Short People

 

A skilled portrait photographer
always tries to satisfy a customer.
Yet when taking photographs of children
a photographer recognizes that
their clientele is not the child but its parents.
The photographer provides only the camera.
A child's wardrobe, hair, and accessories
are mother's responsibility.

 

 

 

 

 

In the brief time that a photographer
has charge of an unfamiliar child,
they must quickly arrange the subject,
position the lights, focus the camera,
and wait for that perfect moment
to release the shutter.

 

 

 

 

 

Even the best cameramen know they can command
the attention of a young boy or girl for just an instant.
Any delay brings unwanted movement,
a fuzzy eye blink or blurring shudder.
Likewise undue haste might miss
a candid gaze or youthful smile.

 

 

 

 

 

If the photographer's timing is good
they capture a perfect picture for the parents.
An image of childhood yet one full of blooming personality
and brimming with a parent's hope for the future.

Today I present
four beautiful studio photos
of handsome young boys holding musical instruments
that I'm fairly certain
none of them could actually play.

 

 

The first little boy sits on a hard wooden chair that is too tall for his feet to reach the floor. His long hair has been neatly curled and oiled as he gazes at someone to the side of the camera. Mother maybe? He clutches a slide trombone in a tight two-handed grip. The instrument gleams in the studio light showing off its elaborate engraving on the bell. He looks like a child who has been told several times, "Be very careful of Daddy's trombone. Don't drop it!"

 

A trombone's slide has seven positions that lengthen the instrument and give it a full complement of musical notes. It requires a fairly long arm stretch which would clearly be beyond the reach of this boy. My guess is that dad (or maybe mum) aspired that their son might soon take up the instrument. But looking at this kid, I have a hunch he chose something different. Unfortunately his postcard is unmarked so all I know is that it was taken somewhere in America around 1900-1910.

 * * *

 

 

 

 

 

The next boy is about the same age, around four or five maybe. He is dressed in a dark sailor suit with short knee pants. He stands on a fur rug in front of a large wooden bench and holds a shiny cornet. Once again the lighting picks up the fancy engraving on the bell. His short hair is cut in a military style and pinned to his blouse is a small medal. It resembles the crossed guns insignia worn by a U.S. Navy Gunner's Mate, though it might be the crossed cannon of the U.S. Army artillery or crossed rifles of the infantry. 

 

The way the boy holds the cornet is a not the usual way a real cornet player would hold the instrument. But more critical is that his fingers are too small to mash the valve buttons. So I think this was a picture taken for dad, maybe a sailor serving aboard a navy ship, who also played the cornet. 

 

 

This postcard does have a note on the back but sadly the clues are incomplete. There is a date, April 15: a name, Chas. Erb.; a place, Green Wick, K-town, and a mystery number, –16. 

 

Without a year we have only the little corner triangles in the AZO stamp logo to go by. When two point up and two point down it is roughly a photo paper style that the AZO company produced from 1918 to 1930.

The forename Chas. is Charles, but is Erb. a full surname or an abbreviation? It is an uncommon name in Ancestry.com.

And the place name doesn't match anything in Google Maps. There is no Green Wick, though plenty of Greenwichs. Initially I though K-Town was a short name for Kansas City, but Wikipedia has an entry for K-Town which does not include it. Of the cities in the United States with that nickname are Kaysville, Utah; Knoxville, Tennessee; Kenosha, Wisconsin; and Kearny, New Jersey. My guess is that it signifies Kearny, NJ which is on the Hudson River east of New York City, and near a major naval shipyard.

 

_ _ _

 

 

 

 

 

  * * *

 

 

 

 

  

The next postcard photo is of an older boy, somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. He is dressed in a proper bandsman's uniform and is holding a bassoon that is an inch or two taller. A bassoon is an unusual instrument to find in a small town band. Typically it was played only in large military bands. It's a bass instrument with complicated keys that require a wide finger stretch. This boy's hands are again too small to properly cover the finger holes and keys. 

