Gerda Taro (née Gerta Pohorylle)
1 August 1910 | Stuttgart – 26 July 1937 | El Escorial
Photographer, reporter during the Spanish Civil War
Gerta Taro, the eldest daughter of the Jewish merchant Heinrich Pohorylle and Gisela Pohorylle (née Boral); in 1929, her family moved to 32 Springerstrasse in Leipzig. Her father ran a wholesale egg business.
Gerta first attended a Swiss girls’ boarding school – and from 1929, the Gaudigschule in Leipzig, near Nordplatz. Her new circle of friends was almost entirely Jewish and politically left-wing. In Gohlis, she fell in love with Georg Kuritzkes, the son of a tobacconist, whom she had met at the Jewish sports club Bar Kochba. Georg’s mother, Dina, was married in her second marriage to the communist doctor Karl Gelbke.
Through Georg, his family home – his father, the communist doctor Karl Gelbke – and his friends, Gerda became politically active. Together with them and her brothers Oskar and Karl Pohorylle, Gerta was involved in the resistance against the rising National Socialism. When Hitler came to power in 1933, she took part in leafleting campaigns – was arrested by the SA and detained for three weeks in the Leipzig women’s prison. As no evidence could be found against her, she was released. Gerta fled overland – with the support of a communist aid network – to Paris.
In Paris, she was reunited with Ruth Cerf, her friend from the Gaudigschule. Ruth belonged to a circle of left-wing resistance fighters in Paris. Through Ruth – who was also a fashion model – Gerta met the young Hungarian photographer André Friedmann in 1934, who took photographs of both of them. She learnt photography from him – and shortly afterwards, they became a couple.
Gerta invented the pseudonyms Robert Capa and Gerda Taro. Under the name of the fictional American photographer Robert Capa, they worked together for a time – partly in an attempt to escape anti-Semitic accusations and growing xenophobia in 1930s France. In the summer of 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Gerda Taro and Robert Capa travelled to Spain, where international brigades were gathering to support the Republic – to aid the fight against the Franco regime through photographic documentation. Their powerful (anti-)war photographs were seen around the world at the time. Gerda Taro’s photographs often focused particularly on the suffering of the civilian population, women and children.
She was the first female war photographer to work on the front line. On 25 July 1937, when the German Legion Condor carried out an air raid on the Brunete Front, Gerda Taro was fatally injured.
NOTE: *) Due to the format of the exhibition, the biographical details above have necessarily been abridged. Visitors to the exhibition have the opportunity to read an expanded version of the biographical details in the exhibition folders provided. The entire, very extensive project includes further biographies, additional content and research … is in progress – also online…