During the ’70s and ’80s, Harald Hauswald shot from the hip, secretly documenting life behind the Berlin Wall. For the rebel storyteller, whose work was smuggled out of the east and published in the west, photography was a way to hit back. Before long, the Stasi knew all about him.
Text & Photography Harald Hauswald
I was already quite rebellious as a teenager. I hitchhiked a lot in the GDR [East Germany], following rock bands. But I found photography through my father. He was a freelance photographer who shot passport pictures, wedding photos. He forced me to do an apprenticeship.
I started in 1970 but stopped and became a rock technician, then did various other jobs. Then came my army national service. I moved to Berlin in 1978 and worked as a telegram messenger in Prenzlauer Berg. That’s when my photography really started. It felt like another way to rebel.
I wanted to be able to travel to the west so, for appearance’s sake, I got engaged to a West Berlin woman. In the meantime, I met a woman in East Berlin with whom I really fell in love. We had a child, and I took a picture of my daughter in a shopping basket in a mall, which became my first published picture. I gave it to my ‘ex’ in West Berlin in 1979 and she passed it to Der Tagesspiegel, the West German newspaper. I got paid 20 Deutsche Marks – she bought me a pair of jeans with the money.
From then, I regularly had photo essays published in West German periodicals. My film reels were smuggled out by western journalists and I had a secret bank account held by the mother of a West Berlin friend. People would bring me in cash, or buy me cameras or equipment. In the first years I was published anonymously, but from 1986 I began to openly use my name. By then, the Stasi knew all about me.
In 1987, my first book, Ost-Berlin, was published illegally in West Germany. Until then, photos directly from inside the GDR, together in a book, just didn’t happen. It became a political issue. I found out years later, through my Stasi file, that it reached Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi. If I could go back in time with that knowledge, I would take even more photos.
For me, photography was practical – not artistic. It was pure journalism. My ambition was always to document people. I am the only photographer in the GDR who shot both punks and hooligans. The first punks appeared in Berlin in the early 1980s and