 

His cap, and braided cord accoutrements are of a military style but a closer look shows his tunic sleeves are folded under and his trousers cuffs are tucked into his socks. This was clearly a borrowed uniform and bassoon to stage a photo for Dad or Grandpa. The photo's location may not even be a photographer's studio but instead it was taken behind a concert stage or even in a residential home. 

There are no marks on this postcard, but the letters, MINN are on the tunic's collar. Minnesota? I date the photo to around 1905-1915. He seems a sharp lad that any dad would be proud to see playing in a band.  

 

 

 

 

 

 * * *

 

 

 

The last boy is the oldest in time, though he is only about age 5 or 6. His picture is on a small CdV photo, a carte de viste, taken in the 1870s or 80s. He stands with a tenorhorn in a photographer's studio in front of a crudely painted backdrop. His hair is neatly combed and he wears a sturdy corduroy jacket with knee pants. It's not impossible that he played this instrument, a member of the saxhorn/euphonium brass family. I have several photographs of family bands which had young siblings who played a tenorhorn. However he just doesn't have the air of a real brass player so I'm uncertain.

However his small size certainly fits with my group of diminutive pseudo-musicians. The photo has a backstamp of the photographer, Adolph Rapp of Glasgow, Kentucky. This town is about halfway between Nashville, Tennessee and Louisville, Kentucky. In 1870 Glasgow, KY had a population of 733 residents. It jumped 106.0% to 1,510 in 1880 and then to 2,051 in 1890, so this photo likely comes from Glasgow's boom years.

 

 

 

I can't finish this post about young non-musicians
without showing off what talented kids are capable of
when they get the right musical training.
 

Here is an astonishingly great concert from Japan
by the Hirasanishi Elementary School Brass Band
performing the Benny Goodman classic, "Sing Sing Sing".

Look out for something that is not there
and you will even more amazed. 

Did you spot any music stands?

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where cuteness in any size is always awesome.

The Long Horns of Wisconsin

The alphorn is one of the simplest of musical instruments.
Take a tree limb, split it in half, carve out a hollow center,
and glue and bind the two halves together into a long conical tube.
Buzz your lips into the small end and a great yawp will sound from the big bell.
The length of the horn determines its fundamental pitch
and with a little practice a player can produce enough overtones
for a serviceable number of notes to play simple melodies.
Due to its length and dynamics
it is best heard outdoors where the open air will carry
the sound far beyond forest valleys and rocky mountains. 

 

This unusual photo gives us a rare glimpse
of an alphorn craftsman in his workshop
with one of his instruments resting on his shoulder.
It appears to be over six feet long.

 

 

But a closer look at his woodworking tools
reveals curiously modified gouges, knives, and axes
that have shortened shafts with threaded metal ends.
These are not the handles these tools usually have.
Why does this man have tools like that?

Fortunately the answer is printed
on the back of this 8" x 10" photo.

 

HORN A-PLENTY
(Fourth of Ten)

The tools used to make an alphorn like
the one he's holding are displayed on a table
by Gwziates.  In foreground are specially-
made instruments that screw into Joe's
mechanical right hand.  The seven-foot horn
was carved from a 12-foot limb.
CREDIT (UNITED PRESS)          8/17/56 (LB)
ROTO SERVICE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

This press photograph also has a stamped date of SEP 2 1956 with penciled instructions for the newspaper's typesetter. It's a typical syndicated photo/report used by newspapers to fill page space in between advertising. Most are novelty material about people doing unusual things or making some noteworthy achievement. In this case the oddity of the picture is that a man with one hand made an unlikely long wooden horn. 

 

But like many of these brief reports, the photo's caption left out a lot of details and made one rather grievous journalistic error. The alphorn maker's full name was Joseph N. Gwzietes and he lived in Monroe, Wisconsin. It's one of the most unusual surnames I've encountered and I suspect Joe was pretty accustomed to misspellings of his name.

 

It happened earlier in that same year when the Madison WS State Journal ran a feature on his unique musical instrument.

