Germany

For me Germany was always our neighbouring country we passed through when going on our holiday trips abroad to Southeastern Europe or to Austria for skiing. Thanks to Kurt Hielscher's Germany photobook I found a way to discover and enjoy all those beautiful places in Germany I never actually thought of existed. The photo album was a real eye opener for me.

There are several editions of Kurt Hielscher's photoalbum of Germany with quite some differences in between the collection of the photos. I only realized this when somebody showed me the index of his 1925 copy. Before, I assumed that the different editions were reprints of the first edition. Now this makes it more interesting to achieve other editions as well. Within the map I have included the places of my 1938 edition. Included are the territories belonging to East Prussia, today's parts of Poland and Kaliningrad Oblast in today's Russia. Later I also managed to achieve the 1924 which is the first edition and the 1941 edition which contains territories occupied by the nazi regime during WWII like the Alsace, Luzemburg, Czech Republic and Poland. I achieved this copy in December 2019, just before a trip to the Czech Republic. I was shocked and baffled to see Kurt Hielscher incorporated photos from the Czech Republic in an edition of his Germany photobook published during the Second World War. On the other hand, I felt the opportunity to rephotograph photos of cities like Prague and for example Ceský Krumlov too and show what changed here or not since. I decided to proceed with the project.

Working on it in Stralsund, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 28th of July 2020

These photos were not the only reasons I was shocked, there is even more. I tell about that in my online presentation for the Geographical Society of Philadelphia. This edition also triggered me to find out more about Kurt Hielscher's life after the publication of the series of his photobooks and I will publish my findings here later on the subpage about Kurt Hielscher.

Germany on the website:

Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Dinkelsbühl, Freiburg im Briesgau, Passau, Burg Eltz, Genovevaburg Mayen, Aachen, Quedlinburg & Goslar in the Harz, Limburg an der Lahn, Runkel an der Lahn, Wasserschloss Raesfeld, Tangermünde, Merseburg, Soest, Lübeck, Rügen & Stralsund.