POST 87: “COLORIZED” PHOTOS OF PAULY FAMILY MEMBERS

 

Note: This post is inspired by a Polish gentleman who sent me “colorized” photos of members of the Pauly branch of my extended family using an image I included in Post 45.

Related Posts:

Post 45: Holocaust Remembrance: Recalling My Pauly Ancestors

 

Given the emotionally taxing subject matter of some of my family history posts, occasionally I like to intersperse stories that are more whimsical or lighthearted in nature. The current post is one such example. It was inspired by a Mr. Marek Bieńkowski from Włocławek, Poland. This gentleman is not subscribed to my Blog, nor, to the best of my knowledge, are we in any way related. Taking a photo inserted in Post 45 showing multiple members of the Pauly branch of my family, Mr. Bieńkowski “colorized” images of 19 of the 31 people in this picture. I estimate the picture was taken in the early 1890’s in Posen, Prussia [Poznan, Poland], and, to date, I’ve been able to identify 23 of the 31 subjects using an incomplete caption on the back of the photo and comparing the individual images to others where the people are identified by name. The original photo with the heads of the figures circled and numbered is included here (Figure 1), and the table below summarizes the vital data of the known people.

 

  

NO.	NAME	EVENT	DATE	PLACE
1	Anna Rothholz née Pauly (Figures 2a-b)	Birth	14 March 1871	Posen, Germany
		Death	21 June 1925	Stettin, Germany
		Marriage	20 May 1892	Berlin, Germany
2	Josef Pauly (Figures 3a-b)	Birth	10 August 1843	Tost, Germany
		Death	7 November 1916	Posen, Germany
		Marriage	1869
3	Paula Pincus née Pauly (Figures 4a-b)	Birth	26 April 1872	Posen, Germany
		Death	31 March 1922	Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
		Marriage	16 November 1891	Berlin, Germany
4	UNKNOWN WOMAN (Figures 5a-b)
5	Julie Neisser née Sabersky (Figures 6a-b)	Birth	26 February 1841	Wöllstein, Germany
		Death	11 April 1927	Berlin, Germany
6	Ernst Neisser (Figures 7a-b)	Birth	16 May 1863	Liegnitz, Germany
		Death (Suicide)	4 October 1942	Berlin, Germany
		Marriage	5 September 1898	Stettin, Germany
7	Margarethe Neisser née Pauly (Figures 8a-b)	Birth	16 January 1876	Posen, Germany
		Death	10 December 1941	Berlin, Germany
		Marriage	5 September 1898	Stettin, Germany
8	Rosalie Pauly née Mockrauer	Birth	3 January 1844	Leschnitz, Germany
		Death	28 November 1927	Berlin, Germany
		Marriage	1869	Unknown
9	Rosalinde Kantorowicz née Pauly (Figures 9a-b)	Birth	22 January 1854	Tost, Germany
		Death	3 November 1916	Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany
10	UNKNOWN MAN (Figures 10a-b)
11	Charlotte Mockrauer née Bruck   (Figures 11a-b)	Birth	8 December 1865	Ratibor, Germany
		Death	10 January 1965	Stockholm, Sweden
		Marriage	18 March 1888	Ratibor, Germany
12	UNKNOWN WOMAN (Figures 12a-b)
13	UNKNOWN BOY
14	Therese Sandler née Pauly	Birth	21 August 1885	Posen, Germany
		Death	25 November 1969	Buenos Aires, Argentina
15	Gertrud Kantorowicz “Gertrude Pauly (Pseudonym)”	Birth	9 October 1876	Posen, Germany
		Death (Murdered)	20 April 1945	Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia
16	Maria Pohlmann née Pauly	Birth	21 July 1877	Posen, Germany
		Death	Unknown
		Marriage	30 September 1901	Posen, Germany
17	Gertrud Wachsmann née Pollack	Birth	10 July 1867	Görlitz, Saxony, Germany
		Death (Murdered)	22 October 1942	Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia
		Married	17 October 1893	Görlitz, Saxony, Germany
18	Heinrich Sabersky (Figures 13a-b)	Birth	July 1845	Grünberg, Germany
		Death	January 1929	Berlin, Germany
19	Helene Guttentag née Pauly (Figures 14a-b)	Birth	12 April 1873	Posen, Germany
		Death (Suicide)	23 October 1942	Berlin, Germany
		Marriage	5 February 1898	Berlin, Germany
20	Adolf Guttentag (Figures 15a-b)	Birth	4 December 1868	Breslau, Germany
		Death (Suicide)	23 October 1942	Berlin, Germany
		Marriage	5 February 1898	Berlin, Germany
21	Wilhelm Pauly (Figures 16a-b)	Birth	24 September 1883	Posen, Germany
		Death	1961	Unknown
22	UNKNOWN MAN (Figures 17a-b)
23	Elly Landsberg née Mockrauer	Birth	14 August 1873	Berlin, Germany
		Death (Murdered)	15 May 1944	Auschwitz, Poland
		Marriage	1892	Posen, Germany
24	Edith Riezler née Pauly	Birth	4 January 1880	Posen, Germany
		Death	1963	Unknown
25	UNKNOWN MAN (Figures 18a-b)
26	UNKNOWN WOMAN
27	Elisabeth Herrnstadt née Pauly	Birth	2 July 1874	Posen, Germany
		Death (Murdered)	27 May 1943	Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia
		Marriage	11 May 1895	Cunnersdorf, Germany
28	Arthur Herrnstadt	Birth	15 March 1865	Hirschberg, Germany
		Death	21 October 1912	Stettin, Germany
		Marriage	11 May 1895	Cunnersdorf, Germany
29	Adolf Wachsmann (Figures 19a-b)	Birth	3 January 1859	Ratibor, Germany
		Death	Unknown	Unknown
		Married	17 October 1893	Görlitz, Saxony, Germany
30	UNKNOWN MAN (Figures 20a-b)
31	UNKNOWN MAN