 

Madison WS State Journal
25 March 1956

Joe Gwzietes (a.k.a. Gwziates or Gwzietis) was born in Lithuania on a farm where he made his first wooden horn at the age of seven. He called it a truba and used its deep rumbling sound as a way to keep wolves away from the cattle, even using the horn as a club  if necessary. In 1909 at the age of 22, Joe immigrated to America and found work first in Chicago and then Michigan and Wisconsin as a laborer, private policeman, lumberman, deckhand, and farmhand. 

When an Irish acquaintance suggested Joe could make good money working for the Swiss-American community in Wisconsin, he moved to Monroe in Green County, Wisconsin. This small town is just north of the Illinois/Wisconsin state line, about 100 miles west of Milwaukee and 130 miles northwest of Chicago. The area around Monroe was settled in the 1860s attracting many Swiss families who established dairy farms there and gave Monroe its nickname, "the Swiss Cheese Capital of the USA".

 

In Monroe, Joe continued making his so-called truba horn just for his own amusement until one day a Swiss man became excited to learn that Joe made an alphorn, the celebrated folk instrument of the Swiss Alps. At first Joe had no idea what the man was talking about as Joe thought his truba was his own invention. But he soon discovered there was a demand for his Lithuanian-Swiss alphorns and he began selling them to the Swiss-American people living in the region around Monroe. But in 1950 he suffered a tragic accident.

 

 

Madison WS State Journal
25 March 1956

 

Since making alphorns only provided a sideline income Joe continued working on farms. Six years before while running a corn shredder he accidentally put his right hand too close to the machinery and "in a twinkling, his world was chewed to bits." Then while recovering in hospital, a fire at his home destroyed all his tools. Despite these setbacks, Joe Gwzietes figured out how to adapt woodworking tools to screw into his new prosthetic limb and by 1956 had returned to his woodworking craft and was once again accepting orders for alphorns.  

 

 

 

Philadelphia PA Inquirer
16 September 1956

Joe Gwzietes was born in 1887, so he was age 69 in 1956. His remarkable recovery from his frightful accident as well as his handcrafting an unusual instrument added a nice heartwarming element to his story, so it's not surprising that newspapers across the country picked up this story and several accompanying photos. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a series of photos including a dramatic one of Joe standing with his alphorn on a Wisconsin butte. Ironically considering its Swiss alpine connection, the highest point in Wisconsin is only 1,951 feet above sea level at Timms Hills, about 130 miles north of Monroe.  This butte must be considerably lower.

 

 

 

 

Minneapolis MN Star Tribune
7 October 1956

The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a set of photos that included my first photo of Joe in his workshop along with pictures of him choosing long branches of spruce, pine, and fir trees, and preparing the timber for carving. The best trees for alphorns are softwoods that have a limb with a natural bend that matches the shape of the alphorn's bell. In fact this method which Joe taught himself as a boy is exactly the same technique used by traditional Swiss/French/Austrian alphorn makers.

 

 

Madison WS State Journal
28 September 1958

 

In 1958 the Madison State Journal ran another feature on Joe Gwziates (still getting the spelling wrong, so maybe Joe sometimes did too.) This story included a photo of him making spoons and added more details on his life. To begin making an alphorn he chose a spruce with a 10 to 15 foot limb which required chopping and sawing for which Joe had specially modified tools. Some of his recent instruments were for sale between $45 and $100. 

 

He also made hundreds of wooden spoons and forks, part of his family heritage. "At home in Lithuania," he says, "that's all we had to eat with. If one kid's spoon got broken, he had to wait till the other kids finished eating before he can eat."

"Kids used to fight with them," Joe said. And one time: "Our mother had a big bowl she put out in the yard with the soup in, and the kids all got around the bowl to eat. One time the old sow came up and put her head in the bowl and started eating. We all turned and hit her and broke our spoons. So we had to make new ones."

 

He objected when people called him "the Russian" as he was proud of his Lithuanian homeland. After immigrating to America he was employed as a police guard at the Chicago stockyards. But the work proved dangerous when he was threatened by a man who put a knife to his throat, so he soon moved on to the northwoods of Michigan and became a lumberjack. Sometime later he found work on a ship. On one cold foggy night on Lake Michigan, his captain called on Joe to play his turba horn to replace the ship's frozen whistle. For the rest of that night Joe stood on the deck blowing three blasts a minute.  "I may have saved some lives," he says. 

