Fanfares for a New Year!

 

It's the end of the year,
and, as it happens, a century too.
The year 1900 has been satisfying for some folk
and not so good for others.

Oh well, so it goes.
Still we can't complain.
We wish you a warm

Prosit Neujahr!

A brass band plays a fanfare on a fanciful castle tower high above a sleeping city. Hovering above them, a young girl waves a handkerchief as she floats along in the moonlit clouds. The quintet (look closely to spot the fifth musician) has waited until the stroke of midnight to add their sound to the peal of a great bell behind them. It marks an exciting moment as it was indeed the true turn of the century.

This colorful salute to the New Year appeared on a German postcard with a postmark of 31.12.00 — 31 December 1900 from Frankfurt am Main, possibly also the place where it was printed. The card was addressed to Musketier Eckhardt of the Infanterie Regiment Nr. 117 in Mainz, Germany. Presumably it was sent by one of his army comrades who thanks him for his card and sends best wishes for a new year.

There was a lot to remember about 1900. In February, Britain and the United States signed a treaty to build a canal in Nicaragua that would link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In May, the second Olympic games opened in Paris. Then in July, Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin's airship LX-1 made the first successful flight over Lake Constance. Then in September, Galveston, Texas became the target of a devastating hurricane that took thousands of lives. And throughout the year, there were terrible wars going on in South Africa, China, and the Philippines too. 

* * *

Another fine year comes to a close

having given the 20th century a respectable start.

1903 has been decent enough for most people

though others might think it pretty poor.

Oh well, so it goes.

Still we can't complain.

We wish you a

Prosit Neujahr!

On this next postcard a small band of four intrepid musicians stands outside in the snow playing tunes for the New Year. They are wrapped up warmly with sprigs of evergreens in their hats. This charming caricature appeared on a card sent to Zürich, Switzerland on 31.XII.03 — 31 December 1903 from someplace (the postmark is unclear) in Bayern – Bavaria. The back of the postcard dutifully advertises in 13 European languages that it is indeed an officially approved postcard. 

The year 1903 was generally more peaceful for most people. In January, the first transatlantic radio broadcast was made from the United States to England. In February, the new Republic of Cuba leased Guantánamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity". In March, the Ottoman and German Empires signed an agreement to build the Constantinople–Baghdad Railway. April was sadly a violent month as many people were killed in a pogrom in Kishinev, Russia (now in Moldova), and then many more died in a calamitous earthquake in Turkey. In November the United States signed a treaty that gave it exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone, formerly a French project. And in December, the Wright brothers made the first successful flight of a powered aircraft. 

* * *

Once more a year has passed.

The decade may have a bit more to go,

but 1908 has been remarkably agreeable

though for some people maybe not so much.

Oh well, so it goes.

Still we can't complain.

We offer our congratulations

and best wishes

for the New Year!

Another year and another band announces the turning of the calendar. Though technically this little group is just a quartet with two woodwind instruments, a clarinet and bassoon, I think it will still count. This German postcard was sent from Berlin on 31.12.08 — 31 December 1908. The bright colors of the illustration are enhanced by a subtle embossed outline that is more visible on the back of the card. This card was approved by 15 European postal services! (Double points for readers who can spot the new languages.)

The year 1908 ushered in many new signs of a modern era. In London in January, Robert Baden-Powell published his book "Scouting for Boys" which quickly became such a bestseller that it started the worldwide Boy Scout movement. In February, assassins murdered King Carlos I of Portugal and Prince Luis Filipe in Lisbon to supposedly advance a democratic republic. In July, the third Olympiad opened in London. In August, Wilbur Wright demonstrated a new flying machine to thousands of people at a horseracing track in Le Mans, France.  Later that month, the Hoover Company of Canton, Ohio acquired the rights to manufacture an upright portable vacuum cleaner. In October, Henry Ford's factory in Detroit rolled out the first Model T automobile. Then tragically in late December, between 75,000 and 82,000 people perished in an earthquake that shook Sicily and Calabria in southern Italy.

* * *

Just like clockwork,

a year has finally wound down.

Its beginning was not too bad,

but as 1914 ends,

the world has little cheer to share

and far too much bad luck for everyone.

Oh well, so it goes.

Still we can't complain.

We offer a hearty

Prosit Neujahr!

This last postcard offers plenty of brass bands, all precariously perched on snow-covered rooftops.  The artist has combined painting and photography to create a scene with almost Escher-like perspective. Ignoring the danger of slippery slopes, the musicians seem determined to sing and play in the new year as the clock hands move relentlessly to midnight. 

