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I hunt fake history and correct it, but also post amazing real history stuff. Rude, obscene, vulgar, racist people who can't act like grown-ups get blocked.

Jul 24, 2021, 25 tweets

I couldn't resist... I collect old photo albums, daily life during the 1920s-40s is one of my specialities and these pictures are just such a gold mine.
I have quite the collection!
Let's have a quick look at the lot I received today.
Thread;

Tiny album with a few loose photos thrown in as extra, very nice!

The flower card;

My dear little mother!
Flowers that May gives us
should tell my mother
what love feels and thinks.
Today and every day.

First album shows a family that really liked to do a lot of hiking in the mountains.
Can't help wondering how those kids got through the war.

This photo of a shoe shop window is a possible clue about the identity of this family.
Generally people don't put such a photo in their family album unless there's a connection.

Next album is full of group photos of children on a day out.
And Edelweiss!

I reckon they've gone here;
second.wiki/wiki/littard

Clue; grandparents lived in Rottach.
Here?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rottach-E…

Another clue, someone worked at a company called 'Herkula'.

Oh dear, a darker clue.
Whoever decided to remove a few photos may have forgotten the one of the chap in a Nazi uniform.

Last photo in the album.
Here too one small detail that stands out and a clue.
The man is wearing a Nazi badge but the photo also appears to have been taken in Krefeld.

Last album starts with a big clue.
The owner appears to have worked in the brushes and mop business, is he perhaps Herr Karl Wolfram himself?
The business was at the Käthnerort 32 in Hamburg, did he also live there?

The office, it seems there were two!
Käthnerort 32 and Ritterstrasse 60.

The wedding photo and a date, this may help trace the people in the picture one day.
But I also spotted a tiny clue.
Karl, as I'll call him for now, is wearing the Iron Cross.
He's a veteran of WW1.

These are extra valuable to me, interior design magazines of the time rarely give a realistic view of how people lived and not many people took pictures of their homes because it was difficult, you needed light and so on.

Another big clue, they bought a house in 1932 (business was going well I guess) and they had their first Christmas there.
If we can find this house...

Er what?
Early hippies or are these the 'Wild men' the Medieval people mentioned in some of their books and art?

I fear something isn't right with Karl.
People recuperating, resting, semi-outdoor beds, reminds me a bit of a Sanatorium or something.

First Sunday back home.
Karl is now walking with a stick.
Is it perhaps related to the war?

1st of May, 1933.
Hitler had taken power in Germany a week earlier.
Dark clouds were gathering, in Schönberg the Nazis marched and the swastika flags were waving.
The album ends here.

As with all my albums I will one day take proper photos of each page and put them online, then I'll do a bunch of research and see if I can trace still living family members to see if they want the albums back.
As that's where they belong.

Although it is very rare for me to find people who are related to the folks in these albums or other historical documents I own, I have been able to reunite some of them with the original owners or their descendants.
There was a lot of crying.
I'll write about it some day.

Oh and while I have your attention...
grab all the old photos you can find in your home and write names and dates on the back!
Also name & date your digital photos!
One day your entire life may end up in a box at a flea market somewhere.
#makefuturehistorianshappy

Mr. Dommershuijzen found a clue!
Fußbodenbohnern... wat a word!

Mr. Dommershuijzen probably found Karl at the
Ohlsdorf cemetary in Hamburg.
Our assumption about his health may have been correct, he died shortly after the photos were made at the age of 41.
He was married to Ingeburg Armhold who died in 1973.

They had 2 daughters, Sigrid and Mechthild.
When daddy died Sigrid was 7 and Mechthild 3.
Sigrid died in 1983.
Mechthild left for London in 1957 and died in 2016.
The whole family shares one gravestone it seems.

Mr. Dommershuijzen has found the house!
The Farmsener Straße changed name in 1951, it's now Wolliner Straße.
If someone lives nearby, put a polite note in their mailbox with a link to this thread :)

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