 

Janesville WS Daily Gazette
22 December 1964

In December 1964 Joe Gwzietes got his picture in the paper once again playing a small alphorn, this time with the heading: Makes His Own Best Present.  Joe was now age 77 and "made his own best Christmas present–an alphorn–to prove he could still do it despite ill health and the loss of right hand in a farm accident" The same picture was used nearly five years later when Joe's hometown newspaper printed his obituary with a tribute on the paper's front page.

 

 

Monroe WS Evening Times
24 May 1969

 

   A man of several trades and languages, better known for his making of alphorns, Joseph Gwzietes, 82, died at 2:05 p.m. Friday, May 23, 1969 at the Green County Hospital. He became ill the night before from an enlarged heart condition of some duration.  

    Joe, as he was familiarly called, often corrected people as to his birthplace, Lithuania and not Russia. He was born March 19, 1887, a son of Frank and Worsheria Marzulicki Gwzaitis. His father was German and his mother Lithuanian.
   When he was in Lithuania it was under the domination of the Czar of Russia. Joe learned to speak Russian, Polish, Swiss, and English as well as his native tongue.
While doing farm work in Lithuania, watching a herd of cattle on a large estate, he spent his time whittling at the age of 7, he fashioned a "Russian bugle" for himself from a limb of a tree. This he referred to as a "truba." Coming to America, he learned that his instrument was more famous as a Swiss Alphorn
   Joe came to America in March 1909, settling in Chicago. He was married July 3, 1913 to Amelija Merkis...
   Surviving are four brothers, Ignasis, Tony, John, and Charles, all in Lithuania, and three sisters, Mrs. Anna Burba of Chicago, and Stasha and Patricia, back in the homeland...

I omit the remainder of Joe's obituary as it repeats
some of his biography which I've already told.
 

 

 

Gravestone for Joe Gwzietes, 1887–1969
Calvary Cemetery, Monroe, Green County, Wisconsin
Sorce: FindAGrave.com

 Joe Gwzietes was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in Monroe, Wisconsin
and FindaGrave.com has a picture of his gravestone.

 

On the monument is an image
of two crossed alphorns
above his nickname.
Alphorn Joe.

Madison WS State Journal
1 May 1966

America is a land built by immigrants like Joe. His ingenuity and enterprising nature helped him establish a place in the new world that clearly left a mark on the Swiss-American community in  Monroe, Wisconsin. It was surprising how many newspapers focused not on his handicap but on his woodworking skill. His obituary is a testimony to the great affection he engendered in his many friends and neighbors in Monroe.

 

Like Joe, I am an alphorn player and woodworker too, so I can appreciate the difficulties he overcame to pursue his love of the "truba", his Lithuanian-Swiss Alphorn. He's also an example of how music has special powers both in the playing and making of a musical instrument that begins with a love for its sound. I imagine Joe humming Lithuanian (or maybe Swiss) folk tunes as he began carving out a "truba." Perhaps someday I'll find one of his alphorns hanging in a Wisconsin ice cream shop and get a chance to play it. That would be a treat.

 

Joe Gwzietes also deserves a special mention in this age of the internet. His surname, Gwzietes, (or even Gwziates) is so unique that it confuses the search engine on Ancestry,com so much that it offers unconnected Greek names as substitutes. And more remarkably Google can not find the word "Gwzietes" anywhere in the internet universe except for a couple of archived news clippings that mention—Joe Gwzietes and his alphorns.

 

 

 

 

Every year Monroe, Wisconsin celebrates its Swiss heritage
with a festival that, of course, must have alphorn music
Here is a YouTube video appropriately titled:
Cheese Days in Monroe, Wisconsin - Alphorns.
It was posted on 16 September 2022 by Laurie Kutil.

 

 

 

 I think Joe would have loved hearing them play.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where its never as long as you think.