This card is from Austria as indicated by the mutilated green stamp of the Emperor Franz Joseph but the postmark is unclear. The only date is a handwritten note of 28 M***? 1914, which looks like a date, along with a placename which, I think, stands for Albrechtsberg an der Großen Krems, a small town in the district of Krems-Land in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. The card was sent by the family Pochmann and addressed to Fritz Pinkert, a Musikdirektor in Kemberg, a small town in the Wittenberg district of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. I wonder if Fritz played a brass instrument. 

Few years in world history can compare to 1914 which everyone remembers as the summer when the  Great War began. In February the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was laid. In March, a Belgian surgeon Albert Hustin made the first successful non-direct blood transfusion, using anticoagulants. In April, 2,300 U.S. Navy sailors and Marines landed in Veracruz, Mexico, which they would occupy for over six months. At the end of May, the ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence taking 1,012 lives. In June Kaiser Wilhelm reopened the improved Kiel Canal linking the North and Baltic Seas and in August the SS Ancon made the first passage of the Panama Canal.

But it was the tragic assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo that triggered the main events of 1914. Within a month, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia which led to the mobilization of troops in Russia and then Germany. Within days France, Belgium, and Britain ordered their forces to deploy too. By late summer most of Europe was in the throes of a terrifying war. As the year closed in December 1914 there seemed to be no end in sight. 

As I began to write my last story of 2023, I chose from my collection four postcards of new year's greetings from the beginning of the 20th century. By themselves they are colorful, even silly, pictures of how people used to celebrate the start of a new year. But as I looked at the postmark dates, I realized that there was a larger context for each card that was worth examining. 

Just as in our time, each year brought far more tragedy, injustice, and suffering than anyone could have imagined at the time. And likewise there were countless new inventions, scientific discoveries, and astounding developments that seemed to offer transformative benefits to mankind. The hearty toast to the new year was more than just a simple sentiment. It was then, as it is now, an optimistic expression of hope and reassurance for the people we love. Be well. Stay safe. Prosper and enjoy life. May the new year bring you happiness and joy. 

So just as in times long passed,
my wish for everyone is the same.

Be well, stay safe,
and have a wonderful new year
for 2024. 

Prosit!

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where not every holiday
is merry and bright. 

And for a special holiday treat,
this morning, 24 December, 
these lovely ladies paid a visit
to my neighbor's house across the street.
Anyone for some Christmas turkey?

The Königsbrück POW Camp, A Theatre of War

 

In show business 
it's always good to start
with a clown act
that gets the audience laughing. 

Of course every successful show
needs a handsome man
to play the lead,
the hero of the drama.

And an actress or two is important
to add romance and intrigue to the story. 

Sets, props,
costumes, wigs, makeup,
complete the illusion. 

Once everything on stage is arranged,
the actors have studied their lines,
and all the blocking and cues are rehearsed,
the call goes out to the company.
It's time for the show to begin.

The patrons have taken their seats in the hall 
awaiting an evening of entertainment.

No matter if it's a comic farce,
a musical revue, or a tragic melodrama,
this captivated crowd will welcome any distraction
from a life of perpetual monotony
far removed from a terrible war.

This is a story of theater productions
produced at a prisoner of war camp
in Königsbrück, Germany.

It is 1916
and this was the company's second season
There would be two more
before the curtain finally closed forever.

 
. 

WW1 Serbian Memorial, Königsbrück, Germany 2020 

The location of this World War One prisoner of war camp was a short distance north of Königsbrück, a small town in the German state of Saxony. In a strange twist of irony in our age of the internet, if you search on Google for Königsbrück, the first image offered is a photo of a war memorial found at the site of this camp. It's a dramatic sculpture of a fallen Serbian soldier created to honor his comrades who are buried at the camp's cemetery. It was carved by a Frenchman, Edmond Delphaut (1891 1957), a talented artist and soldier who was also imprisoned there. In August 2021 I told the story of this sculpture in Monument to the Fallen, Königsbrück 1918.  Since then, I acquired this next photo of Delphaut and his assistants putting the finishing touches to the monument before its dedication in September 1918. Delphaut is the man dressed in a white suit on the right.

Several years ago my first interest in the Königsbrück camp was sparked by discovering photos of its orchestra of French and Belgian soldiers. After more research I learned that from 1914 to 1918 this German POW camp produced hundreds of photo postcards recording the activities of thousands of French, Belgian, British, Italian, Russian, and Serbian soldiers imprisoned there.  

