Ilse Salberg and the Salberg office building

The Salbergs moved to Cologne in 1907. Their daughter Ilse Salberg (1901–1947) joined the management team of Salberg GmbH in the mid-1920s, when – after meeting the photographer August Sander – she also developed a growing interest in photography and contemporary art. This became a new career aspiration.

In 1934 Ilse Salberg moved to Berlin with her two children and in 1936 they moved on to Paris, where they met many other refugees, among them Luise Straus-Ernst. Another centre of Salberg family life was Sanary-sur-Mer in the south of France. After the German occupation of southern France in autumn 1942, Ilse Salberg and her family fled to Switzerland, where she died a few years later. Her son Ernst was captured while on the run and killed in Auschwitz.