Warsaw – the last glance

The exhibition shows German aerial photographs of the centre of the city of Warsaw occupied by the German Wehrmacht – from the districts of Wola to Praga and from Zoliborz to Mokotów. The photographs were taken a few weeks before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944; they were probably produced at the end of June or early July on a reconnaissance flight by a type FW 189 Eule aircraft. The good weather and the high-degree of professionalism of the photographers produced
unusually good shots. The squares, streets and parks – full of people and vehicles – show a lively bustle in the summer sunshine. The architecture of particular districts and groups of buildings, as well as individual buildings, now lost, can be seen in the last days of their existence. At the same time, the extent of the losses that the Polish
capital had already suffered in the German attack on Warsaw in 1939 also becomes clear.

The aerial photographs come from the Foto Marburg image archive, which received this series of 110 photos in 1983 in a private bequest. This small holding of valuable image sources, previously unknown to research, was “rediscovered” there on the occasion of a study visit to the Herder Institute by Dr. Marek Baranski in 2003. On his initiative, a presentation designed by him was initially realised for the Polish public in the autumn of 2004 in a collaborative project between the Union of Polish Curators of Monuments, the Historical Museum of the City of Warsaw and the Foto Marburg image archive, supported by the Foundation for German-Polish Collaboration and the Polish Workshops for the Preservation of Historical Monuments (PKZ).

Find the aerial photographs in the Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.