A Fiddler on the Street

 

 The fiddler bows low in supplication.
His clothes are ragged and his feet are bare.
"A few coins, please, for my music," he pleads.

The caption in Hungarian reads:

 

Ide azzal a borra:
Szomjazik a Kátsa,
Csiklandozza torkát még
Töpörtus pogάcsa.
 ~

Here with that wine:
Kátsa is thirsty,
Tickle our throat with some more
Puff pastry.

This colorful illustration of a musician appears on a Hungarian postcard dated 1903 June 20. The dating convention in Hungary at that time was to use a year/day/month pattern and leave off the first numeral 1 from the year. It was sent from Dunaszerdahely, which is now called Dunajská Streda in southern Slovakia. The town was first mentioned in records from 1256. The word Szerdahely means "Wednesday (market)place" in Hungarian and today the town is still predominantly inhabited by ethnic Hungarian people.

 

 

The fiddler's postcard caught my attention mainly for its vivid colors which despite the passage of 120 years are still bright. The musician's shabby appearance is not unlike that of street buskers seen in cities around the world. In fact he looks better dressed than some of the street musicians found here in my hometown in western North Carolina. What sold me on this whimsical card was the discovery that there were more in the same series.

 

 

 

On this card the fiddler clasps his hands in prayer while gazing up to the sky. If his first plea did not work then perhaps an appeal to a higher authority will. His tattered blue jacket and red trousers are similar to a European military bandsman's uniform. In the lower left corner are initials:  WK.C.Bp. which I interpret as the mark of the publisher and not an artist. The printing method is lithography which probably accounts for it better quality ink. It needed only a tiny bit of digital correction of some faded contrast. The card has no printed verse and was never mailed.

 

 

 

 

Jól izlet a májas hurka,
Meg a malacpecsenye,
Ilyen ếtel a czigánynak
Minél többször kellene.
Koplal sokat a szegény
Kóczos, fekete legény.
~
The liverwurst looks good,
And the pork roast,
Such food for gypsies
As often as possible.
The poor man fasts a lot
A disheveled black fellow.

Now the fiddler glances covetously at some tempting food according to the verse. The sender of this postcard adds a line: Tanifókkal eqzyűl ~ He met with Tanifos, which probably was a funny remark that made sense only to the recipient. Like the first card this postcard was also sent from Dunaszerdahely on 3 June or July 1902.  In this era Dunaszerdahely was in Hungary, a part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, but Hungary was still a separate kingdom and had its own postal service. Notice that someone, maybe the postman, has struck through the alternate foreign names of this postal media leaving only the Hungarian name: Levelező-Lap, which translates literally as Correspondence-Sheet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here the fiddler holds out his hat to ask for coins, a universal gesture recognized since ancient times. The unknown artist has kept a consistent style and given the man a variety of charming expressions. This card shares the same style printed back as the others but was never posted.

 

 

 

My last card of the fiddler has him begging down on bended knee with his dark eyes turned to the viewer in an imploring gaze. I feel certain there is a 6th card where he is playing his violin as this was the typical number printed for postcard series, but I will have to remain patient and watchful until I find it. 

The artist's depiction of this vagabond musician fits with artwork I featured in my story from August 2022, The Romantic Violin. Like those passionate violinists, this fiddler is a fanciful romantic creature too, but unlike them he is also an example of a racial trope. European people in 1902 would have instantly labeled him as a Zigeuner, a Gypsy, or more properly a Romani. Though he is rendered in a gentle way as a poor tramp he embodies an ethnic cliche that appears in many other postcards from this same period.

 

 

 

The Romani people are said to have originated in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. After the  invasion by Islamic forces in AD 1000-1040 the Romani migrated into the Byzantine empire and then central Asia. They appeared in Europe first in the Balkans in the 13th century; then Bohemia in the 14th; followed by Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal in the 15th; and by the 16th century they were in Russia, Denmark, Scotland and Sweden. They were a nomadic people who seemed never able to settle in one place, mainly because they were abused and persecuted everywhere they went.

The Romani were often portrayed disparagingly in Western culture for their stubborn independence, criminal pursuits, and knowledge of arcane arts like mysticism and fortune telling. Yet many artists, writers, and composers were attracted to their culture and created Romani, Gypsy characters to add an exotic or provocative allure to their work. Perhaps the best-known musical character is Carmen, the beautiful Spanish Gitano (Romani) woman in Georges Bizet's popular opera of the same name, adapted from Carmen, an 1845 novella by the French writer Prosper Mérimée.

 

But Romani culture was also recognized for its music, especially on the violin. Many great composers like Brahms and Liszt were influenced by Romani rhythmic dance forms and melodies played in a characteristic minor mode. Thus the Gypsy fiddler became a popular figure for European artists.

 

 

  * * *

 

 

 

In this postcard another artist renders a colorful bearded fiddler seated on a small keg. He is dressed very like the other fiddler with a short blue jacket and soft hat and his violin and bow under his arm. Curiously he holds a postcard-sized painting of himself as if offering it for sale. Under this small printed watercolor is a name: Docili Mocili just beneath a tiny silhouette of a black dog or pony. The caricature also has two lines of verse.

