Maria Austria

Marie Karoline Oestreicher grew up in what was then the Bohemian monarchy Karlsbad, the daughter of Austrian doctor Karl, who died young (1864 – March 1915) and his wife Clara, née Kisch (1871–1945), sibling of the older Felix (1894–1945) and Lisbeth (1902–1989).

The Jewish family was middle-class in an intellectual and artistic environment.

Maria Austria (née Marie Karoline Oeststreicher; 19 March 1915 in Karlovy Vary – 10 January 1975 in Amsterdam) was an Austro-Dutch photographer who is considered an important post-war photographer of the Netherlands, and was a theatre and documentary photographer.

She had Austrian citizenship until 1918, and then Czechoslovakian citizenship.

From 1928 to June 1933 she attended the local girls' high school, from which she graduated with very good grades.

During this time she began taking photographs.

From the summer of 1933 she lived in the Rathausstrasse, Vienna.

She bought a Leica and a Rolleiflex and began a three-year apprenticeship as a photographer on September 18 the Graphic Teaching and Research Institute Vienna - Department of Photography and Reproduction Processes, including an internship from February 1934 to July 1935 in the Viennese Willinger's photo studio on Kärntnerstrasse.

After graduating with "very good" on July 4, 1936, she worked as a freelance photographer.

She was interested in culture, attended avant-garde theatre productions and small experimental theatres and found inspiration in the circles of left-wing artists and actors around the Naschmarkt.

In the summer of 1937 she left Austria because of the increasing influence of the Nazi Germany and the growing anti-Semitism and moved to the Netherlands to live with her sister Lisbeth, who, after training as a textile designer at the Bauhaus Dessau had settled in Amsterdam.

Accustomed to demand for her work in Vienna, Maria first had to develop a reputation in Amsterdam.

She learned Dutch, took any small job, and from the beginning of 1938 photographed her sister's designs in their joint studio "Model en Foto Austria" (Fashion and Photo Studio Austria), and carried out advertising and portrait commissions.

She developed her negatives herself, produced reportage and slowly established business with magazines.

She published in the magazines Libelle and Wij and made contacts with politically and culturally like-minded people in the Nederlandsche Film League.

During this time she met the directors Joris Ivens and John Fernhout and the Hungarian photographer Éva Besnyö.

With the move to the Noorder Amstellaan in the Rivierenbuurt district in 1939 she only used nom-de-plume 'Maria Austria.'

After the invasion of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, and the occupation by the German Wehrmacht, the living conditions for Jewish people became increasingly difficult due to the growing reprisals during the German occupation such as compulsory registration for Jews, exclusion from public life, exclusion from associations, professional and writing bans.

As she was affected by the occupational ban for Jewish photographers, Austria had to give up her job in May 1941 and began working as a nurse in the Portuguese-Israelite Hospital on the Rapenburg peninsula in the Jodenbuurt, and as a photography teacher for the Judenrat of Amsterdam.

In April 1942 entered a marriage of convenience with the German-Jewish merchant Hans Bial (1911–2000) that ended in divorce in December 1945.

Her sister Lisbeth was interned in Westerbork Camp in 1942, as was her mother and brother and family in 1943, who had fled to the Netherlands in 1938.

Maria Austria went into hiding, changing accommodation from mid-1943 and began to work for the Dutch Resistance.

During this time, while hiding in the attic of the house at Vondelstraat 110 in Amsterdam, she met her future husband Hendrik (“Henk”) Pieter Jonker, whom she taught to take photographs.

Jonker worked as an official for the Amsterdam population register.

Together with him and other Jewish photographers such as Éva Besnyö, they produced false identity cards for the resistance and Maria took on courier services under the pseudonym Elizabeth Huijnen.

Her mother was sent in April 1945 to the KZ Bergen-Belsen, her brother Felix and his wife died shortly afterwards as a result of imprisonment in Belsen.

Lisbeth survived in Westerbork and took in the three orphaned nieces Beate, Helly and Maria, whom she looked after with Maria Austria.

After the war she accepted commissions for fashion reports and founded the photo agency Particam (Partisan Camera) at Willemsparkweg 120, Amsterdam with Henk Jonker, Aart Klein and Wim Zilver on 4 May 1945.

The Canadian Allies initially supplied them with film stock for the documentation of life in the devastated cities.

With the permission of the National Armed Forces, socially critical photo stories on the reconstruction and misery amongst the population were produced for the Dutch free press.

On 1 September 1945 Emmy Andriesse, Maria Austria, Eva Besnyö, Carel Blazer, Charles Breijer, Violette Cornelius, Es Elenbaas, Cok de Graaff, Paul Huf, Henk Jonker, Aart Klein, Cas Oorthuys, Sem Presser, Annelies Romein, Hans Sibbelee, Kryn Taconis, Ad Windig and Hans Wolf founded the Department of Photographers of the GKf ; the Vereniging van Beoefenaars der Gebonden Kunsten (Association of Practitioners of the Bonded Arts).

In this capacity, she campaigned for the recognition of photography as a legitimate art discipline and lobbied the Ministry of Education, Art and Science for a separate fund in the state budget for the purchase and exhibition of photographs in museums.

She insisted on attribution when publishing her photos in magazines and forbade the cropping of her pictures.

From 1949 to the early 1960s, Maria Austria and Jonker were given a page on the back of the Algemeen Handelsblad with a photo section on changing social themes.

The couple also photographed people from the performing arts in the Netherlands for program booklets and theatre showcases.

Her neorealistic, humanist photo reportage was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1953, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1958, the Van Gogh Museum in 1975, and the Joods Historisch Museum in 2001.

Six Dutch photographers who had attended the meeting at Paul Huf's studio were included in The Family of Man, but not Maria Austria, despite the humanist ethos of her imagery and although her work had appeared in Steichen's 1953 Post-war European Photography.

In 1954 with Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Carl Blazer, Ed Van Der Elsken, Henk Jonker and several others Maria met MoMA curator of photography Edward Steichen in the studio of photographer Paul Huf in which Steichen outlined plans for his global exhibition The Family of Man and looked at their photographs.

It was to be a lasting and influential organisation supporting photographers rights and interests; in 1968 the Association of Practitioners of the Bound Arts GKf split into five associations and the Professional Association of Photographers GKf was founded; and in 2014, GKf merged with the professional association for socially engaged photography, Dupho (DutchPhotographers).

She was also a member of the "Nederlandse Vereniging van Photojournalists" (Association of Dutch Photojournalists).