family reshuffle

Every picture tells a story, season 3, picture 10:

Let's go back to the family portrait with the fowl from season 2 (I'll include a copy of the photo below to make things easier). It showed Maria Mentzel, mother of Heinrich the cellist, presumably between 1913 and 1916, with select members of her family, and a chicken in her lap. After posting that one, I discovered another family portrait taken in the exact same spot, with mostly different people, and the bird replaced by a baby. This photo is dated 1916:

Compare and contrast with the one I shared earlier:

Most clearly recognisable from the earlier photo is Liesel Güde, wife of Maria Mentzel's first son Arthur Reim (from a previous marriage). She's standing on the left, then we have (I think) Robert Goetzky, then his wife Gertrud (Maria's daughter, who was also in the earlier photo), then Gertrud's brother Heinrich the cellist, then a mysterious grey-bearded man, and an equally unknown boy. What's worse, I don't recognise the woman holding the baby (nor the baby, for that matter).

Maria Reim, daughter of Artur and Liesel, was born in August 1915, so that could conceivably be her, maybe with a nanny? Alternatively, Gertrud and Robert also had a daughter as their first child at some point after getting married in 1908, and I don't have a birth year for her, so that could be her as well. But I think Maria Reim is the more likely answer. We've seen her as an adult in the earlier entry, too, and I think the baby's look is vaguely compatible with the adult's.

Maria Mentzel died in April 1916 at Magdeburg, which is where the Goetzky family lived, so I am guessing that the house in the background is their home, and that the family may have gathered on the occasion of Maria's funeral. For all I know, the bearded chap and young boy could be her relatives, I don't know of any of hers outside the immediate ancestry and the descendants mentioned.

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
4. bakery to butcher's shop
5. the Hamborn brotherhood
6. all grown up
7. sisters in the snow
8. the last holiday
9. village life
10. family reshuffle

The Mastodon thread for season 3 is 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.