Photographer Robert Held: The reporter with the camera

What was a columnist doing in a convoy of British soldiers in Port Said in 1956?

We do not know it.

But Robert Held was there.

Not only there.

He photographed in crisis areas as well as the carefree everyday life in California.

Back in Frankfurt, when time permitted, he stood in the darkroom with his colleague Friedrich A. Wagner and made the prints of his photos from his numerous trips himself.

Born in Mainz, Robert Held attended the humanistic high school there from 1932 to 1940.

He studied in Mainz, where he received his doctorate.

Further stations of his studies in Romance Studies and Sociology were Paris and the Spanish city of Salamanca.

During the war he served as a radio operator in the defense.

In 1947 he wrote for the German-French culture magazine "Wort und Tat" and then for the Allgemeine Zeitung in Mainz.

In the FAZ, Held was initially in the feuilleton, for which he was responsible from 1962-74 and from there he then switched to the political editorial department.

He had a seat and vote in the editors' conference.

And he was responsible for the photographers of the house.

However, Held did not limit himself to the organizational side.

He regularly slipped into the role of the photographing reporter.

He mostly took the pictures for his foreign reports – often printed in the supplement “Images and Times” – himself. Our photographer Barbara Klemm was amazed when she took part in a rally of the Partido Comunista Português for the election to the Constituent Assembly in April 1975 fighting for a better position, met Robert Held, who had already placed himself in a promising position.

He also didn't shy away from when the air threatened to become lead-laden.

Whether during the Suez Crisis or the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, where he was wounded by shrapnel on the last day of the war.

When time permitted, he stood in the darkroom with his colleague Friedrich A. Wagner.

Robert Held was articulate and immersed himself in the history of the countries he visited.

He is said to have a foreshadowing of coming political changes and currents.

After a short, serious illness, he died at the age of 63 on April 14, 1986. He would have been 100 on December 16.

Many of the following photos were published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and in a posthumous book.

)