Heinrich Hoffmann was a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 photographer best known for his many published photographs of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

.

Early life and career

Hoffmann worked in his father's photographic shop and as a photographer in Munich from 1908. He joined the NSDAP in 1920 and was chosen by its new leader Hitler as his official photographer. A photograph taken by Hoffman in Munich's Odeonsplatz

Odeonsplatz

Odeonsplatz is a large square in central Munich which was named after the former concert hall Odeon.-Architecture:In 1791 the medieval city wall was demolished and plans for a square at the point of the Schwabing Gate could be realized with the erection of the Brienner Straße in 1816. The...

 on 2 August 1914 purports to show a young Hitler among the crowds cheering the outbreak of World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and was used in Nazi propaganda; its authenticity has been questioned. Hitler and Hoffman became close friends. Hoffmann's photographs were published as postage stamps, postcards, posters and picture books. Following Hoffmann's suggestion, both he and Hitler received royalties

Royalties

Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

 from all uses of Hitler's image (even on postage stamps), which made the photographer wealthy. In 1933 he was elected to the
Reichstag

Reichstag (Weimar Republic)

The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...

 and in 1938 Hitler appointed him a 'Professor'.

Family

Hoffmann married Therese "Lelly" Baumann, who was very fond of Hitler, in 1911, their daughter Henriette

Henriette von Schirach

Henriette "Henny" von Schirach was the wife of Baldur von Schirach and a close childhood friend of Adolf Hitler. She is the only person known to have challenged the persecution of Jews to Hitler personally.Henriette was the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's personal photographer....

 ("Henny") was born on February 3, 1913 and followed by a son, Heinrich ("Heini") on October 24, 1916. Henriette married Reichsjugendführer

Reichsjugendführer

Reichsjugendführer was the highest paramilitary rank of the Hitler Youth. It was held first by Baldur von Schirach and later Artur Axmann. Originally, there was no insignia for the rank, and von Schirach can be seen in documentary evidence as wearing a Nazi Party brown jacket with Hitler Youth...

 (National Hitler Youth

Hitler Youth

The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...

 commander) Baldur von Schirach

Baldur von Schirach

Baldur Benedikt von Schirach was a Nazi youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna....

, who provided introductions to many of Hoffmann's picture books, in 1932. Therese Hoffmann died a sudden and unexpected death in 1928. Hoffmann and his second wife Erna introduced his Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 studio assistant Eva Braun

Eva Braun

Eva Anna Paula Hitler was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and, for less than 40 hours, his wife. Braun met Hitler in Munich, when she was 17 years old, while working as an assistant and model for his personal photographer and began seeing him often about two years later...

 to Hitler. Braun later became Hitler's mistress and ultimately, his wife on April 29, 1945 and partner in suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 the following day.

Publications

During the Third Reich Hoffmann wrote many books on Hitler such as The Hitler Nobody Knows (1933) and Jugend um Hitler (1934). In 1938 Hoffmann wrote three books, Hitler in Italy, Hitler befreit Sudetenland and Hitler in seiner Heimat. His last book, Das Antlitz des Führers, was written shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

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Later life

Hoffmann was arrested by the Americans on 10 May 1945 and after the war he was tried and sentenced to four years for Nazi profiteering

War profiteering

A war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term has strong negative connotations. General profiteering may also occur in peace time.-International arms dealers:...

. Upon release from prison on 31 May 1950 he settled in the small village Epfach in the Munich area where he died 7 years later at age 72. His widow Erna then lived there together with the former silent-movie star Wera Engels

Wera Engels

Wera Engels was a German actress.Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor of the then German colony Tsing-tau-China. After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, Engels was invited to Hollywood....

.

Photographic archive

A large archive of his photographs was seized by the United States Government during the Allied occupation of Germany. These are now held by the National Archives and Records Administration

National Archives and Records Administration

The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...

 and comprise an important source of images for scholars of the Third Reich. These photographs are considered to be in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

 in the US owing to their status as seized Nazi property (otherwise their copyrights would not yet have expired).

There is an archive called the 'Bildarchiv Hoffmann', at the Bavarian State Library

Bavarian State Library

The Bavarian State Library in Munich is the central "Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria and one of Europe's most important universal libraries. With its collections currently comprising around 9.39 million books, it ranks among the best research libraries...

(or Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) in Munich, Germany.