Tzigánynyal álmodni szöröntse, de legkivált a Kártyával.
~
Don't be afraid to dream with Tzigány, but especially with the Card.

 

This is Google's translation but Hungarian is a very difficult language so I'm not satisfied that this is the best interpretation. I tried to translate the lengthy message but despite the relatively clear handwriting, there are far too many letter choices to get a good translation. I have a feeling that it just says, "We did/did not receive your letter. Everyone is well/not well. Write more soon."  The Hungarian postmark is too faded to read, but the sender wrote a date of 1902.VIII. 9.

 

 

 * * *

 

 

 

The next postcard is a German print of children in a farmyard dancing to a raggedy fiddler as the farmer and his family watch cheerfully. The illustration is by O. Baditz with a German title: Der erste Csárdas ~ the first csárdas. A csárdas is a traditional Hungarian folk dance popularized by Hungarian and Romani bands.

 

This quaint image was printed in München (Munich), Bavaria and sent from there to someone in Württemberg on 3 December 1899.

 

 

 

 

To demonstrate the fantastic quality of Romani music
here is a short video of “Caliu” aka Ghoerghe Anghel,
a violinist with the Romani group Taraf de Haidouks,
playing solo for his family in his back garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  * * *

 

 

 

 

 

From the beginning of the postcard era in the 1890s novelty cards of Romani individuals like a happy busking village fiddler were not uncommon, but I've discovered that during World War One a different kind of picture postcard of Romani people was produced. These were photos usually printed in a grim sepia tone and often captioned: Zigeunerleben ~ Gypsy life like this card. It shows a Romani mother with five small children standing outside their thatched roof cottage.

 

This postcard was sent via German military post on 18 January 1918. The publisher's name is from Berlin and this was likely printed especially for soldiers either leaving or returning from the front. The location of the Romani family is unknown but since Germany's Eastern Front with Russia was much longer and included Romania and Serbian forces too, this family was likely living in eastern Europe.

 

 

 

 * * *

 

 

This next postcard shows another Romani family standing outside their home alongside some German soldiers. The caption reads: Zigeuner und Feldgraue vor einer Zigeunerhütte ~ Gypsies and military men in front of a gypsy hut. The soldiers have no weapons and the picture seems almost pastoral, but the shoddy condition of the house implies a level of grim poverty that would fit the German idea of the Romani people. Were the soldiers seen as liberators or benevolent saviors? 

 

In February 1917 the Imperial Russian monarchy was overthrown in the first Bolshevik revolutions. After that the war with Russian ended, but the war with Romania continued. Though this front was shorter it involved a huge number of combat units and several important battles were fought in the region of Moldova where the Romanian army was able to halt the advance of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies. This isolated conflict of WW1 was not resolved until the Treaty of Bucharest in May 1918.

This postcard was sent in a letter by a German soldier on 17 March 1918. I'm unable to translate the content of the message, but it seems very likely that it was sent from the Romanian Front.

 

 

 

 

My last postcard is a photo of a rural encampment of Romani people. They sit on the ground under simple tents and one man holds a donkey laden with packs and three small children. The caption, in both German and Hungarian, reads: Wanderzigeuner – Vándorczigányok ~ Wandering gypsies. This card was never posted but the back is imprinted with the Hungarian word for postcard, Levelező-Lap, and it has a caption identifying the publisher: Nr. 436 Kunstanstalt Jos. Drotleff, Hermannstadt. Nachdruck verboten ~ Reprinting prohibited. Hermannstadt was the German name of Sibiu, a medieval town in central Romania, situated in the region of Transylvania, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. 

 

Throughout the war years millions of German, Austrian and Hungarian people shared postcards with each other. Though the colorful prewar cards were often printed in dull monotones to follow government rules on restricted materials, the demand for unusual and novelty themed cards increased with so many soldiers serving on multiple fronts. I'm not certain how it was ordered but many of the wartime postcards were obviously devised as propaganda. See my recent story, Looking Through the Lens of History, where I compare two versions of the same Ukrainian peasant couple, one sepia tone and the other in color. 

One of the common themes on these wartime cards is images of exotic people–foreign folk marked by their unusual headdress and sometimes dark swarthy complexions. I think the idea was to diminish the enemy people, making them appear weak, unintelligent, even ridiculous. It was a method used throughout history and around the world to create The Others, that is, People Not Like Us. The Romani people were included in this larger collective group along with Russians, Africans, and other ethnic and national minorities. Tragically the Romani, who had already experienced centuries of wicked pogroms, would soon suffer the worst injustice with the murder of hundreds of thousands of Romani, perhaps as many as 1.5 million, during Hitler's genocidal extermination of Jews and other so-called "undesirable" peoples.

 

I don't make any direct connection between my small collection of early 20th century Romani postcards and the evil of the Holocaust which happened a few decades later. However these images do convey a  public acceptance of European bigotry and prejudice in much the same way that early America postcards depicted African-Americans, Native Americans, Hawaiians, Mexicans, Chinese, and Japanese in similar degrading racial tones and tropes. Our Western culture once included many racist elements that in olden times were considered inoffensive but which today we would deem totally unacceptable. Yet if we fail to remember this difficult history of bigoty our society may regress and repeat it.

