Born March 3, 1898, in Goch on the Lower Rhine, as Anna Sibylla Sternefeld; died January 14, 1933, in Gera, was a German photographer who, within a very short period of time, established herself as one of the most important figures of avant-garde photography in Germany. She is regarded as a key representative of New Vision (Neues Sehen) and New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit).

Life and Work

Anna Sibylla Sternefeld was born as the youngest child of the leather manufacturer Alphons Sternefeld and his wife Julie. The Sternefeld family belonged to the wealthy entrepreneurial elite of Goch. The leather factory founded by her grandfather was later run by her brother Fritz and her uncle and employed more than 500 workers before going bankrupt during the global economic crisis of the late 1920s. Aenne grew up in an upper-middle-class environment with her brothers Fritz and Otto; another brother, Ernst, died in early childhood. While her brothers attended higher schools, Aenne received primarily musical training, and for a time a career as a professional pianist was considered.

During a vacation on the North Sea coast, she likely met Herbert Joseph Biermann, a member of a department-store-owning family from Gera. The couple married in 1920 and settled in Gera, where their daughter Helga was born the same year and their son Gerd in 1923. Although she signed her marriage certificate as Anna Biermann, she had already begun using the first name “Aenne” prior to her marriage, and it became her customary name following the move from Goch to Gera.

Biermann came to photography as a self-taught practitioner in the early 1920s. Shortly after the birth of her children, she acquired her first photographic equipment in order to document family life. Her earliest photographs depict her children, but her interest soon expanded beyond the private sphere. As her practice developed, she increasingly turned to subjects such as plants, stones, still lifes, portraits, everyday objects, and intimate details of domestic life, including the family piano. Through autodidactic experimentation, she explored photographic technique and composition with growing rigor.

A decisive moment in her artistic development came around 1927, when the geologist Rudolf Hundt, a family friend from Gera, commissioned her to photograph a series of rock samples. Over the course of just a few years, Biermann rapidly professionalized her work and aligned herself with the aesthetics of New Vision and New Objectivity. Her photographs are characterized by tightly cropped compositions, clear structures, precise use of light and contrast, unconventional perspectives on people and objects, and a strong emphasis on surface and form.

Despite her brief career, cut short by her early death in 1933, Aenne Biermann left a lasting impact on modern photography through her disciplined, experimental, and highly modern visual language.

Reference

Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition.
Retrieved January 19, 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aenne_Biermann