Erich Schutt was born at
Vetschau in the flatlands west of
Cottbus about eighteen months before the
Hitler government took power. Fifty years earlier the region had been overwhelmingly
Sorbian speaking, but in the German countryside, as in the remoter corners of France, Belgium, and Britain, the centralising nationalism of the age meant that use of regional languages was powerfully discouraged. Nevertheless, Schutt's mother Anna, who kept the house and looked after the little animals accommodated in the garden in case of special meals, is described as "Sorbian". His father, Alfred Schutt, worked at Vetschau station, where he was responsible for looking after the
points on the track. As a school boy Schutt was already taking photographs round the town with the camera "Agfa Box" he had received as a particularly lavish birthday present, Schutt's career as a photo-journalist began in 1952 when he was approached by a local newspaper editor and accepted an invitation to become a part-time photo-reporter for the ''
. His first commission involved a visit to a garden festival at Forst, since 1945 a border town, some 35 km / 20 miles to the east, beyond Cottbus. The route was nevertheless relatively level, which was important for a photo-journalist whose sole means of travel was his bicycle. The recently launched Brandenburgische Neueste Nachrichten'' was a stand-alone and modestly equipped publication, and on getting home to
Vetschau later that day Schutt went straight back to the photography department of "Spreewald-Drogerie Petzold", the specialist shop where he was employed, in order to develop his film and print off the pictures, which he was able to deliver to his editor's desk the next day. In 1966, at the conclusion of a three-year distance learning course of study, Schutt obtained a degree in Journalism at the specialist attached to the
University of Leipzig, widely seen as the most prestigious university-level institution for training journalists in a country which attached great importance to "training" its journalists. Commentators note that during his career Schutt consciously tried to avoid photographing carefully staged "press photograph" scenes. Alongside published volumes of his pictures, Schutt's work continues to feature in public exhibitions. In 2012 more than eighty of his photographs were included in an exhibition at the
Wendish Museum in Cottbus. Although his work occasionally also appears at international exhibitions, the entire body of what can readily be lumped together and categorised dismissively as the
party sponsored photo-journalism of East Germany still attracts relatively little interest or recognition among commentators outside Germany. == Memberships ==