Last week I presented a story about a set of photos from the Königsbrück POW camp called Soldiers at Ease, which followed a theme of men seated at tables doing a variety of mundane things. This week we will follow them to the camp theatre which was the center for a variety of entertaining pursuits for the soldiers. 

The Königsbrück camp was number 87 in a 1917 gazetteer of 177 prison camps in Germany and Austria. It was described as:  "A camp of wooden hutments situated on sandy soil amidst pine-woods a short distance from the town. Capacity, 15,000. 12th Army Corps."  It was hastily set up in August 1914, just weeks after the start of the war, at a training base for the Imperial German Army. This was chosen for convenience as the first prisoners, mainly French and Belgian soldiers, were quickly housed in some of the former German army barracks. However within a few months the military command realized it would need much more space for captured Russian troops, so new extension camps, Neuen Lagers, were constructed.  

This postcard was taken outdoors with the camera several meters above the ground, presumably from a guard tower, and it shows several casual groups of men, mostly French by their uniforms, standing along a "street" in the camp. The trees are too tall to have been planted in 1914, so I think this is somewhere in the old camp. The white building in the center looks like a stables. The raised section on the left with a barn-like roof seems large enough for a small stage. Though it is impossible to be certain about its use, it does demonstrate that there were buildings at the camp with space suitable for a stage and theater seating. 

The photo's location is identified on the back with both an official Königsbrück stamp and the writer's message. It is addressed to Monsieur A. Mazot of  St. Denis-de-Cabanne, a commune in the Loire department in central France. The postmark and message date is 16 October 1918, just 4 weeks before the end of the war. But more interesting is the note and date written on the front:

A bientôt  18-11-18
~
See you soon   18 November 1918

My first postcard at the beginning of this story was of Million, Comic Exentric who signed the card with a salutation to a friend and a date: 15 February 1916. The photographer, Carl Schmidt of Königsbrück whose name was on almost all the postcards, was generous enough to write the clown's caption just like it would appear on a typical entertainer's promotional card. The card was never mailed but has the standard imprint of the Königsbrück POW camp.

Million's wild plaid suit and Buster Keaton porkpie hat are the classical costume of a music hall/circus comic. Was he a professional clown before the war? My bet is that he was a hilarious mime who needed no language to be funny. 

My second postcard of the man with the long dark hair, goatee and artiste's bowtie is labeled a Schauspieler ~ actor, from the French prisoner of war camp in Königsbrück. This card went through the Germany military post, presumably from a camp guard, and sent to Kötzschenbroda, a district in Saxony north of Dresden. It has a postmark and written date of 30 November 1916. The closeup portrait is unusual to find in photos of prisoners, and because it lacks the usual prison camp backstanp, it may be a private photo produced by Carl Schmidt for only the camp's guards to use. It does suggest that the German captors got to enjoy the shows too. 

My third image was of two "women" performing in a play. Of course there were no female soldiers held at the prison camp, so these two "actresses" were men cleverly dressed in wigs and fashionable costumes. I believe they are also pictured in this next stage scene. The woman with the white headband is now seated on the right, and her companion may be the woman seated center who gasps in shock at the detective's report. The cast of five, two men and three women are in a residential drawing or dining room, artfully fitted with faux paneling , paintings, and china racks.

Unfortunately the caption was cut off in this photo, but the other photo has the title: "La Roulotte, MMe. Delattre et Braconnier dans la fin tragique ~ Mademoiselle Delattre and poacher in the tragic ending." The title is a match for a French novel of the same name from 1897 but I could find no mention of the name Delattre in it. However La Roulette was a celebrated cabaret in Paris. 

As an aside, I should mention that men playing female roles is a theater tradition as old as Shakespeare. In this era it was quite common to find cross dressing entertainers of both sexes performing on the European and American theater circuits. I've posted several stories on them in this blog.  At times these performers could be suggestive, maybe a bit bawdy, even titillating, but I don't think it is fair or accurate to assign our 21st century assumptions about sexual orientation and gender to unknown people in antique photos. In these photos it was just another kind of show biz illusion.

This card was sent by Alfred Cerene of the 156th infantry regiment to Mademoiselle Fernande Montels of Decazeville, a commune in the Aveyron department of the Occitanie region in southern France. In the corner is No. 52 which I interpret as Alfred's 52nd card to Fernande, presumably his sweetheart. Though this card has no postmark date, I have a number of Alfred Cerene's postcards from Königsbrück which were preserved for a hundred years and then sold through a dealer to collectors like me. 

