Erich Auerbach (2) (1911–1977)

[from British Czech and Slovak Association website]
Erich Auerbach was educated in Karlovy Vary and Prague University Collegium Musicum. To help finance his studies he took part-time work as a music critic with the Prager Tagblatt. Eventually Auerbach switched to a career in journalism and photography, though music remained a lifelong passion. With his first professional camera, a present from his father, he proceeded to document the land and people of Czechoslovakia.

In Prague he worked for leading Czech newspapers and his photographs were published around Europe. Auerbach left Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1939, escaping on foot over the border into Poland. From there he used contacts in the British press to help him get to England.

In London he became the official photographer of the Czechoslovak government in exile during the second world war. During this time he wrote in a letter to a friend: “with all its setbacks and eternal struggles, photography is a lovely thing, and I feel a warm satisfaction after such a day's work.”

After the war he decided not to return to his homeland and settled in London where he married in 1946 and finally gave up his Czech nationality, becoming British in 1947. During this time he was employed as a photographer for the news magazine Illustrated.

From 1957 until his death he returned to his first love of music and worked as a freelance, photographing most of the great composers, conductors and musicians of the post war era. In 1960 he was enrolled as a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. In 1971 his first book An Eye for Music was published in London. In 1996 a further volume of his photographs, Images of Music, was produced by the Hulton Getty Picture Collection Ltd., who hold the copyright to Auerbach's musical archive.