a guard dog called Schluck

Every picture tells a story No. 29

Around 1930, Heinrich the cellist was put in charge of the city's Pfandleihhaus (a pawn shop, but run by the city administration) at Elberfeld, which around that time became part of Wuppertal. This episode ended swiftly after he launched an investigation into things gone missing - very mysterious as he and his wife Maria were living above the shop, their German shepherd called Schluck* guarded the property, and there was no sign of forced entry. It turned out that it was Maria who had helped herself to items. She got a psychiatric assessment and Heinrich was moved to a different department of the city administration. And they had to find a new flat (in Gronaustraße, shown here).

Here are Maria and Schluck from the set of Richard's negatives I processed in the 1980s.

Possibly from the same woodland walk, one of Richard with the dog.

* Note on the name: in comicbook language, schluck! would translate as gulp!, but that only emerged several decades later (the translator Erika Fuchs is widely credited for this addition to the German language). So at the time of these photos, the association of Schluck was a small quantity of drink (as much as you can swallow in one gulp), so similar to a sip but maybe a bit more generous.

This photo is also on flickr.

Every picture tells a story series so far:

1. string quartet Wuppertal Elberfeld 1927
2. greetings from Adamsweiler
3. Gastwirthschaft Ferd. Weirich
4. quartet times three
5. Neumühl 1923
6. Tangermünde railway station 1889
7. a singing lesson
8. bei Wilhelm Geppert
9. a bakery at Lorsch 1900
10. Consumgeschäft von Julius Düsselmann
11. Hanna and Ruth
12. a young chemist
13. school's out at Reichenstein, 1886
14. a patchwork family in East Prussia
15. the case of the missing grandmother
16. checkpoint Glaner Brücke 1929(ish)
17. finding Mimi
18. five sisters, five decades
19. happy at home
20. gone milking
21. steel workers
22. field work
23. what to wear at Porta Westfalica
24. a classic convertible
25. at the bottom of the steps
26. a forester's family
27. the Kaiser visits Allenburg
28. teaching the 'deaf-mute'
29. a guard dog called Schluck

Alternatively, you can use this twitter thread as an illustrated table of contents.

In a somewhat roundabout way, this series relates to my research for the family history music memoir I have now completed in a first version.