Posie Album

[Dean Perdue]

Here's a 1923 'Posie Album' that was supposedly common for girls to keep back in the day.

This one seemed somewhat out of the ordinary and I have about 3/4 of the 60 pages of hand done old German Sutterlin script translated.

From what I understand it was a young woman's from Niederoesterreich Austria and the original owner was a member of the German Turnverein (a so called sports organization).

Any constructive comments or input welcome.

[Dean Perdue]

More photo's

[Dean Perdue]

Here's a translation from 1 Turnfest sister to another with a exerpt from Hitler's quote in Mein Kampf about something to the effect of how the weak don't deserve to live.
Shows you how brutally tough this new generation was raised.
Notice the A.H. after the quote

[Dean Perdue]

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[Dean Perdue]

Incredible penmanship

[Dean Perdue]

Drawing of Friederich Ludwig Jahn, 1778-1852 founder of the German gymnastics movement, which was meant as a training for young boys and men to be able to fight off Napolean's armies. The National Socialists likened him to Hitler and his unification efforts. They said, "The Jahn spirit is the Hitler spirit ..."

Towards the last days of the Second World War
they named a reserve grenadier unit after him for his efforts to arm the German people.
(Thanks to Bill Warda for this information)

[Dean Perdue]

Inside of book and another page that shows a sweet flowery side just pages after the one talking about how the weak have no right to live.Quite a contrast.

[KC]

Love this kind of thing.  My youngest daughter is really into ledgering and loves to research it!

Great piece of literature/history!

[wendy177]

Dean how cool !!!! would imagine this would be valuable to the right collector!!!

[talesofthesevenseas]

Wow- Amazing to have such a personal glimpse into history! Thanks for sharing this it is really interesting. You are right, the contrasts are really striking- Death and flowers!

[Skinny]

It's hard for us to imagine in left-wing, right-wing, or middle of the road America, such a thorough  indoctrination of a people into one national belief system. Great artifact Dean, thanks for sharing.

[Dean Perdue]

Thanks for your responses.

I always wanted to try to find out the identity of the original owner and try to contact her but so far there was no name, but one of the 1926 signings mentioned her exact birthday and said her age then was 16.
So I guess time for that is most likely past.. unfortunately.

Some of the wording is neat such as a closing saying 'In the fog of the November moon,your gymnist sister' (sounded cool to me at least).

From what I gather some of these entries were made at these big Turnfest events and probably had a somewhat military theme but were called sporting events in guise due to the restrictions forced by the Treaty of Versailles.

Here's a few postcards that did not come with the book, but had corresponding dates to the entries from 1926 and 1933.The 1926 card with the sword I think really shows there were thoughts other than sports.
Also notice the symbol on the womans flag on the right matches the Gut Heil art found 8 frames up.