 

 

 

Music on a Field of War

 

 It's a nice day for an outdoor concert.
The weather isn't too cold
and though there's been rain,
the grass is dry enough for the soldiers to sit on.

 

 

 

Instead of standing in a military formation
the bandsmen are arranged in a relaxed casual way.
They are easy to recognize by the distinctive epaulets
called Schwalbennest or swallow's nests
that always embellish the shoulders of an army bandsman's tunic.

On this occasion the band is accompanied
by a few regular soldiers with rifles slung across their shoulders.

Close behind them is horse-drawn farm wagon
loaded with something covered by a canvas tarpaulin.
On top, next to the farmer, is one of the bandsmen
holding a chalkboard sign that sadly is too faded to read.
 

 

 

 All the men wear a Pickelhaube, the standard helmet
of soldiers of Kaiser Wilhelm's Imperial German Army.
Most of the musicians are sprawled
along an embankment below the wagon.

 A few have their instruments
but more are probably stowed on the wagon.
Attached to each musician's belt is a ceremonial short sword,
an indication they are playing for some special event
that required a proper full dress uniform.

 

 

 In the center of the group is an officer,
possibly the band director,
as he holds a full length sword
while perusing either a music score or a map.
Next to him is the glockenspiel player,
the traditional instrument of all German military bands.

 

 

 Taken altogether
the band is quite large
with over 30 musicians.
Correcting the contrast and focus
on this faded postcard photograph
revealed a charming image of German soldiers

in a tranquil, almost carefree, setting
seemingly far from the chaos of warfare.

 

Pickelhaube of Bavaria Regiment 1914-18
Source: The Internet

 

The German Empire in 1914 was made up of 25 constituent states,
each of which had its own army, though unified under a central command.
The Pickelhaube originated in Prussia
but was standard issue for every German soldier's uniform.
However affixed to the front was a distinctive Wappen or helmet plate
unique for each kingdom's or province's regiments.

 

 

Helmetwappen of Bavaria Regiment 1914-18
Source: The Internet

 

The army of Bayern or Bavaria had a plate design
with two crowned lions clutching an oval shield over a wavy ribbon.
I think it matches the grainy pattern seen on the helmet plates of these soldiers.

 But the real charm of this photo comes
from a simple note written on the back
and an + marked on the front.

 

 

1917–18
Papa im Felde, Frankreich
Regimentsmusik Company
~
Papa in the Field, France
Regimental music company

The German phrase "im Felde" means "on the battlefield" though in WW1 a band would typically never be stationed anywhere near the front lines in France. They are more returning from a concert near a military headquarters far from the trenches of the Western Front. The note may have been added much later by the bandsman's child, but its message transforms the photo into a cherished memento, a relic of wartime service, and a memory of family and comrades.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone has somewhere to go.

In honor of this weekend's theme image
I can't resist adding a few old car photos
from my collection of family photographs.

This is my dad, Russell Brubaker, at age 4

sitting on the radiator of an vintage Chevrolet coupe
in 1933, judging by the Maryland license plate.
It was his first start to many, many more photos with cars.

 

 

 Here he is at about age 17 or 18
sitting on the bumper of a friend's car.
This was taken somewhere near
Reisterstown, Maryland, west of Baltimore.

A companion took another picture
of Russ on the car bumper
this time with his friend and a pretty puppy
pretending to be a hood ornament.
I'm not sure whether I have more photos
of my dad with cars or with dogs.

 

This pretty young woman is my mom, Barbara Dobbin Brubaker,
kneeling in front of a 1950 Willys Jeep, her first car.
They had only been married a few months in 1950
before the army sent my dad to Korea.
My mother purchased this sturdy car, a used one, I think,
with the plan to drive it to California the following year 

to meet my dad when he returned by ship.

This became known as the first great family road trip
when my mother, her mother, and my dad's grandmother
drove cross country from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, California.
I have accounts written by each of them about this wonderful adventure.

A few years later found mom and dad
in France where I was born.

