(b Hameln, 3 April 1911). German photographer. Self-taught as a photographer, he worked as a casual labourer for Hanomag in Hannover from 1929 to 1930 and again from 1933 to 1941, occupying himself as an independent photographer from 1930 to 1933. He was one of the younger members of the Arbeiter-Fotograf movement, and his photographs provide a social documentary of Germany under the Weimar Republic. His earlier experiences as a labourer gave him a sympathetic eye for the widespread poverty of the period. Ballhause was opposed to the Nazis and was consequently hounded by the Gestapo. He was imprisoned in 1933 in Hannover, after which he gave up photography, and was again imprisoned from 1944 to 1945 in Zwickau and Plauen. From 1939 to 1941 he trained as a chemical technician in Hannover, and he worked in that capacity at the Vomag works in Plauen from 1941 to 1944. After being Mayor of Strassburg bei Plauen from 1945 to 1947, he became head of the Plamag printing works in Plauen from 1947 until his retirement in 1971. In 1971 his photographs were rediscovered and exhibited at the Vereinigung Verfolgten des Naziregimes in Hannover. The best of them appear in the book Zwischen Weimar und Hitler (1981).

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