Hoffmann, Heinrich (1885-1957), German photographer and Nazi propagandist. The son and nephew of photographers, he worked in the Hoppé studio in London before setting up in Munich as a portraitist and photojournalist. His photograph of cheering crowds on 2 August 1914 unwittingly captured the young Adolf Hitler, a fact which would later benefit Hoffmann's career. Drifting to the far right after the First World War and revolutionary events in Bavaria, he joined the Nazi Party in 1920 and convinced an initially camera-shy Hitler of photography's political value. (The relationship was cemented by Hitler's liaison, from 1930, with Hoffmann's assistant Eva Braun.) After 1933 his virtual monopoly of Hitler photographs, as ‘the man who sees the Führer for us’, made him one of the Third Reich's major profiteers. His scenes of carefully constructed intimacy, presenting his master, especially in the regime's early years, as a clean-living, nature-loving man of the people, were massively disseminated. After 1945, though claiming to have been a mere chronicler of events, he was fined and imprisoned. His extensive photo archive survives.

— Robin Lenman

Bibliography

• Herz, R., Hoffmann und Hitler: Fotografie als Medium des Führer-Mythos (1994)

The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.