03.06.2025-05.03.2025
FRED STEIN
Paris in the 1930s
Alarmed by Hitler's seizure of power in Germany and by the danger of fascism developing in Europe, as illustrated by the bloody riot of February 6, 34, and convinced that the voice of united intellectuals could change the course of events, writers organized in Paris, under the leadership of André Malraux, Jean-Richard Bloch, André Gide and Ilya Ehrenburg among the most active, the Congrès international des écrivains pour la défense de la culture took place at the Maison de la Mutualité from June 21 to 25, 1935, bringing together the most eminent writers of the day: Romain Rolland , Heinrich Mann, Henri Barbusse, Bertolt Brecht, Aldous Huxley, Anna Seghers and others. and Boris Pasternak, whose last trip outside the USSR.
Fred Stein, who fled Germany in October 1933 and settled in Paris, attended the Congress as a member of a German association of anti-fascist journalists, and photographed most of the speakers.
His photos are the memory of these four exceptional days, which brought together the most famous thinkers of the century from all over the world.
The gallery is delighted to be able to present some thirty of these original portraits, together with images of Paris in the 1930s, as seen by these great intellectuals.
Image
Fred Stein
Metropolitain Paris, 1936