Lisel Haas was born on the 12th October 1898 to Jewish parents in Mönchengladbach, a city in west Germany near Düsseldorf and the Netherlands border. Her Brother, Hans Erich, worked as a psychoanalyst. She was trained in painting. 

In Mönchengladbach, Haas owned and ran her own photography studio and would occasionally conduct some commercial portrait work. She worked primarily as a photojournalist, in particular for the Catholic magazine Weltwarte. She also worked as a photographer for Gladbach Town theatre. 

On 18th October 1938, she was issued with a decree that forced her to label her studio as a Jewish business. During Kristallnacht, her studio was targeted. On 15th November 1938,  Haas and her father left Germany and joined her brother's family in Birmingham that December.

After moving to Birmingham, in 1940 she gained a permit to work as a theatre photographer for the Birmingham Repertory. She photographed almost every production there at a time when many promising young actors appeared - including Albert Finney, Ian Richardson, and Derek Jacobi. She also photographed at the Birmingham Crescent Theatre, the Alexandra Theatre Birmingham, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, and the Kidderminster Playhouse. 

After the war, she was able to set up her own studio at her home in 12 Grove Avenue, Moseley. Throughout the rest of her life, she worked as a commercial portrait photographer, primarily catering to families. She lived with her life-

partner, Grete Bermbach, and died in Birmingham in 1989. She returned to Germany only once in her life in order to collect some belongings which had been left with a friend.

Setting the story into a contemporary context of displaced people today is of particular importance to us; as an organisation we believe in working with the past to dream futures. We want to work with displaced people, in particular female creatives, who will be classified as refugees without any heed to their professional practice. 

Our initial conversations with the University of Birmingham, Moenchengladbach Cultural Team (Haas’ town of birth), The Civic Society, The REP and Birmingham’s partner City Leipzig, have engendered widespread and significant support for this project. The Library of Birmingham has also agreed to support the project by confirming that we can use the exhibition space of 250 square metres, in kind, during the second phase of the project.  

As well as gaining an overview of Haas’s legacy, this initial project will allow us to scope a larger project with all of the above partners, as well as identify any additional partners that can contribute to the project; we will be able to work with the partners at this stage to clarify their contribution and shape collaborative activity. We envisage collaborating with a number of organisations in Germany, but in order for us to involve any partners and develop a meaningful project, we need to clarify what archival content we can access and work with.