 * * *

 

 

 

I will finish with two videos of the Romanian band, Taraf de Haidouks.
These are excerpts from a 1993 film called Latcho Drom (Safe Journey)
which tells a story of the history of Romani musicians
from Rajastan (India), Egypt, Turkey,
Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, France and Spain.
 

The two simple scenes vividly connect
the postcards of the poor Romani fiddler
to the images of Romani village life. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where the horse always
comes before the cart.

 

 

zxc

 

 

 

The Four Musical Hodges

 

Press Play

 

There's no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
Everything about it is appealing,
Everything that traffic will allow,
Nowhere could you get that happy feeling,
When you are stealing that extra bow.

There's no people like show people,
They smile when they are low.
Yesterday they told you you would not go far,
That night you open, and there you are,
Next day on your dressing room, they've hung a star,
Let's go on with the show!

Thе cowboys, the wrestlers, the tumblers, the clowns;
The roustabouts that move the show at dawn;
The music, the spotlights, the people, the towns;
Your baggage with the labels pasted on;
The sawdust and the horses and the smell;
The towel you've taken from the last hotel.

There's no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
You get word before the show has started,
That your favorite uncle died at dawn,
And top of that, your pa and ma have parted,
You're broken-hearted, but you go on.

 

 

 

There's no people like show people,
They don't run out of dough.
Angels come from everywhere with lots of jack,
And when you lose it, there's no attack.
Where could you get money that you don't give back?
Let's go on with the show!

The costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props;
The audience that lifts you when you're down;
The headaches, the heartaches, the backaches, the flops;
The sheriff who'll escort you out of town;
The opening when your heart beats like a drum;
The closing when the customers won't come.

 

There's no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
Everything about it is appealing,
Everything that traffic will allow,
Nowhere could you get that happy feeling,
When you are stealing that extra bow.

There's no people like show people,
They smile when they are low.
Even with a turkey that you know will fold,
You may be stranded out in the cold,
Still you wouldn't change it for a sack of gold,
Let's go on with the show.
Let's go on with the show!

 

There's No Business Like Show Business
from "Annie Get Your Gun" (1946)
Composer / Lyricist: Irving Berlin
Music recording from the 1954 movie of the same name.

 

 

I don't know if Irving Berlin (1888-1989) ever met this musical group, but he certainly knew show biz people just like them. And I have no doubt that this happy bunch included many of his iconic songs in their performances. Their full photo shows a quartet of three women and one man sitting cross-legged on the floor of either a theater stage or a photographer's studio. They are dressed in extravagant band uniforms with fringed epaulets, fancy knotted embroidery, and pillbox caps topped with frilly horsehair plumes. Resting on their knees are four saxophones—a baritone, tenor, and two altos. Stamped on the lower edge is their name:

Four Musical Hodges

 

This slightly faded and cracked postcard has small pinholes in the corners which I imagine meant it spent most of its life pinned to the wall in some theater manager's office. The caption is the only clue to the saxophone quartet's identity as there is nothing on the back. Fortunately it is more than enough.

 

 

Portland Oregon Daily Journal
13 September 1908

 It didn't take long to find them in the newspaper archives. The earliest theater notice of the Four Musical Hodges came from the end of October 1907 when they played a vaudeville theater in Washington, D.C. In the following year they started in Brooklyn, NY and then Camden , NJ, but by the summer of 1908 the Four Hodges had traveled to the northwest Pacific coast with dates in Vancouver, British Columbia, Seattle, and then Portland, Oregon in September. 

 

There they were the headline act at the Pantages Theatre in an "Advanced Vaudeville" show playing "In a Spectacular Military Musical Act".  The show included Tatum, "the wizard of second sight"; The Helstons, "presenting the Stenographer and the Office Boy"; The Two Zolars, "Fashion plate song and dance artists"; Maud Rockwell, "Comedian and Character Singer"; Myrtle Victorine, "La Petite Soubrette"; Barney First, "Hebrew Comedian"; Elliott Beamer, "Baritone Soloist"; and the Biograph, "presenting the latest animated picture direct from the manufacturer". You got an awful lot of entertainment for 15 cents. 

In the years before World War I, vaudeville theaters flourished in the great boom of America's entertainment industry. Every small town had an "opera house", often incorporated into a town hall and civic building. Every big city had multiple "grand theatres", not to mention "music gardens" and amusement parks. Many theaters were linked together under national management agencies that contracted with hundreds of entertainment acts like the Four Hodges to fill their theater bookings. Every week thousands of entertainers boarded a train that would take them to another town and another stage.

Little Rock AR Democrat
28 February 1909

In February 1909, the Four Hodges, "high-class musical artists" played the Majestic Theater in Little Rock, Arkansas. The local newspaper printed a photo of the quartet showing the three women and one man standing in the same uniforms as they wear in the postcard. But instead of saxophones, the Hodges hold two cornets and two slide trombones. Notice that the women are not wearing ballet slippers but sturdy laced boxer boots.

 

 

Fort Wayne IN Daily News
29 May 1909

 

At the end of May 1909 they were in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the paper there ran a similar photo but this time they are standing with saxophones. From the very brief descriptions of their act, the Hodges played both brass and reed instruments as well as percussion instruments like xylophones and drums. Though they were characterized as high-class, their newspaper notices never listed any music repertoire except to broadly label it as in a ragtime or popular style. With four saxophones they may have played lively Rossini overtures but it's unlikely they ever played any refined music of Mozart or Beethoven. Essentially the Four Hodges were a novelty act that amazed audiences mainly by the variety of instruments they played.

