Hans Günter Flieg, cousin of writer Stefan Heym, was born into a Jewish family in Chemnitz. He and his family emigrated from Nazi Germany to São Paulo shortly before war broke out. He had just completed a course of training with the photographer of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. After arriving in Brazil, his parents founded the machine embroidery company Bordados Flieg, for which his younger brother also worked. Hans Günter Flieg, on the other hand, decided to build on his photography training. He trained as a lithographer and worked as an industrial and commercial photographer, founding his own studio in 1945.

As a freelance photographer, he worked for many companies; his photographs were published in newspapers and calendars. In 1951, he was the official photographer at the first International Biennial in São Paulo. He recorded the development of São Paulo in more than 35,000 photos. His work was shown at numerous exhibitions and won multiple awards.

Hans Günter Flieg's first links with the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 were forged in connection with the exhibition "… mehr vorwärts als rückwärts schauen…" Das deutschsprachige Exil in Brasilien (2013), developed in cooperation with Marlen Eckl. We had the privilege of visiting him at his apartment in São Paulo. Hans Günter Flieg was also enthusiastic about our cooperative network project "Arts in Exile". In 2013, he gave an interview – also in his apartment in São Paulo – for the special exhibition "Voices of Exile", a collaboration with Jochanan Shelliem.

Some of his impressive photographs are also part of the virtual museum "Arts in Exile", e.g. the photo strip "Last photograph taken in Chemnitz and first photograph in São Paulo". "The story of this film is the story of the black stripe between the two photos," Hans Günter Flieg said to us in an interview. Behind the black stripe that separates the two images lies the story of his emigration from Nazi Germany to Brazil. The black stripe tells of taking leave – the last look out of the window of the family's apartment in Chemnitz – and arriving in exile, where Hans Günter Flieg chose a vase of flowers as his first subject. His memories of what happened between the two pictures were astonishingly detailed.

In Hans Günter Flieg, we have lost one of the last contemporary witnesses of exile from the Nazi regime. A remarkable, fascinating man with a tremendous wealth of knowledge and great artistic flair, even though he referred to himself as a "technician". We are grateful to have met Hans Günter Flieg and will not forget him.

(Dr. Sylvia Asmus)