It was here that my dad developed a love for cars
particularly small cars.
Here he is sitting in a tiny three-wheeled vehicle,
a clown car really, with a big grin on his face.
It's so small it looks like a child's pedal-powered cart.
Parked behind him is his Willys Jeep, the second one they owned,
but this little car is borrowed, maybe from an army buddy.
I can't identify the make, but as the photo was taken in France
I'll assume it is from a French manufacturer.

This last photo is of me at age five
riding on a small tank,
a French one from WW1, I believe.
It's just the kind of vehicle a real road warrior should have.
The gas mileage might be horrible
and the speed pretty pathetic,
but nobody would dare cut me off in heavy traffic.

Paper Airplanes, part 2

 

 The flight wasn't too bad.
We thought the food service was pretty decent
though the steward had a bad habit
of putting his fingers into the beer.

 

 

 

 

And as usual
the seats were too cramped
with not much leg room.
Yet we all got a window seat
so we shouldn't complain.

 

 

 Once upon a time,
air travel was a dream,
a fantastic idea of flying
comfortably from place to place
in a machine that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
 

Who could imagine a vehicle like that?
Who would trust riding in such a dangerous thing?

Soldiers it seems.

Today I present four photos
of World War One era
German soldiers enjoying
a stress free flight in an "airplane".

Or at least something that resembled one. 

 

 

 

 

My first photo has four enlisted men seated in the narrow fuselage of a canvas covered monoplane powered by a single-engine prop. The aeroplane seems to be at a high altitude yet still low enough that they can see their army barracks down below. The four soldiers appear to be be having a good time. Among the clouds in the background is a gigantic zeppelin airship, a large biplane below it, and a bird-like monoplane on the right. On the side of their aircraft is a sign that reads:

 Flucht aus Bitsch 338 meter Höhe
~
Escape from Bitsch 338 meters high

 

Obviously there was no way a photographer could take such a picture unless they placed the soldiers into a fake aeroplane painted onto a canvas screen. The photographer did leave his mark on the lower right, S. Graetz, Photograph, Bitsch, Lothringen. Bitsch is now known as Bitche, a commune in the Moselle department in northeastern France, about 43 miles north of Strasbourg. But when these German soldiers posed for their novelty photo Bitsch belonged to Germany as part of the Alsace-Lorraine region acquired by Germany as a prize for winning the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. 

 

The German army built a training base there in 1900 that covered 3285 hectares with a camp for 3,500 soldiers and 100 officers. At the end of 1918 France recovered the Alsace-Lorraine and converted the camp into a facility for French soldiers. But when Germany invaded and took over France in 1940, the camp was used again by the German army until 1945. The base is still used by the French military. 

 

This postcard was sent on 13 August 1913 from Metz, also in the Moselle department which was then in Germany. Notice that Herr Graetz was a bit careless and failed to properly crop the image. The photograph really fooled no one as the edges of the scene reveal the illusion.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

In this next photo a trio of soldiers appear to be flying over a town. The aeroplane is a similar single-wing aircraft with one prop. The curious rack above the pilot and passengers supports a fuel tank, likely with a gravity fed line to the stout 4-cylinder engine. As in the previous photo the background shows a zeppelin airship and a biplane. One the side of the open cockpit are two small signs:

Mit Donner, Hagel
und Blitz, schuf Gott
die Wüste Döberitz.
~
With thunder, hail
and lightning, God created
the desert of Döberitz.

In Döberitz gibts
kein Sünd weil
da Keine Mädel sind.
~
In Döberitz
there is no sin
because there are no girls

Döberitz is one half of Dallgow-Döberitz, a small municipality in the Havelland district of Brandenburg, Germany. In 1894 the Imperial German Army established a training base in Döberitz, where later one of Germany's first military airfields was built. This photo was sent on 20 July 1914, just eight days before Germany invaded Belgium precipitating the start of the Great War of 1914-1918.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

This third trick postcard has another quartet of German enlisted men sitting in a single wing aeroplane with much the same features as the previous "aircraft". One soldier dramatically points to something he sees below in their army base. The pilot keeps a good grip on the steering wheel. Once again a zeppelin and large biplane are in the sky background. The photographer's name was Jos. Jeuck, if I read the German Fractur font correctly.

