Erich Schutt
Erich Schutt is a German retired photographer and photo-journalist. He was at his most prolific in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany: 1949–1989) during the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Since 1990 his work has continued to draw interest and to feature in exhibition displays, as many of the subjects that he photographed, from the lignite-fuelled power station Vetschauvast on the edge of his home town to the traditional Sorbian artefacts and costumery that were still relatively mainstream during the middle decades of the twentieth century, retreat rapidly beyond living memory. Life and works Erich Schutt was born at Vetschau in the flatlands west of Cottbus about eighteen months before the Hitler government took power. Fifty years earlier the region had been overwhelmingly Sorbian speaking, but in the German countryside, as in the remoter corners of France, Belgium and Britain, the centralising nationalism of the age meant that use of regional languages was powerfully discouraged. Nevertheless, Schutt's mother Anna, who kept the house and looked after the little animals accommodated in the garden in case of special meals, is described as "Sorbian". His father, Alfred Schutt, worked at Vetschau station, where he was responsible for looking after the points on