Franz Krieger

Who is Franz Krieger?

Franz Krieger, was an Austrian businessman and photographer from Salzburg, Austria whose collection includes 35,000 photographs taken during the rise of Hitler, World War II, and the reconstruction afterwards.

Krieger photographed the Salzburg festival, including movie stars like Marlene Dietrich and Hans Albers, and the arrival of Hitler. He later photographed Kristallnacht, book burnings, and the boycott of Jewish businesses, as a freelance photographer and on the staff of Nazi magazines. During World War II, he was assigned to as a photographer to a special propaganda unit on the Eastern front. He was sent back from the front because of illness, and so avoided the Russian campaign. However, his wife and daughter were killed in the allied bombing of Salzburg. After the war, he photographed the redevelopment of Salzburg.

Krieger was little-known in Germany, except in Salzburg, and even less well known in the United States. In June 2011, an American businessman in New York obtained a collection of photos, without the photographer's identity, and tried to identify them.