Locating the circuit that the Four Hodges traveled is relatively simple since their newspaper notices are easy to map. But gathering any personal information on this kind of forgotten ensemble is a real roll of the dice. Just finding out their names was a difficult challenge because few newspapers ever reported both first and last names of theatrical artists. However, I got lucky, and found a reporter in Pittsburgh who asked the Hodges some questions in 1911 and ran a picture with his article too. It turns out that they were a pretty musical family.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
13 August 1911

Pretty Sisters in Musical Family  

"Music hath charms."

   That familiar old saying, hand painted and hung in a beautiful frame, always occupies a prominent place in the library of the Hodge homestead up in the Kentucky hills south of Frankfort.
   The Hodges are a musical family and by the same token a happy, contented family, as a glance at two of the girls will show. Edna and Alice Hodge are pretty blue grass country girls, and they are on the stage playing musical instruments because they love music. In addition to them there is a brother, William Hodge (no relation to The Man From Home){a popular theater melodrama} and a sister, Harriet Hodge, all of whom will be seen and heard at the Hippodrome this week where, as The Four Musical Hodges, they are one of the big features on the program.

 

As regular readers should know, I have written many stories about family bands. It seems that William Hodge and his three sisters, Edna, Alice, and Harriet Hodge were a subset of that genre, a sibling band, or in their case a quartet. Unfortunately despite the useful clues in this report, I have been unable to find any Hodge family in the Frankfort, Kentucky region, or even in the whole state, that included all four first names. It's very peculiar, and frustrating too, that there are no census records, marriage documents, or newspaper accounts that would verify this report. But I'll accept it for now and call them William, Edna, Alice, and Harriet Hodge.

 

 

Winnipeg MB Tribune
27 January 1912

 

In 1912 the Four Hodges were in Canada again, this time in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the local newspaper published a photo to announce their appearance at the Empress Theatre. Here they stand in a line with cornets and trombones raised for a fanfare. Since they wear the same costumes as in the postcard and other newspaper photos, I believe this was taken at the same studio and actually dates from 1908/09.

 

 

 

Denver CO Post
28 May 1912

 

In May 1912 the Hodges were in Denver, Colorado where they played at another Empress Theatre joined by members of the Denver Post Boys' and Girls' Band. The feature's editor made a passable paste-up of photos of the Hodges and the cornet section of the Denver Post Boys' Band. This was one of the bands I featured in my story from September 2019, The Newspaper Boys' Band, though there was no mention of a girls' component as my two postcards came from 1907 and 1908. I imagine many young girls who saw the Hodges perform began the next day to campaign their parents for a band instrument.

 

 

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
14 July 1912

A few weeks later they were back in Pittsburgh and the Post Gazette ran a different fanfare photo of the Four Musical Hodges with cornets and trombones. Here they are dressed in Scottish kilts and caps that suggests a Scottish connection though I have no other reason to place their heritage there. But it is a curious choice, that at least demonstrates the group had a larger wardrobe. In this image William Hodge is on right playing a trombone instead of cornet. Though this scanned photo is terribly grainy, the women's faces look younger than my first photo. More interesting is that William is the tallest here but in the other earlier newspaper photos two sisters appear taller. I suspect this may be a photo that either dates from before 1907 or that some of the women are different people.

 

 

Frederick MD Post
10 September 1912

 

In this next news photo we get a glimpse of what the stage setup was like for the Four Musical Hodges. William Hodge and his three sisters stand on a theater stage behind some xylophones, at least three are visible, which display banners with the name Hodges. On the floor in front are trombones and cornets, and behind are several tubular bell racks. The xylophone is not an easy instrument to move around, and like the bells, it is made of enough metal to require a stout box for storage and transport. How the Hodges managed to carry all this, as well as their costumes, is a question no reporter ever bothered to ask. Just getting their equipment onto the stage would be a logistic feat worth seeing. 

 

 

Fort Wayne IN Journal-Gazette
7 February 1914

In February 1914 the Hodges Quartet played Fort Wayne again where the newspaper ran a nice portrait of them wearing the same uniform costume as in my photo. Though the archived newsprint is very dark (despite my digital improvements) William Hodge is obviously at the top in this diamond arrangement and I think the women, going counter-clockwise from William, are the same persons as right to left in the photo.

 

 

Sioux Falls SD Argus Leader
6 April 1914

Then in April 1914 the Hodges were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at the Orpheum Theatre. Here they are on the floor with their saxophones which surely makes this image contemporary with my photo of them. On a table behind them are two mellophones, another rather awkward instrument to have to carry.

 

The Four Musical Hodges had kept their group together for at least 7 seasons. Their circuit was not very large but it covered a long distance. They seemed to play enough large cities like New York, Washington, St Louis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco to justify their good reputation, but they didn't seem to play more than a few dozen dates each season. Whether they returned home to Kentucky is unknown. Another curious thing is that with the exception of that single Pittsburgh report which gave their full names, no other newspaper notice described them as siblings of a family in any way. Only "one and man and three women" was used in the brief promotions of their act. Could Hodges be a stage name? Were they in fact unrelated? I don't know.

