Propaganda Photographer in World War II: Benno Wundshammer

Benno Wundshammer

Benno Wundshammer (1913–1987) worked as a local reporter in Cologne. During the war, he was deployed to various air force propaganda companies (PK) as a ‘photo reporter’. From 1942 onward he delivered photo and text reports for Signal, a highly successful illustrated magazine with an extremely modern layout for foreign distribution published by the High Command of the Armed Forces of Germany. Like several other PK photographers, he successfully continued his photography career in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, providing photos for the leading magazines Revue and Quick.
Wundshammer’s mission to Stalingrad in October 1942 was certainly his most formative war deployment, leading him to address this subject repeatedly after the war.
Based on the extensive material contained in Wundshammer’s estate, the exhibition not only presents one of the most striking PK photographers of the armed forces, but also the organisation of the German propaganda photographers and the role they played at the time.