 

** Numbers in the left-hand column correspond with the numbered, circled heads in Figure 1. Names in red refer to people whose images have been colorized.

 

Mr. Bieńkowski seemingly used the automated feature of an image-editing program to smooth and sharpen the individual photos. All subjects have blue eyes but given that only 8 to 10 percent of the world’s population have eyes this color, clearly this is unrealistic. Some of the colorized images are remarkably real and look like their originals, others are eerie since the proportions are imprecise and imbue the subjects with a wax-museum quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned, based on the estimated age of the younger subjects and their known dates of birth, I gauge the original picture was taken in the early 1890’s. While color photography is almost as old as black-and-white, the process did not become widely available until much later, certainly after the Lippmann color process was unveiled in 1891. The only color photo I have of any of the subjects is of my great-aunt Charlotte Mockrauer née Bruck when she turned 100 in 1965 and her eyes appear to be brown. (Figure 21) Additionally, I have color paintings of two of the 31 subjects in the original photograph, specifically, Julie Neisser née Sabersky (Figure 22) and Wilhelm Pauly (Figure 23). In these paintings, Julie Sabersky clearly has brown eyes, and a much older Wilhelm Pauly has blue eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regular readers know how I like making connections between seemingly unrelated things. In the previous post, Post 86, Suse Vogel née Neisser’s 1947 letter describing the last days of her father and aunt’s lives in October 1942 in Berlin was sent to her first cousin, Liselotte Dieckmann née Neisser in St. Louis. (Figure 24) Liselotte was an extremely accomplished woman and a Professor of German at St. Louis University. She wrote a short biography in English of her life, which I obtained a copy of from Nicki Stieda, Suse’s Vogel’s granddaughter. On the opening page, Liselotte discussed her grandmother without naming her. Being familiar with the Neisser family tree, I quickly ascertained she was discussing Julie Neisser née Sabersky, who is seated alongside one of her sons, Ernst Neisser, in Figure 1. Liselotte’s description of her grandmother, quoted below, comports with my preconceived notion of the strong matriarch I imagine she was:

 

“My Father Max Neisser, born in 1869, professor of bacteriology at the University of Frankfurt, came from Silesia which was then a Prussian province and is now part of Poland. By the time I was born in 1902, his mother [editor’s note: Julie Neisser née Sabersky], widowed for many years, lived with her brother [editor’s note: Heinrich Sabersky] whom she had well-tamed in Berlin where we visited her often. She was a fine lady, with beautiful blue eyes, who sat straight as a ruler at the edge of her chair. She was a woman of great vitality—no doubt, almost to her end in 1926, the ruling member of her family. My cousins and I owe to her a sense of family closeness rarely found among cousins. Her sons and one daughter had eight children together, with whom I am still in close touch, insofar as they are still alive.”

 

Julie’s regal bearing caught my attention well before I knew who she was. Interestingly, Julie’s brother, Heinrich Sabersky, mentioned in the paragraph above who is also in the group picture, similarly caught my attention because of his warm demeanor. Among my third cousin Agnes Stieda née Vogel’s personal photographs is a different one with Julie and Heinrich Sabersky seated amidst a group of ten people; this photo includes three Pauly sisters, Margarethe, Helene and Edith, all three of whom are in the larger group picture that is the subject of this post, two of whose photos are also colorized. (Figures 25-26)

 

 

 

To my mind, the major take away of receiving the unsolicited colorized images of people from 130 years ago is that it personalizes them and makes them seem less abstract. This comports with one of the goals of my Blog to make my ancestors come to life in a tangible way, while conceding it may not be entirely realistic.