 

But history interrupted their story as it did for most people of the world living during 1914-1918. The United States entered WW1 in 1917 but it took many months to actually get soldiers "over there". For unknown reasons the Four Hodges played less than half as many shows in 1915 as they did in 1914. They stopped altogether in 1916 and had only a half dozen dates from 1917 to the end of the war in 1918. Did William Hodge serve his country? His name is too common to find in military records. And of course the great influenza epidemic of 1918-19 disturbed many people's work life but I do not know what effect it had on the Hodges.

 

But evidently they weren't giving up show business just yet. In 1919 the Four Hodges made a come-back of sorts and began appearing in the new style vaudeville theaters. The ones that featured motion pictures.

 

 

Bloomington IL Pantagraph
12 April 1920

 

The new age of cinema was exciting and full of new kinds of celebrities. Photos of the latest screen stars filled the newspaper space that used to go to vaudeville artists. Films with action, drama, romance, and comedy took center billing for theaters. Since the films were silent there was still a need for live musicians to accompany the picture show, but increasingly there were fewer variety artists on the playbill. 

 

Somehow the Four Hodges remained a headline attraction so that from 1919 to 1920 they played a few dozen theaters. Their repertoire now included a new specialty number called "The Jazz Drummer Girl". They still played the old standards of ragtime and popular songs, but like many musical groups, they were scrambling to get the attention of a public that wanted to hear music just like this "jazz" music everyone was playing on the new gramophone records.

 

 

Trenton NJ Evening Times
7 January 1922

 

The Hodges disappeared from the amusement pages in 1921, but made it back in 1922. Theaters found they could play movie shows almost continually all day, every day. The early pioneers of cinema had fresh competition from startup film studios generating dozens of new film titles every week. The old theater owners were also challenged as the popularity of bigger and longer films meant that larger theaters were needed for increased seating. Cinema chains built new palaces of entertainment. Few vaudeville acts could keep up with the changes.

 

 

Harrisburg PA Telegraph
13 October 1922

 

In October 1922 the Four Hodges played a show aptly named. Harmonyland, at the New Regent Theatre in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The local paper ran their picture promoting their show in conjunction with Bebe Daniels in "Pink Gods", her latest Paramount release. The four musical Hodges would "give a number of pleasing musical numbers." In this photo they are holding four mellophones, usually described incorrectly in the theater notices as "French horns". The only qualities of the mellophone that are similar to the horn is the circular shape and large bell.

The Hodges had perhaps two dozens dates booked in 1922, less than half what they had in 1912. In 1923 it diminished again until finally in 1926 they played no more that two theaters in New York and Pennsylvania. After that the Four Musical Hodges vanished from newspaper notices and, as far as I can find out, left show business entirely. 

 

What really impressed me about this small group was the number of publicity photos that they used. Show business in this era was a tough competitive market which played to very fickle audiences. Small town folks had more conservative tastes in music while people in big cities preferred more sophisticated modern fare. A small novelty band had to keep a close watch on the public's latest trends and fashions. I don't think the Four Hodges could have been modestly successful without keeping their music fresh and appealing. It surely took a lot of hard work and dedication to keep smiling.

* * *

 

While researching my stories I usually limit my search range within the time frame of my subjects, so, for instance, these musicians were working adults from roughly 1900 to 1950. But earlier this week I removed that restriction and was surprised when I found a reference to the Four Musical Hodges from 1974. It was a reprint of a monograph entitled "Musicians, Orchestras, and Bands" delivered to the Maynard, Massachusetts Historical Society in 1967 by Birger Koski. It filled a full newspaper page with all kinds of historic trivia about talented people of Maynard who made a notable contributions to music making in the community. 

 

In his 1967 lecture Mr. Koski mentioned several individual musicians and gave an unusual credit to the Woolersheid Family of four brothers, Theodore, Ernest, Albert, and John and their offspring who were "unquestionably the most prolific musical family in the history of Maynard." Considering what he said about other people, this was high praise indeed. The four Woolersheid (or sometimes Woolershied) brothers were second generation German-Americans who played in several orchestras and bands around Maynard.

 

Evidently Theodore Woolersheid's daughters were very talented and beginning in 1901 his eldest daughter, Emma, played cornet for several seasons with Helen May Butler's Ladies' Band, a group I've featured several times on my blog. Her younger sister, Leonora or Lenora Woolersheid, was also a talented musician who began on E-flat tuba and in 1902, at age 13, was playing trombone in the Maynard town band. This is where Mr. koski's story gets interesting.

 

He writes that by 1913 Lenora had been touring the Keith Theater Circuit for five years with the "Four Musical Hodges". And she was still with them in 1915 and in 1920 too. In February 1922, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Woolerscheid hosted a "tender reception for the Four Musical Hodges." This is an intriguing reference that may explain why the Four Hodges rarely explained their supposed family relationship. It may not be a complete confirmation but it does open up a new element of mystery to my postcard.

