in 1936 – the year after his marriage in Vienna – Casparius immigrated to England, with his wife, Monika, settling in London. Following the outbreak of war, Casparius was exempt from internment, his earlier photographic work in Africa proving useful to British intelligence. Other wartime projects included a propaganda film for the Free French and photographing the Luxembourg royal family in exile. Postwar, Casparius worked on a number of productions connected with childhood, including: The Young Traveller in London, which explored the city through the eyes of a young scots girl on her first visit; Simon (1954), a short, fictionalised study of a disabled boy, directed and scripted by German émigré theatre director, Peter Zadek (in which the young Sean Connery appeared), as well as several short films for children's and Christian charities in the 1960s (see BFI). In the mid 1950s Casparius formed the film company, Music in Miniature, with émigré musicologist Karl Haas as a musical adviser, making films in which music and image were imaginatively integrated; these included You take the High Road (1955), in which shots of the Scottish coast accompanied a score of traditional Scottish music. Casparius' varied photographic clients included Architectural Review, Architects' Journal, the Ham and High newspaper, Good Housekeeping magazine, and Fortnum and Mason – he photographed food for the latter two. In later life he founded London's European Liszt Centre. In 1978 his work was celebrated at the Berlin Film Festival, which showed two of his early films at the Staatliche Kunsthalle, while London's Goethe Institute and Photographers' Gallery presented an exhibition and accompanying catalogue. A larger than life character both physically and temperamentally, Casparius was noted for his conviviality, and was delighted to be elected to the very 'English' Reform Club in London. He died in north London in 1986. An active member of the Association of Jewish Refugees, his career was regularly followed by the AJR Information, in which he received full page memorials in August and September 1986. His photographic work is represented in UK collections including Tate and the Robert Elwall Photographs Collection at the RIBA.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hans Casparius]
Publications related to [Hans Casparius] in the Ben Uri Library