Thursday, October 19, 2023

fashion show

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 3:

The middle child of the three from the bakery at Dörndorf (Kreis Frankenstein, Silesia), Emma Geppert, later gained a bit of a reputation as somebody who wanted to live the good life at the expense of others and sniffed at Hedwig's employment on farms and the associated smells. Accordingly, photos of her were buried deep and not exactly celebrated in the family. Once we identified her in the sibling photos, however, I discovered quite a few more photos of her. In these, she expresses her being different from the hardworking family in the relatively conspicuous clothes she wears - even in difficult times.

A set of three photos all dated 1.6.1941 shows her in three different outfits:

Here's one she wore earlier, dated Breslau 1938 with the remark on the back that the photo didn't turn out well.

Another one from Breslau with no inscription, but the city's Kreuzkirche is recognisable on the left (in all the zillions of pre-1950 photos we have this is an extremely rare example of a recognisable cityscape showing up in the background).

Here is a postcard from 1941 of the same perspective minus Emma (hotlinked from the site that sells the postcard). Emma's photo fits in roughly between the tree on the left and the right hand side of the watermark in the middle.

Some serious dressing up went into this one, but again she wasn't quite happy with the result:

And I think this may be her as well, although less flamboyantly clothed and less round-faced, but I setting looks like the cabbage garden where they also took the sibling photos. Part of the problem with identification is that there may have been any number of cousins that may had some resemblance with the bakery kids, but other than the recently discovered portrait of Lotti Geppert we don't know anything about any of them.

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 3 so far:

  1. family holiday
  2. play time
  3. fashion show

The Mastodon thread for season 3 starts here.

You can find Season 2 entries in this thread on Mastodon (complete now!) or via the list at the bottom of the last entry of the season (and also at the bottom of the first entry of this season).

The twitter thread for season 1 is still here. Alternatively, visit the last instalment and find the numbered list of entries at the bottom.

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