 

This treasure trove of information was clearly research that Mr. Koski took great pride in having gleaned these details from reading old Maynard newspaper accounts and interviewing family members. It also has a ring of truth because Maynard is very close to Boston, a place that produced many female musicians who are in my photograph collection, either individually or in bands and orchestra. It makes perfect sense too that a talented young woman who could play multiple instruments would find a steady job in an act working the B. F. Keith Circuit, a chain of vaudeville theaters that began in Boston. And taking on a stage name like Hodge meant you didn't have to keep announcing your name as Woolerscheid, admittedly a difficult surname to fit onto a playbill.

 

I don't know which of the four Hodges was Lenora Woolersheid, or if this is just a mistaken connection. But I did find the 1920 census record for Theodore Woolerscheid living in Maynard, Massachusetts. He was age 59, occupation: Foreman, Woolen mill, and a widower. He shared his home with his daughter, Lenora Woollenscheid, age 30, single, occupation: Musician, Musical Act. That's a pretty good confirmation of something.

 

 

As Irving Berlin says,
Let's go on with the show
and finish by watching the
Tokyo Disneyland Saxophone Quartet
play a sprightly arrangement of The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin.

The Four Musical Hodges would have liked this.

 

 

 

 

 

For my other stories about saxophone ensembles
who worked on the vaudeville circuit check out these:
The Darling Saxophone Four
Bicycles and Saxophones, The Elliott~Savonas Troupe
Sax Appeal
Send in the Clowns!
The Novelty Musical Artists

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where laughter is always the best medicine.

Terror on the High Seas

 

At first glance it doesn't look like a boat. Two men stand in a small tower structure teetering just a few feet above turbulent waves of a rough sea. In the dark background a large ship bears down upon the men. But a closer look reveals they are sailors and on the short mast behind them flies the flag of the Imperial German Navy. It is a German U-boat, an Unterseeboot or submarine. But it is not a photograph. It's a postcard print of a painting.

On the back is an explanation in German. This was a Wohlfahrts-Karte, a welfare card of the "Reich Association for the support of German veterans". The painting's title was "Auf der Wacht" or "On Guard". The postmark date is 8 March 1916 sent from Zerbst, a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.

 

 

Also printed is the artist's name, Willy Stöwer. Born in 1864 at Wolgast, Germany on the Baltic coast, Stöwer was the son of a ship captain, and initially trained as a shipyard metalworker. While employed as an engineering draftsman he started a sideline making maritime illustrations and paintings on commission. After his marriage in 1892 to a young woman from a wealthy family he was able to devote his life exclusively to art. He was also fortunate to find an enthusiastic patron in Kaiser Wilhelm II who commissioned several paintings and invited Stöwer to accompany him on several voyages on the Imperial yacht.  

 

 

Willy Stöwer (1864–1931)
Source: Wikipedia

Despite the honorific of Prof., i.e. Professor, Willy Stöwer (sometimes spelt as Stoewer in English to replace the pesky umlaut) had no art school degree and was entirely a self-taught artist. During his long career he created over 1,200 illustrations for 57 books, as well as numerous posters, postcards, trading-cards, labels, brochures and calendars. His principal form was in maritime subjects, particularly navy ships. Stöwer's works became very popular during the prewar years, partly due to the patronage of the Kaiser, but more because he had a real talent for capturing the excitement of seafaring.

 

 

His next postcard is more dramatic as it depicts a U-boat next to a sail-rigged ship. The three masted ship is sinking at the bow and flies a French flag. Its crew are on a lifeboat, perhaps rowing toward the German submarine.

 

The back has a printed description, "U-BOOT-SPENDE 1917" ~ "U-boat donation 1917". Another caption identifies the artist as Prof. Willy Stöwer, and the painting's title: "Französische Bark wird durch deutsches U-boot im Atlantik versenkt." ~ "French bark is sunk by a German U-boat in the Atlantic." The message is dated 18 June 1917.

 

 

By June of 1917 every nation at war in Europe was struggling to gain some advantage over their adversaries. Just after the start of the war in 1914 Britain imposed a tight naval blockade on Germany which was so restrictive on food imports that Germany felt its people risked starvation. Responding to this cruel provocation the German Imperial Navy unleashed its submarine fleet to encircle the British Isles and destroy all navy and commercial shipping, no matter whether it was British or neutral.   

In this painting a U-boat has disabled a merchant ship that sharply lists to port. The captain has brought his submarine quite close to the sinking ship and he seems to be directing the ship's crew in their lifeboats towards a safe direction.

This postcard was sent by free military post and the writer dated it 20 April 1916. The captions are printed in Fraktur, an old German typeface that can be quite challenging to decipher. The first word is "Kolonialkriegerdank" ~ "Colonial warrior thanks", which makes this a postcard sold for a veteran's charity. The lower caption identifies Willy Stöwer as the artist and the painting is described as "Notice is given to an English commercial steamer by a German submarine."

At the beginning of the 20th century most navies considered a submarine as an experimental vessel which might be useful only for harbor defense in shallow waters. But with the introduction of diesel engines, double-hull construction, and self-propelled torpedoes a submarine became a much more seaworthy and dangerous naval warship. When war was declared in 1914 Germany had 48 submarines of 13 classes in service or under construction. Eventually as the terrible conflict continued the Imperial Navy counted 373 U-boats in its fleet.