The card was sent on 28 November 1916 from Truppenübungsplatz Heuberg, a large military training ground  in the districts of Sigmaringen and Zollernalbkreis in Baden-Württemberg. It was first established in 1885 on 47.9 square kilometres (11,800 acres) of hilly land north of the Bodensee—Lake Constanz, and is still used for military training.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The fourth and last photo has the largest group of flying soldiers, a quintet if you don't count the monkey. Clearly this a party flight that came with full conssessions. Like the previous aeroplanes this is another monoplane with a complicated rigging of wire cables keeping the wings in position. Below them are row after row of army barracks and above is another airship. This time its companion biplane has flown ahead. On the fuselage is the name of a German city, Darmstadt, located south of Frankfurt. The monkey is unidentified but I've seen him before on other soldiers' photos from Darmstadt so he/she may be a representative of a Darmstadt brewery.  Hanging on the right wing is a sign.

Die Zeit vergeht,
die Wolken ziehn,
Wir fliegen vergnügt
zur Heimat hin!
~
Time goes by,
the clouds move,
We fly happily
to our homeland!

The postmark on this card is marred as the stamp was removed and the full date is lost. But it seems likely that it was written during the war years. Fortunately there is enough of the mark left to identify that it comes from the Darmstadt übungsplatz, another military training base near Griesheim, Germany, just outside Darmstadt. The base began in 1864 as a site for firing exercises by Hessian artillery regiments. In 1908 August Euler (1868–1957), a pioneer German aviator, aircraft designer, and the first person to attain a German pilot's license, founded Germany's first aircraft factory not far from the military base. Euler leased the training area's parade ground for his flight tests which is now known as August-Euler-Flugplatz.

 

 

 

Any photographer located near a military base would be foolish to ignore a ready market of thousands of soldiers eager to buy a photograph of their military service to send to their folks back home. This kind of silly postcard of people pretending to drive an automobile, steer a ship, or even ride in a balloon was already a popular novelty of photographers at seaside resorts and spas in the 1910s. But the diffeence here is that this was a make-believe aeroplane, a new machine that had never been contemplated, much less seen, before the summer of 1908 when Wilbur and Orville Wright first demonstrated their Wright Flyer in Europe. Within months dozens of other aviators were able to match, or even surpass, this amazing achievement of human flight in a powered aircraft. 

 

Back in July 2022 in my story, Paper Airplanes, I featured a collection of similar photo postcards that included a number of French soldiers "flying" fake aeroplanes produced by French photographers. This kind of fun photo gimmick was clearly popular with soldiers on both sides of the war. The images retain a charm that shows off the individual persoanlities of each soldier and his mates. We can spot the prankster, the serious fellow, or the callow daredevil. 

 

But we forget that air travel as we understand it did not exist in 1913, the date of the first photo from Bitsch. Though by the end of the war there were aircraft large enough for a crew of more than two men, the idea of a single-wing passenger airplane capable of carrying five soldiers and a monkey was a complete fantasy created by an clever  photographer. What I like most about these photos is that they depict a wonder of imagination, a fantastic imagery of air travel not unlike something devised by a science fiction writer like the French novelist Jules Verne (1828—1905). 

The other curiosity about these postcards is how the fake aeroplane and scenery is nearly identical in each photo despite being taken by different photographers. I suspect that each studio ordered a canvas scene from a theatrical supply house. The "ground view" was tailored to each military base but copied from a standard drawing. 

 

I've been unable to find an actual historical aeroplane that served as a model for these faux ones, but the painted version uses elements from several early monoplane designs. As a way of illustrating what those first aeroplanes looked like here is a colorized historic film of the 1910 London to Manchester air race.

 

 

 

And to get a true sense of what it was like
to fly one these early aeroplanes,
here is short video of a reproduction 1912 Taube
built and flown by Michel Fithian on 9/1/2018.
I think his airplane most closely resembles
the faux aeroplane in my postcards,
though it is only a single seater
and there is no rooom for a monkey.

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where everyone is preparing for take off.
Please make sure your seat back and
trays are in their full upright position.