Alfred's neat penmanship made it easy to read his name and unit which led me to find him in the gigantic database of WW1 prisoners of war that was compiled by the International Commitee of the Red Cross, both during and after the war. There I learned that Alfred Cerene, infantryman of the 156th regiment was captured on 20 August 1914 in a battle in Mörchingen, a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. It is now called Morhange but in 1914 it was in the Lorraine territory captured by German in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. It's no wonder then that Alfred had time to write so many letters and cards. 

This next scene comes from a different play, "Mlle. Josette ma Femme ~ Miss Josette my Wife." Seven characters, four men and three women seriously ponder some point of uncertainty. The maid's offer of a cup of tea does not seem to allay the seated woman's discomfort. The set is another drawing room, but it is a few degrees classier than the other play. 

This card was also sent by Alfred Cerene to Mlle. Fernandes Montels. He numbered it 32, so it is earlier than the other play. Alfred included a brief message: "Received your photo 1000 times thank you, and am very happy. Soon will write more." 

My fourth photo from the top, the one showing soldiers seated close to the stage, was sent by Alfred too and marked as number 27. It's a testimony to the high standards of European postal services of this era that even in wartime a postcard from eastern Germany could make its way to a small town in the south of France. I wonder what the number was for his final postcard to Fernande? Surely it was her that saved all his cards. 

This next scene has no caption but I think we can get the idea even without a translation. A man and a woman are having a discussion, perhaps an argument. He sits relaxed in a chair, maybe smoking, I think, with a haughty expression on his face. She has an gutsy air about her even though she is dressed only in her undergarments. There is a bed between them. Who will prevail? 

This card is marked from Königsbrück but was never posted. I have more examples of scenes from plays of the French theater, but it was not the only theater in the camp. Russian soldiers enjoyed theatrical entertainments just as much as the French.

Alfred marked this next card number 41. This scene is similar to the last one but with a twist in location. A man and woman are seated at a low table. The man, old with a beard, pours the young woman a glass of spirits or wine. She is seated on a narrow bed. The set is not of a room in a Parisian hotel but in a crude Russian log cabin. In one corner is a large brick oven suitable for cold Siberian winters. What did soldiers worry about or lose sleep over? Not the battles or the bombs, but the menace to their unprotected wives and sweethearts back home. It's an old story every trooper feared. And as playwrights well know, anxiety breeds drama. 

This next card is captioned as the prisoner of war camp at Königsbrück, the Russian Theater. Here we see an exterior set somewhere in a birch forest with a lake and mountains in the distance. Two young women confront an old woman who is seated on a park bench. The women look surprised at something the old crone has revealed. I think this play has a fairytale quality as it seems more rustic and  less sophisticated than the French plays. 

As the number of prisoner of war camps increased in 1915, on both sides of this now global conflict, the Red Cross and YMCA stepped in as neutral agencies to monitor the condition of prison camps. Besides checking on the food, housing, and medical services in the camps, these organizations also found ways to look after the captive soldiers' morale by suppling library material, sports equipment, and musical instruments to the prisoners. Some of these instruments came from local German music stores while others were handmade by the captive soldiers.

By the end of 1915 both the French and Russian sections of the POW camp in Königsbrück had their own orchestras.  And what do you get if you put instrumentalists and actors together? A musical revue! In this photo nearly two dozen men fill the tiny stage. The caption identifies it as the Königsbrück Russian Theater and this show has everything needed for a proper musical. There are a bunch of costumed actors and actresses at the back. A chorus of men in military tunics. And in front a string orchestra of two mandolins, violin, guitar, and two triangular Russian balalaikas. A playbill in the center announces the acts in Russian Cyrillic characters. Notice the Corinthian columns on each side of the proscenium.    

Not to be outdone, the French theater put on their own musical revue. Here the cast has eighteen characters on stage, including four wearing clown makeup and two women. In front of the stage an orchestra of at least nine musicians sits in a makeshift "pit" with four violins, flute, clarinet and tambourine. This is a group large enough to bring the roof down. Did the German command allow the singing of "La Marseillaise"? I doubt they could have stopped it on this night.