 

 

In this next painting Willy Stöwer moves the perspective to the deck of a U-boat looking toward a seaside town situated on a snow-capped mountainous coast. Sailors stand next to a smoking gun as the town burns. The back has Stöwer's printed title: "Deutsches U-Boot im Eismeer Beschießung von Alexandrowsk." ~ "German submarine shelling of Alexandrovsk in the Arctic Ocean." Alexandrovsk is now called Polyarny and is located in the Murmansk Oblast of Russia on the northeast side of the Scandinavian Peninsula.  

The card was probably never intended for mailing as there is no place for an address. Instead there is a large notice that translates as: "This submarine donation is for our heroes on submarines, minesweepers and other security vessels from 1 to 7 June 1917."

 

 

Early in the war the U-boats in the German navy and the Austro-Hungarian Navy, too*, which took on older German class submarines, made several successful attacks on British and French warships. This fame came at a great cost as the U-boat fleets suffered many losses too. These early submarines could stay underwater only for a small amount of time and were then unable to observe what was happening above on the surface. They were also much slower than regular warships and had limited firepower. Their real threat was to commercial shipping and during the war years this became the target of the German U-boat fleet. 

 

*Musically minded readers may remember a bit of trivia from the film, The Sound of Music. The father of the Trapp Family Singers was Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp (1880– 1947) who was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. During World War I, Trapp was the most successful Austro-Hungarian submarine commander sinking 11 Allied merchant ships totaling 47,653 tons (GRT) and two Allied warships of 12,641 tons total. 

 

On this next U-boat postcard Stöwer moves the perspective forward showing officers and sailors on the submarine's distinctive sail or conning tower. Waves splash over the deck as the helmsman steers the vessel through choppy water. The artist instantly conveys the great bravery and extreme endurance that set U-boat sailors apart from other navy servicemen. Though it's difficult to see enough of the submarine's design to identify its class, I suspect Willy Stöwer with his draftsman's eye always painted his submarines and ships very carefully to include accurate details. The next image shows him in his studio working on a huge painting. Around the room are examples of ship designs and sail rigging that he used to as models. 

 

 

Willy Stöwer in his studio, 1903
Source: Wikipedia

 

 

What made a U-boat such a serious menace was, of course, it's ability to submerge. This power to hide beneath the ocean surface and lie in wait for enemy ships was a stealthy quality that no warship had ever possessed. Many people thought this was unfair and contrary to the so-called "rules of war". So before attacking a merchant ship a U-boat captain supposedly had to stop it and allow its crew to safely abandon the ship before sinking it. But when Germany announced unrestricted submarine attacks without warnings or any protection for ships from neutral countries, the "rules" were discarded with terrible consequences. Eventually as the war dragged on, the Allied navies developed defensive tactics of dazzle paint to disguise ship movement; zig-zag maneuvers for convoys; aerial reconnaissance with blimps and dirigibles; and ultimately explosive depth charges.     

 

 

Here a U-boat moves along a calmer sea as its crew watches a very large passenger steamship slowly sink. Surrounding it are several lifeboats and dots of people floating in the water. The black lines in the sky are not seagulls but marks left by the postal service.

This Stöwer postcard was another in the series for the U-Boot-Spende 1917 veteran's charity. Presumably the money collected was turned into a benefit paid to wives and children of sailors killed in the war. The postmark is 18 June 1917. The caption gives the picture's title: "Versenkung eines feindlichen bewaffneten Truppentransport Dampfers durch deutsches U-Boot in Mittlemeer" ~ "Sinking of an enemy armed troop transport steamer by a German U-boat in the Mediterranean."

 

 

 

On 7 May 1915, the passenger liner RMS Lusitania, out of New York and bound for Liverpool, was torpedoed by U-20, off the southern coast of Ireland. It took only 18 minutes to sink, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard, including 128 American citizens. The outrage in America came close to forcing the United States to declare war on Germany, but President Wilson knew that America was not yet ready to fully engage in this kind of conflict. The world would have to suffer through two more years before the US joined the Allied powers in France.

 

 

Once again in this next painting, Stöwer devises an unexpected angle for the viewer, something that at the time a photographer could not achieve. A cargo ship steams toward us as puffs of explosive shells hit the water ahead of it. In the distance a U-boat is firing its gun while receiving a barrage too. Though torpedoes were a powerful weapon, they were not reliable and had uncertain accuracy. And a submarine could only carry a limited number of them. For merchant shipping it was more effective for a U-boat to surface and fire its gun.

This  card was another in that same veteran's charity series. The writer has covered the caption but it translates as: "German U-boat fires on an armed commercial steamer". The postmark is dated 4 June 1917 from Charlottenburg, a locality in Berlin famous for its grand royal palace.

 

 

The various classes of German U-boats in service during WW1 were less sophisticated that the submarines of WW2 and, of course, nothing like the modern versions which are now nuclear powered. For an example SM U-20 that sank the RMS Lusitania was 64m (210 ft) long with a beam of 6.10m (20 ft), a height or 7.30 m (23 ft 11 in),  and draught when at the surface of 3.58 m (11 ft 9 in). It was powered by two 8-cylinder diesel engines when surfaced and by two electric motors when submerged which gave it a speed of 15.4 knots (28.5 km/h; 17.7 mph) and 9.5 knots (17.6 km/h; 10.9 mph) respectively. It carried a ship's complement of 4 officers and 25 enlisted men.

