Weimar Berlin: Frieda Riess, a photographer in Weimar Berlin

Kseniya Boguslavskaya, artist and poet

Frieda Gertrud Riess (1890-1957) was born in the Prussian Province of Posen (today Polish) where her Jewish parents were shopkeepers. At the end of the 1890s, the family moved to Berlin where she first studied sculpture under Hugo Lederer and later photography at the Berlin "Photographischen Lehranstalt".
In 1918, she opened a business on the prestigious Kurfürstendamm; it became one of the most popular studios in the city. Partly as a result of her marriage to the journalist Rudolf Leonhard in the early 1920s, she extended her clientele to celebrities such as playwright Walter Hasenclever, novelist Gerhart Hauptmann and actors and actresses including Tilla Durieux, Asta Nielsen and Emil Jannings. While on a trip to Italy in 1929, she was invited to photograph Benito Mussolini. In addition, she contributed to the journals and magazines of the day including Die Dame, Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, Der Weltspiegel, Querschnitt and Koralle.
Her success in Berlin was however short-lived. In 1932, after falling in love with the elderly French ambassador in Berlin, she moved to Paris with him, disappearing from the public eye.