For over four years, several thousand soldiers were held at the Königsbrück POW camp. Some, like Alfred Cerene, came early and endured a full sentence until finally released in November 1918. Others arrived late, having suffered the horrors of a brutal war of attrition on the Eastern Front, or the terror of relentless bombardments on the Western Front. And hundreds more came from now forgotten battles in Italy, Serbia, and Romania. How the camp commander managed to control so many men speaking different languages is difficult to understand. But how he tolerated, and maybe even promoted, the theater arts is astounding to me. 

Concerts, dramatic plays, or musical revues are not art forms that can be produced by just one or two people. It takes real teamwork by an army of people, if you will, to design sets, fashion costumes, write scripts, and arrange music. Even in the best of times this is hard work. How did ordinary soldiers, sidelined from combat, and now held captive deep inside enemy lines manage to generate  so much entertainment in this prison camp?  Where did they get the material to build scenery and props? How did they write out the scripts or the music? Where did they find the time to do all this? Oh, wait. They are confined to a prison, so there's the answer to that question at least.

I have many more questions and even more photos from the Königsbrück prison camp that I want to introduce in the near future. My next story in this series will be on the musicians of the camp with maybe some more photos from the theaters too. Stay tuned.  It's enough to make you forget that there was a war on.

And as Loegel the Comique 
probably would say,
"Don't worry. Cheer up!
Life is but a joke!"

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where the play is the real thing.

The Königsbrück POW Camp, Soldiers at Ease

 

Most of the men walked there.

Those that couldn't walk
got a ride.

And those men from further away

came by train.

And for the next 4 years
this would be their home.

It was the time of the Great War
and these men were enemy soldiers
who had been captured on the battlefield.
They came from France, Russia,
Belgium, Britain, and Serbia.
Now they were in the heart of Germany.

They had arrived at
the Königsbrück Prisoner of War Camp. 

It was only the end of August 1914. 
They were removed from combat
but they now had a lot of free time on their hands. 

The first photo postcard shows French troops guarded by German soldiers marching along a dusty road. It was captioned Königsbrück, Ankunft der Kriegsgefangen ~ Königsbrück, Arrival of prisoners of war. The date was 28/8/1914, just 26 days after the first military action on the Western Front, a small skirmish at Joncherey, a commune on the border in the Territoire de Belfort. It was also only three weeks after the start of the Battles of the Frontiers on 7 August 1914 when a massive German force overwhelmed Belgium and Luxembourg and invaded France with a goal of crushing its capital Paris. The only resistance came from the French 5th Army and the smaller British Expeditionary Force. 

In this first month of World War One the battles were about rapid maneuver, unlike the static trench warfare that would later dominate most of the war on the Western Front. Over 30 days the German army suffered nearly 300,000 casualties while the French sustained 330,000 and the British 30,000. Both sides also captured thousands of enemy soldiers and immediately began sending them to  internment camps far back from the frontlines. 

The prison camp at Königsbrück, a small town in the eastern German state of Saxony, was just one of over 175 POW camps that Germany established during the war. By November 1918 there were over 2.4 million men held prisoner in Germany. 

The captured French, Belgians, and British soldiers came from the west, probably traveling most of the way on the same trains that had taken German troops westward for the invasion. The distance from the first battles along the French-Belgian border is about 440 miles from Königsbrück.

The captured Russians came from the east, transported along the railway lines that connected Prussia to eastern Europe. The German and Austrian-Hungarian rail networks had 32 routes that went to the Russian border with 14 having two-lane tracks. Russia had only 13 lines headed west with just 8 available for two-way traffic. This greatly hindered the mobilization of its armies delaying a full deployment of Russian troops by a month or more. 

During the Battle of Tannenberg, 23–30 August 1914, the German Eighth Army practically destroyed the Russian First Army in a great victory that strengthened German resolve to continue the war. The German army took only 13,873 casualties at Tannenberg but the Russians lost 30,000 – 78,000 soldiers killed or wounded and 92,000 taken prisoner. The Russian defeat severely crippled its army which ultimately led to its capitulation later in 1917. It is roughly 350 miles from that region, now in Poland, to Königsbrück.

Königsbrück is about 27 km (17 mi) northeast of the Saxon capital Dresden, and 114 km (71 mi) east of Leipzig, two major centers for German culture, music, and art. When the war began the town's population was only a few thousand, maybe less, but nearby was a large military base used for army training by the XII (1st Royal Saxon) Corps. As German forces advanced east and west and more enemy soldiers were being apprehended the troop barracks of this base were converted into a detention camp for French and Belgian soldiers. Within a year it would intern more than 15,000 men including many Russian and Serbian soldiers. 