The U-20 was armed with just six torpedoes, two small guns and, after 1916, sometimes carried 12 mines. Surprisingly it had a very long range of 9,700 nautical miles (18,000 km; 11,200 mi) using the diesel engines, but only 80 nautical miles (150 km; 92 mi) when submerged. This submarine was capable of descending to 50m (164 ft) which was the limit for most submarines then, though a few could reach 75 m (246 ft).  But all the U-boats lacked any technology for sonar, radar, quiet running, and long range radio which would come in later decades.

 

 

 

This final postcard of Willy Stöwer depicts the heroic welcome given to the crew of the SM U-9 on its return to Wilhelmshaven on 23 September 1914. On the day before, while on patrol in the southern North Sea, the U-9 encountered a squadron of three British armored cruisers, the HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue, and HMS Cressy which were guarding the eastern end of the English Channel against German warships and shipping. The U-9 fired four torpedoes, reloading while submerged, and sank all three warships in less than an hour, killing 1,459 British sailors. It is considered the first major submarine action of the war and it demonstrated how deadly this new warship could be.

The postcard was sent using military post from the SMS Berlin, a Bremen class light cruiser. The sailor or officer wrote a date of 7/3 15, 7 March 1915.

 

 

In November 1918 Willy Stöwer lost his principal patron when Kaiser Wilhelm was forced to abdicate and move to Holland as a condition for ending the war. I doubt Kaiser Bill ever went yachting after that. Stöwer continued working in commercial art, and I've started a collection of his postcard paintings of ocean liners, but his fortune changed as the public's taste for maritime paintings drastically declined. Willy Stöwer died at his home in Berlin on 31 May 1931, nine days after his 67th birthday. 

 

 

This last image is not a postcard by Stöwer but it is probably one that he knew. It has a forbidding title: "Englands Not." ~ "England's distress" over a map of the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of France shaded mustard yellow. The caption reads: "12 Monate uneingeschränkten U-Bootskrieges auf dem nördlichen Seekriegsschauplatz" ~ "12 months of unrestricted U-boat boat warfare in the northern naval theater". Scattered across the blue ocean  are hundreds of small symbols that the map's legend identifies as "a ship sunk by the activity of our submarines, regardless of its size." 

 

Undeneath is a list of 12 months from February 1917 to January 1918 giving an estimate of ship tonnage lost to German submarines. This overt propaganda is frighteningly impressive for its statistics and hideously appalling in its casual disregard for the lives lost, both of the enemy and of Germany. 

The death toll caused by four years of submarine warfare was horrendous. The U-Boat entry on Wikipedia describes it best.

Of the 373 German submarines that had been built, 178 were lost by enemy action. Of these, 40 were sunk by mines, 30 by depth charges, and 13 by Q-ships; 512 officers and 4894 enlisted men were killed. They sank 10 battleships, 18 cruisers, and several smaller naval vessels. They further destroyed 5,708 merchant and fishing vessels for a total of 11,108,865 tons and the loss of about 15,000 sailors. The Pour le Mérite, the highest decoration for gallantry for officers, was awarded to 29 U-boat commanders. Twelve U-boat crewmen were decorated with the Goldene Militär-Verdienst-Kreuz, the highest bravery award for non-commissioned officers and enlisted men. The most successful U-boat commanders of World War I were Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière (189 merchant vessels and two gunboats with 446,708 tons), followed by Walter Forstmann (149 ships with 391,607 tons), and Max Valentiner (144 ships with 299,482 tons). Their records have not been surpassed in any subsequent conflict.

 

 

As I wrote in last week's post, The Sky Watchers, about early aviators, I'm fascinated by the way humankind's collective imagination was suddenly inspired by the sight of airplanes and zeppelins carrying people through the sky. The invention of flying machines added a new direction to the human perspective of UP. 

 

Similarly beginning in 1914, but with less public spectacle, the submarine, especially the Unterseeboot, turned our perspective in the opposite direction—DOWN. Unlike the airplane which was initially developed by civilian inventors, the evolution of the submarine began as a naval warship. Yet what the U-boat demonstrated by submerging was that sea level was only the midpoint for our human experience. Not only could we go up into a sky seemingly without limit, but we could now descend down into ocean depths unmeasured, though that would require decades more science and engineering to achieve. Even a century later there is less known about our ocean world than is understood about our atmosphere, but what is known comes from the invention of the submarine.

 

The appeal of Willy Stöwer's artwork is also about the power of imagination. In his time photography and cinematography had made great advances but were still very constrained and could not show real colors and genuine action. But an artist like Stöwer could do that and more, like capture the sense of adventure on a U-boat. I can easily believe that many a young German boy was inspired by Stöwer's postcard art to enlist in the German Navy of 1939-1945.

 

Putting aside the global politics and gross misjudgements that led to World War One, Stöwer was trying to depict the heroism and bravery of U-boat sailors. I think he presented their courageous efforts in an honorable manner because as navy servicemen they had pledged their life to protect their nation and fellow countrymen. The great tragedy is that so had their adversaries and they became the victors. 

   

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where no one is ever down when they're up.