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.59In fact, she and Margot Monnier worked very closely to put picturesand texts together: a letter from Monnier to Kurt Orgel in October1944 described how the two women had Purper s pictures all over thefloor in Purper s quarters in Osterburg while Monnier composed thetexts.60 Moreover, Purper s diaries and letters underline how far herprivately expressed views were in tune with the message her photo-graphs were used to project.Purper supported Nazi conquests and theidea of a Greater German Reich.She wrote in 1940 of her joy to see herbirthplace Strasbourg back under German rule, and in 1943 how sherebuked inhabitants of Tirol who did not regard themselves as being from the Reich.61 She was enthusiastic about Himmler s resettlementprogramme.Having visited Volhynian German settlers in their newhomes in occupied Poland in October 1940, she echoed in her diaryentry the clichés used in the Nazi press about settlers setting an exam-ple to other Germans: she commented on how  grateful the VolhynianGermans were to be  on German soil again and how their  readiness tomake sacrifices puts us to shame.62Just as the enthusiasm that Purper expressed privately about Germanyand its conquests was in accord with the message that her images were198 Elizabeth HarveyFigure 9.6 Romanian women ambulance driversSource: Photo by Liselotte Purper (1942).Courtesy of Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz.meant to promote, so her own tastes underpinned the drive to deliverwhat was required: she enjoyed finding and photographing the attrac-tive faces and athletic bodies that the illustrated press expected.ForPurper, as it seems to have been for Steinhoff and Schmachtenberger, itSeeing the World 199was axiomatic that images of attractive women were needed to sum upwhichever theme she happened to be documenting.For Purper, a suc-cessful photoshoot of Labour Service girls meant lining up the entirecamp and picking out the photogenic faces to photograph on the spotbefore the sun went in.63 Following a troublesome session in January1943 in the freezing cold taking pictures at the airfield near Lembergin the General Government, she commented  our women could havebeen a lot better looking, but there was nothing to be done aboutthat.64 Aspiring herself to the tanned, sportif look, she was captivatedby the sight of bronzed and gilded youth.Photographing snow scenesin February 1944 in Tirol, she wrote:  there are very very good-lookingpeople here, wonderfully well-dressed and chic.Most people here areexcellent skiers, the girls too.With short curly hair, slim and supple,swooping towards us, they re a real joy to the eye. 65 To Purper s delight,in 1944 she had her first cover image with a major illustrated periodi-cal: a photograph of Norwegian girls that appeared on the cover of theforeign edition of the Hamburger Illustrierte to go with a feature insideentitled  curly-headed blondes from the North ( blonde Wuschelköpfe ausdem Norden ).66Having traversed the Nazi empire at its zenith in 1942, by 1944 Purper sworld was getting smaller as the borders of the Reich drew inwards, andever more focused on the local.Having been bombed out of her flat inBerlin in November 1943, she was by now renting a couple of roomsin the small rural town of Osterburg near Berlin.Turning down offersof assignments to document young women working in munitions fac-tories that involved travelling by train in the midst of bombing raids,Purper preferred in the final months of the war to stay close to home.In Osterburg, she began to take photographs against payment in kind:she cultivated the local mayor s family by taking portraits of them alland was invited there for meals in exchange.67 As long as she had photo-graphic supplies, Purper could provide a desired commodity at a time ofgeneral shortages: portraits of loved ones in a time of chaos and danger.At the same time, images conjuring up a Heimat that was intact, time-less and expansive acquired a heightened value.As the supply of newimages dwindled, the press was content to recycle old ones.A phototaken by Purper of Tirol in February 1944 was published the followingwinter by the Luftwaffe newspaper Luftwaffenkurier-Ost, and Purper anda journalist friend exchanged notes in November 1944 about how theycould carry on for several months drawing on their stock of old work.68Meanwhile, Purper consoled herself with photos she had taken earlier inthe war from all corners of the then far-flung Reich.In her own  bunker200 Elizabeth Harveyin Osterburg, she hung round the walls of her bedroom a panorama ofthe Greater German Reich and conjured it up in a description for Kurt:There is the Black Sea, the Baltic, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Carinthia,the High Tatras, there is Goethe s river Ilm and Strassburg s river Ill.And when I lie in bed looking at the pictures I find myself in ourwhole wonderful Greater German Reich.No sense of being hemmedin, just glorious  and I am completely happy! Then I think of theterrible war and am completely unhappy.69ConclusionPurper was convinced that attractive photographs contributed impor-tantly to the war effort and to the maintenance of German power.She was captivated by the spectacle of Germany at its most powerful,and her frieze of the Greater German Reich at its zenith cheered herin the dark days of 1944.Meanwhile, she did her best to keep at baythe thought of the  terrible war which had destroyed her home, killedher brother and would in February 1945 also bring the death of herhusband.The case of Purper sheds light both on a female presence in the Nazipress world, and on the way in which the regime´s propaganda about the new Europe was produced and disseminated.Like Schmachtenbergerand Steinhoff, Purper carved out a niche in wartime by covering lifeaway from the front line within an expanded Greater German Reichand further afield.Their focus tended to be on  life-enhancing and positive scenes.A characteristic theme of their coverage was a newtype of international fascist womanhood embodying the Nazi ideal,combining caring femininity and a regard for authentic cultural tra-ditions with combative efficiency and a new body culture.Variouslyattired in uniform, folk costume or sports gear, these were the inter-national poster girls for the Nazi New Order in Europe [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]