Hansel Mieth Hagel

Otto Hagel and Johanna Mieth were both born near Stuttgart, Germany, in 1909. They became friends in their youth and traveled together over much of Europe, keeping a journal of their travels called a Fahrtenbuch, which did not survive World War II. It was during these travels that Otto gave Johanna the nickname Hansel because a boy’s name seemed more convenient during their travels. She used the nickname for the rest of her life. Otto left Germany in 1928 and entered the United States illegally at Baltimore. Hansel followed two years later and the couple came together again in California in 1930. Documentation for this period can be found in the letters from their family members and in the autobiographical writings of Hansel Mieth.

The United States was experiencing the Great Depression at the time Otto and Hansel reunited in San Francisco, California. Work was difficult to find and both of them took whatever jobs they could get. Otto initially found work as a window washer and managed to photograph himself on a scaffold outside an office building. This photograph won a cash prize in a contest organized by the Mid-Week Pictorial in 1930. For a time the two were at Yosemite, helping to build the Wawona tunnel. Later they took jobs as migrant agricultural workers, and it was during this period that they began to develop the humanistic sensitivity that characterizes their later work. The photographs taken during this period (later called by the photographers “The Great Hunger”) documented the Hoovervilles around Sacramento, the squalid living conditions in the Mission District of San Francisco, the Salinas Lettuce Strike, and the hard lives of their fellow migrant workers as well as the longshoremen and dockworkers of San Francisco and Oakland. Documentation for this period consists primarily of photographic materials and reminiscences contained in the correspondence files and in Hansel’s writings. The book Men and Ships used photographs by Otto Hagel to document the general strike of 1936 and the archive contains several copies of this publication. Otto and others also made a film during these years, called A Century of Progress, which is not included in the archive. Letters in the Wayne State University folder, however, provide information on the making and subsequent life of this film.

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