This picturesque view of Königsbrück likely was produced before the war for German soldiers stationed there, but in October 1916 it was used by a French soldier to send a message home about the address of his new posting.   

Some years ago I discovered several photo postcards of large Sandplastik sculptures made by the soldiers held at the Königsbrück POW camp. I featured them in my story Art in a Time of War. 

I also found several postcards of the camp's orchestras and theater productions. As one thing led to another, I began to recognize that the photographers of the Königsbrück POW camp were very prolific and recorded a wider range of subjects than any other camp. So I began to collect these photos and now, after several years, have acquired hundreds of photos that depict the captive soldiers and their activities in the Königsbrück camp. I've previously written about some of them in The Prisoners of Königsbrück and Monument to the Fallen, Königsbrück 1918. 

My collection is far too big for just one story so I'm going to break it into parts. Today I will begin with pictures of soldiers at ease, resting and enjoying some light recreation by sitting down to table with their comrades. Or just standing around, goofing off for the camera.

This photo shows one of the barrack lanes in the Königsbrück camp filled with a crowd of soldiers. French, Belgian, and British soldiers were housed in a section separate from the Russians and Serbians. This was likely because of the challenge of maintaining good order between men who spoke and wrote in different languages. Though all POWs remained soldiers and were obliged to obey orders, ordinary military rules were suspended in favor of those of their captors. However in this photo there is a mix of French and Russian uniforms so evidently the men were free to move around the whole camp.

The back of the postcard has a distinctive printed format as a Kriegsgefangensendung or Prisoner of War Letter from Königsbrück. This makes it easy to confirm that a photo came from this particular camp. It has a stamped date of 13 Août (August) 1915 and was sent to someone in Dejon, France, the center of fine French mustard. The spaces for the prisoner's name and barrack number were a way for the German postal censors to monitor prisoner's mail.

In this photo a group of seven French soldiers sit around a crudely-made low table for a simple meal. I think it is inside a barrack room. One man reads a thin magazine. This wasn't a spontaneous snapshot as the men appear distracted from each other, probably instructed to look away from the camera flash. Since all enemy soldiers were taken captive during a battle, they usually had only the uniforms the wore and the contents of their haversacks with maybe a blanket bedroll. Anything else had to be acquired in camp, either issued through the German camp authorities or bought using barter or camp scrip.

Here another group sit at a table and read. Hanging on the barrack wall behind them are several backpacks and cases. The photographer numbered the photo 3424 which implies there were many photos taken before this one. As postcards were a simple and efficient way for a soldier to communicate with his family, the Königsbrück camp may have commissioned one of the prisoners to take these photos. The images would both appeal to soldiers and, at the same time, work as propaganda to convey the impression that the POWs were being treated well.

This card was sent to Dejon by the same French soldier who sent the barrack street photo. I presume he is in this group but I think the name he has written on the bottom is that of a comrade. 

Card games have always been a favorite activity of soldiers since probably forever. Here a quartet of men play a game while a comrade watches from a bunk bed. There's no betting but the soldier on the left is keeping score. It's interesting to see coffee mugs hanging from pegs on the wall and an electric lamp is on the table. Penciled on the top right is Décembre 1915.

Board games were another way that soldiers could endure the interminable dullness of camp life, and here two men play a game of checkers, being closely followed by most of their comrades. A message in French is written on the photo along with place and date, Königsbrück 9 Mars 1917. 

Now reader can play a game too. Can you spot the differences between this photo and the previous one?  They were both taken at the same place in the same barrack but at least one year apart. Any message on the front of the 1915 card would probably have been verboten and rejected by the censors, but by 1917 the rules seem to have relaxed a bit. 

Here a larger game of cards is played outdoors at a table. The Königsbrück camp was intended for enlisted and noncommissioned ranks and their uniforms often provide clues to the soldiers' units. But over time wardrobes wore out and were often replaced with an assortment of hats, garments, and footwear not found in military handbooks.  

The enemy prisoners held in Germany were entitled to send and receive letters and parcels. This photo shows either a mailroom or a soldiers' library as these men seem intent on some serious correspondence. I'm not certain about the logistics of the POW camps' postal service. I presume it was conducted using a neutral country like Switzerland, Denmark, or Sweden. It seems likely though that there was a long delay. Most of the personal messages are carefully dated and refer to  recent letters to reassure correspondents that letters and parcels were received.   

