Fred Stein //

Focus on People
01.04. – 31.07.2026 
Capa House and German National Library Leipzig
 

The Museum of City History Leipzig and the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 of the German National Library are honoring photographer Fred Stein with two exhibitions and an accompanying program of events as part of the Year of Jewish Culture in Saxony (Tacheles 2026). 
 

Fred Stein (1909–1967) was born in Dresden, studied law, and passed his first state law exam in Leipzig in 1930. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was dismissed from the judiciary as a Jew and a socialist shortly before completing his legal clerkship. He fled with his wife Lilo to Paris, where he gained great renown as a press and portrait photographer. In 1941, Fred Stein emigrated to New York, where he continued his career as a photographer. Today, Fred Stein is considered a pioneer of the 35mm camera. 
 

His photography was always political and social. His humanistic convictions are reflected in his pictures of children who fled to France from the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. They were his photographic contribution to the resistance against fascism and National Socialism, while his friends Gerda Taro and Robert Capa photographed on the front lines.
 

With his street photography, Fred Stein captured everyday life and intercultural diversity in the places of his exile. His numerous portrait photographs, including those of Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and Marlene Dietrich, made him a documentarian of German-speaking emigration. 
 

The exhibition “Out of Exile. The Photography of Fred Stein” (April 1 to July 4, 2026) at the German National Library shows the life and work of the photographer in exile. The exhibition “Fred Stein and the Spanish Civil War” (April 1 to July 31, 2026) at the Capa-House shows photos of refugee children and portraits of Gerda Taro in Paris, 90 years after the start of the Spanish Civil War. Guided tours and film lectures with film director Peter Stein, who talks about his father, as well as a reading with historian and Stein biographer Prof. Dr. Daniel Siemens accompany the exhibitions.

 

A cooperation between the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 of the German National Library 
and the Museum of City History Leipzig, in collaboration with the Fred Stein Archive 
and the Schaubühne Lindenfels.