Michael Ruetz

Michael Ruetz
Ruetz c. 1990
Born	(1940-04-04)4 April 1940 Berlin, Germany
Died	2 December 2024(2024-12-02) (aged 84) Berlin, Germany
Occupations	Photographer Artist Author
Awards	Villa Massimo Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Michael Ruetz (4 April 1940 – 2 December 2024) was a German photographer, artist, journalist and author. He became first known for photos of the West German student movement that were published by international papers and magazines. Ruetz covered the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops and military dictatorship in Greece. He focused later on cultural-historical and documentary projects, exploring the "visual world" of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Theodor Fontane in series such as In Goethe's Footsteps. Projects after the 1980s deal with visualizing time and transience, photographing the same objects again and again over a long time.

Ruetz was born in Berlin on 4 April 1940.^[1][2] His ancestors were from Riga, where they worked as printers, journalists and publishers. After attending school in Bremen, Ruetz studied sinology, with Japanology and journalism as secondary subjects, at the University of Freiburg, in Munich and Berlin.^[1][2] Until 1969 he worked on a dissertation on the novel A Flower in a Sinful Sea by Zeng Pu (1905).^[3] He studied photography at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste with Heinz Hajek-Halke.^[1] In 1976, Ruetz graduated as external student from the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen.^[1]

Ruetz was a member of the staff of Stern magazine in Hamburg from 1969 to 1974.^[1][2][4] Later he worked as a freelance author and photographer. From 1981, Ruetz was a contract author for publishers Little, Brown & Co in Boston, Massachusetts.^[1] In 1982, he became professor of communication design at the Braunschweig University of Art^[1][2] and taught photography until 2007.^[5]

Ruetz was the sole heir of Hajek-Halke's artistic work and managed his estate from 1983 until 2020. He organised major retrospectives of Hajek-Halke at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2002,^[1] at Kunstbibliothek Berlin^[6] and at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, in 2012.^[1]

Ruetz was a member of the German Society for Photography (DGPh), the Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner (GDL)/Deutsche Foto Akademie and the Academy of Arts, Berlin.^[7] He was vice president of the Academy's section for film and media from 2016 to 2018.^[7] In May 2002 he ^[1] was appointed a member of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres.^[1]

Ruetz lived in Italy, Australia and the United States for 12 years. He settled with his family in the Chiemgau where they lived for 23 years,^[3] and later returned to Berlin.^[4]

Ruetz died on 2 December 2024, at the age of 84, at the Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin.^[7][8]

Ruetz became first known through his photographs of the West German student movement during his studies.^[3][8] His portraits of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (APO), now part of German photographic history, were immediately bought by major newspapers and magazines in Germany and abroad, including Time, Life, Der Spiegel and Stern.^[1][3][9] In 1968, Ruetz covered the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops (Prague Spring) and reported for Stern on the military dictatorship in Greece, as on the World Festival of Youth and Students 1973 and the International Workers' Day 1974 in East Berlin. He later accompanied François Mitterrand on his election campaign, visited Chile after the victory of Salvador Allende^[10] and reported on the war in Guinea-Bissau and on many other international events.^[5]

After spending several years in the United States and Australia, Ruetz began to concentrate increasingly on cultural-historical and documentary projects, such as the exploration of the "visual world" of such figures as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Theodor Fontane creating series like In Goethe's Footsteps,^[1][11] With Goethe in Switzerland,^[1][12] Me Too in Arcadia/Goethe's Italian Journeys, and Fontane's Walks Through Mark Brandenburg.^[13]

An extensive study of the phenomena of European necropoles followed. His works after the 1980s deal with the capability of visualizing time and transience.^[4][8] Projects like Second Sight, Timescape and The Perennial Eye, assembled under the main title Eye on Time, document the change of the world's surface during time. In contrast to the individual picture pairs of the Second Sight project, Timescape comprises photographic sequences made over many years.^[4] The project consists of more than 300 series of different objects. The photographs give a clear indication of how much people, places, squares, apartments, and nature are in a state of change. What does not change, however, is the geographical vantage point of each photographic series.^[14] In Berlin, he visited 180 points in the city and vicinity up to 24 times each year over several years.^[3][4]

• Kodak Photobook Prize for Auf Goethes Spuren (In Goethe's Footsteps), Necropolis, APO/Berlin 1966–1969 and Land der Griechen (Land of the Greeks).^[1]
• 1979 Schönstes Buch der Schweiz (Most Beautiful Swiss Book) for Mit Goethe in der Schweiz (With Goethe in Switzerland)^[1][15]
• 1969 German Design Prize^[1]
• 1979 Otto Steinert Prize^[1]
• 1981 Villa Massimo scholarship^[16]
• 2002 Ordre des Arts et des Lettres^[7][17]

Source:^[1]

• 2023 Facing Time, Direction: Annett Ilijew^[32]

• Official website (in German)
• Michael Ruetz at IMDb 
• Michael Ruetz discography at Discogs
• Facing Time / Dokumentarfilm Trailer / DOK.fest 2023 on YouTube