A group photo was a popular style of photo for POWs. This one looks like a party as it includes a man seated on the floor playing a mandolin. Just to the right is a man at a table showing us his  winning hand of cards. It has two aces and I think it's a full house which is appropriate for the 42 men of this barrack. 

            

I finish with a colorized photo postcard from Königsbrück of a small group of French, English, and Turko (Algerian) prisoners of war and their two German guards. This style of postcard was produced for the domestic market and was sent by a German soldier on 3 January 1916. It would be nearly three more years before these men could return home to their families.

What I like about these photos is that we see individual men and not faceless masses of marching soldiers. The men were granted salvation from the hell of warfare but condemned to a purgatory that was both a prison and something like a holiday resort. Though there is an element of propaganda in the images, I don't think this was overt disinformation or political promotion of a false narrative. As I hope to demonstrate, the prisoners at Königsbrück had freedom within the camp that was unusually liberal for this era. It raises a lot of questions for which I have not yet found answers, but I think the pictures do tell a good story.

Next weekend is theatre night at the Königsbrück POW camp.
Mark the date! You'll not want to miss this show.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where tea and cake always sounds nice.

Musical Freaks: The Horn Violin

I believe in ghosts
because I've seen them.
With a light shining behind
they are barely visible as 
transparent phantoms
with strange shadowy features.

They do not speak,
but some of these supernatural beings
do have musical talent and
can play instruments
that we cannot hear. 

Today I present a story
about two of these musical ghosts
preserved on glass negatives
with their unearthly instrument,
the Violinophone
or the Horn Violin.

But first I must summon the digital fairies
to do their magic and restore the ghosts
into their mortal forms.


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My first spirit is a young man dressed in formal white tie and tailcoat. He stands in a photographer's studio playing a violin that appears to have a brass horn bell attached to the chin rest. He gazes into the camera lens with a faint hint of a smile.

Most of the instrument is clearly a violin with its familiar curvaceous body, fingerboard, scroll, and of course, bow and strings, too. But above the man's head is a flared bell of a brass instrument very similar to the diameter of a horn, roughly 12 inches, which is larger than bells of trombones or trumpets. When I first encountered these ghostly glass negatives listed on eBay I recognized that the musician holds an uncommon instrument which I only knew from books on the history of obscure musical instruments. It was a hybrid instrument designed to solve an acoustic problem of the early days of sound recording. 

Sir Edward Elgar in a recording session
with members or the London Symphony Orchestra in 1914
Source: Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music

The first recording studios did not use microphones, which had not been invented yet, but instead relied on the acoustic energy of sound waves funneled into huge megaphones that transmitted sonic vibrations into a needle that then recorded the music onto a wax cylinder or disc. This was an age of low fidelity recordings that captured only a portion of the full sonic spectrum. In order to record an orchestra since brass instruments were the loudest they were positioned at the back of the studio, with French horn players facing backward with their bells turned toward the megaphone. Woodwind instruments were closer but players had to raise their bells for solo passages. String instruments inherently make a diffuse sound so these players were seated closest to the recording megaphone. The nuance of concert hall dynamics were generally ignored and instead musicians just played loud and louder. 

Edison Recording Studio, New York, NY 1916
Source: Wikimedia

Reproducing a proper musical instrument sound was a major challenge in the first era of recording when only mechanical machines were available for picking up acoustic waves. It was not until the advent of electronic  technology in the mid-1920s that more sensitive devices could register the full tones of music and voices. But in prior decades many inventors created a different kind of violin that used simple physics to give a violin a bigger dynamic range.

Jar Krumphans Resophonic Violin, c. 1900
Source: Retrofret.com 

The clever solution was to graft a metal horn bell onto a violin which would amplify the string sound and gave it a more directional sonority like a brass instrument. The horn-violin instrument above was made in Prague in the 1900s, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and called a Resophonic Violin or a Violinophone. Its construction is very similar to the instrument in my first ghost photo. The conical bell tubing is connected to a metal resonator under a traditional violin bridge that receives the strings' vibrations. Notice that like most band instruments the bell has a lyre for sheet music. Maybe this instrument was intended for use in a marching band? 

My second phantom musician is also in formal wear and in a photographer's studio. He stands on a fur carpet with his eyes closed, passionately playing a standard violin. But resting on a small table next to him is another Violinophone with a large bell. I can't say that the two musicians are the same man. They are roughly the same height (measured by the length of their violin bows) and they share a similar facial structure, but the similarities are not entirely convincing for me. However the instrument does look the same, though with the bell twisted over to the left, perhaps in order to balance it on the tabletop.   

