family with fowl

Every picture tells a story, season 2, picture 38:

I'm loving this family portrait dating between 1913 and 1916:

The lady sitting down with the chicken on her lap is Maria Mentzel, the mother of our old cellist Heinrich. She died in April 1916 so that sets the upper limit for the date of the photo. Her husband, railways clerk Richard Groß, had died in July 1913, which sets the lower limit.

Standing from right to to left we have Heinrich's older sister Gertrud, then his even older half-brother Arthur Reim (who also appeared in this family portrait, but otherwise I don't think I have any other photos of him), then Arthur's wife Liesel (Elisabeth) Güde, and finally an unidentified woman.

Arthur and Liesel had one daughter, Maria. She married Erich Tübel, who took over a dance school his parents had founded in Pulsnitz (near Dresden), so this family business shaped their lives through several generations. Last time I checked the dance school was still in business run by one of Maria's grandsons, but in a different city.

Anyhow, here is Maria with a growing number of children:

I think the granny in this one is Liesel Güde again, right?

Should anybody have any answers to some of the many questions I am raising in this series, please leave a comment here (I'll need to vet it, so it may take a few days before it goes public) or contact me at michaelgrr [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk

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Season 2 so far:

1. could be a cousin
2. two weddings in Silesia
3. off to Canada
4. off to Australia
5. a very romantic poet
6. fireman August
7. 50 hundredweight of coffee
8. mysterious Minden people
9. horses for Hedwig
10. guessing the great-grandmothers
11. cousin Charlotte
12. three sisters from East Prussia
13. travelling saleswoman
14. family portrait
15. dancing chemist
16. games time
17. desperately searching Wilhelm
18. the third Hedwig
19. patchwork portraits
20. missing brothers
21. the oberlehrer's family
22. a double wedding
23. mystery solved
24. young Frieda
25. old aunts and young children
26. a semi-mysterious aunt
27. a gathering at Gellrichs
28. farm work at Bad Landeck
29. meet the Weitze family
30. a post-war wedding
31. the joy of chemistry
32. the joy of botany
33. becoming Frieda
34. becoming Peter
35. bakery kids united
36. the four from the farm
37. neighbours at Hamborn
38. family with fowl

I started a twitter thread for season 2 here. However, as the bird site seems to be turning into an evil empire, I have now switched to logging the entries in a similar thread on Mastodon.

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. It only loads 30 tweets at first, so you have to click "show more" a couple of times to get all 40 entries. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

I'm also adding all photos from this series to my family history album on flickr.