Photos of women in Berlin after May 1945

[Annelie]

Love this photo of the three women in Berlin. Obviously not easy work but
they seem to be putting their all in it.

[ghostsoldier]

Trümmerfrau, no doubt....
One of my favorites...

Rob

[Siegfried Wilhelm]

Ghostsoldier,
Where was that photo taken? Looks reminiscent of the Zepplin field but it's not that--looks famliar but I just can't place it.
Great photograph!

SW~

[grassi]

Actually the Zepplin field is a reminiscent of... what ever.

It's the famous Great Altar of Pergamon.
It is on display in Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon

Cheers

grassi

[ghostsoldier]

Yes, grassi is correct...I believe I read where Albert Speer even admitted to designing and building the Zepplinfield based on the influence of the Great Altar in 1934...
Rob

[Jem]

I feel bad for those women

[Siegfried Wilhelm]

Thanks. I'm surprised I did not recognize it; probably because have been to the one several times but the other never.

SW~

[ghostsoldier]

I feel bad for those women

I guess "one reaps what one sows"...or, at least "one reaps what the government sows"... ...but, to give credit where it's due, these women contributed a lot to the rebuilding of post-war Berlin, and other German cities also...
Rob

[Doktor Krollspell]

Women of all ages helped to rebuild Berlin, and other cities after the war. I suppose that german women helped (had to help) in much larger numbers during and after the war than women in other west european countries as their husbands, brothers, sons and fathers were either dead or prisoners of war in huge numbers...

Older women salvaging bricks in Berlin 1946

http://www.corbis.com


Regards,

Krollspell

[Vikki]

For Berlin monuments constructed to the Trümmerfrauen, see http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 718#603718 (as well as other information in the rest of the thread).

Best,
~Vikki

[Scharfschutzen]

I for one do not care for the picture of Trümmerfrau (the women of rubble). It is a reminder of what happened when Stalin made Berlin an open city. Notice the woman on the far right. I have a neighbor who was nine years old living in Berlin during May 1945. She tells some rather ghastly stories.

You may say what you want about sowing what you reap but this was truly the Barbarians within the gate!

[ghostsoldier]

I for one do not care for the picture of Trümmerfrau (the women of rubble). It is a reminder of what happened when Stalin made Berlin an open city. Notice the woman on the far right. I have a neighbor who was nine years old living in Berlin during May 1945. She tells some rather ghastly stories.

You may say what you want about sowing what you reap but this was truly the Barbarians within the gate!

True...but isn't war, by it's very nature (no matter by whom it's intigated), barbaric? And being such, do not the basist human emotional instincts usually take precendence, and normal reason/morality relegated to an obscure mental status?
"Collateral damage," I believe, it is called.
Rob

[Sewer King]

Unfortunately I don't have a scanner yet, but there is a prewar photo of RAD men working the same sort of hopper car these women are tip-dumping here. Ghostsoldier can see it on page 99 in his copy of Dwork and van Pelt's book Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996). It was credited to Yale University Library and may not be available on-line.

The photo is typical of those about the heroism of manual labor, as extolled by the Nazi regime. RAD men are righting their loaded hopper car onto its rails, at land reclamation in the Emsland marshes.

If this photo was placed side-by-side with that of the Trümmerfrauen doing the same labor, they would make an ironic contrast -- even an iconic one. The proud Nazi ideal of their men before the war, then the grim German reality of their women after it.

The woman on the right who is down to her underwear -- I thought it could have been the heat of the day as much as clothing shortage, although the woman in the center seems too well-covered for that. Certainly, this hard labor makes for sweat and it went on through several summers.

-- Alan

[ghostsoldier]

This would be the photo Alan speaks of....

Rob

[Sewer King]

Yes, that is the photo -- thanks! I'm glad you got the book and saw its take on the building of the KZs.

Looking at the photo of the men with the hopper car, and then the one with the wormen using it, one after the other -- knowing the different settings, times, and subjects -- the irony is easy to see.

-- Alan