My ghost violinists were preserved on the most fragile of photographic ephemera, thin glass plate negatives, roughly 4¼" x 3¼". Where the photos were taken is unknown but I have a hunch they are European in origin and date from around 1910-1920. How they survived is another matter as negatives are delicate vessels that contain the camera lens' original light. I believe they likely came from a photographer's studio, as only a photographer would save negatives for posterity.

Violinophone built by Klaus Eberle, c. 2020
Source: Wikipedia

The horn-violin instrument is perhaps better known as a Stroh Violin, an instrument patented in London in 1899 by Johannes Matthias Augustus Stroh, an electrical engineer from Frankfurt, Germany. His design was successfully manufactured by George Evans & Co. from 1909–1942. 

two views of a Stroh Violin
Source: Wikipedia

The bell is smaller and affixed to a minimal violin "stick" just stout enough to withstand the string tension but without the regular violin body. It resembles a modern electric violin but here the sound is amplified by simple acoustic principles that send the sound vibrations through the bridge to a small resonator disc, not unlike the disc on an early wind-up gramophone, and then out through the bell. 

The Strand Magazine
February 1902

The Stroh was featured in magazines as a modern scientific improvement on the old luthier craftsmanship. The bell was patterned after the cornet, the premier solo wind instrument of the time, and made from aluminum, which was then a new material which did not yet have the connotations of cheapness it does now. At the time it was not an inexpensive instrument as it sold for 4 to 6 times the price for a good factory-made violin. It was first marketed to professional violinists to use in theaters and music halls which had limited space for a large string section. Eventually the idea of adding a horn amplifier to a string instrument was incorporated with the viola, cello, double bass, ukulele, mandolin, and guitar. 

The Violinist, January 1912

The Stroh Violin was introduced to American musicians a few years later and used by the Victrola Company in its recordings. In 1912 a Texas violin teacher, Mr. Conway Shaw, promoted the instrument to The Violinist, a leading American music magazine. He claimed that "one Stroh had the volume of 10 or 11 ordinary violins; so that two of them for each part, as against the usual number of wind instruments, gave the proper balance, and could be placed to take a good record." The reporter agreed that the Stroh violin made a stronger sound but he was not so impressed that it would replace the traditional violin.

St. Johns AZ Herald
25 May 1901

In an Arizona newspaper article from May 1901 it was reported that a Swedish-American inventor, Alex Lundgren, had created his version of a hybrid horn violin that he called a "violo-horn." Mr. Lungren, who worked in the "marqueterie" (decorative wood inlay) department of the Pullman railcar company in Pullman, Illinois had been inspired after listening to a violin and horn duet to combine the two instruments. He had shown his instrument to a few friends in Chicago and expected to have it placed on the market soon. The illustration with the article shows an instrument with a horn similar to the one in my photos. Unfortunately there was not enough description to know if the horn part of the "violo-horn" came with a a mouthpiece.

Recording session at Victor Records studio
Source: Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music

In this undated photo of another early recording studio at Victor Record Company we can see another arrangement of a small orchestra around the recording megaphone. A single cellist is seated on a table bench practically on top of the violins. The nearest violinist and two at back center are playing Stroh violins. 

Stroh violin at the Museu de la Música de Barcelona
Source: Wikipedia

There is no longer a need for the Stroh violin in recording studios. With modern sound engineering a few instruments can now be easily multiplied into 101 strings. But the horn violin is still played in the traditional music of Transylvania and the Romani people. Their folk instrument takes the simple construction of the Stroh violin and adds their own handicraft ideas.

Closeup of Romanian Stroh type violin bridge and diaphragm resonator
Source: Wikipedia 

Here is a short video of a busker playing a Romanian style horn-violin. He was filmed on a street in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. Notice how despite lacking a violin's wooden body the instrument's bell amplifies the string sound very much as a trumpet's bell does for a player's lip vibrations. But without the need for a spit-valve. 

I could only find one video of someone playing an instrument like the Violinophone in my two photos. The performance is of the Originální Pražský Synkopický Orchestr from a concert in Prague's Blues Cellar on 26 May 2098. The musician on violinophone is Jan Šimůnek. His solo begins about 1:10 into the video. 

Notice how the bell is twisted around and above his head, not unlike a bass helicon or sousaphone. I wonder if someone has tried melding a tuba with a double bass. That kind of hybrid would make a monster Steampunk Franken-instrument!  

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where mother's stories are always best.