Erich Sonntag in Nancy, 1 May 1941
A first stroll through the city, in the company of his fellow Reichsarbeitsdienst conscripts
If you haven’t seen or read up on parts one and two, please find them here:
Today, I’m short on time, hence but a few photographs that I found tucked away among the vintage postcards from Nancy. I also have a diary entry from 1 May 1941, which I shall provide in the next posting—but I wanted to share some of the photographs with you, dear readers, today.
How do I know about their origins? Well, sadly, the diary is silent on their provenance, but Erich Sonntag glued them to some brown, soft paper and took notes about what is visible on these pictures—and one of these paper notes includes the following line:
First leave [from the Kleber Barracks], 1 May 1941.
So, Erich Sonntag and his Reichsarbeitsdienst troop arrived in Nancy on 28 April 1941, and a few days later, him and his comrades went to explore the city.
Given that the pictures I found tucked away among the postcards are all very uniform in size and don’t look like one of the young men took them, I surmise that he bought them at a local photographer’s shop as a souvenir.
Above, Place Stanislas with the impressive ironwork; below, another view of the same square with City Hall:
Below, la rue Horé with the Arc de Triomphe dedicated by Stanislaus I, the 18th-century Duke of Lorraine and King of Poland-Lithuania:
The below church wasn’t really shown on any of the postcards, Saint-Epvre Basilica, built during the 19th century.
Finally for this posting, an aerial view, likely taken from the above church’s spire, showing the city centre—and Nancy Cathedral in the top-right corner.
It is the quality of these images, as well as the perspectives from above, that supports my interpretation that these photographs were done by a professional photographer and bought on site.
Nancy, 28 April to 10 July 1941
And then there’s the below-reproduced page from Erich Sonntag’s scrapbook that shows what I believe to be snapshots taken by the young men he was strolling around town in early May 1941:
Note the different sizes and otherwise “amateurish” looks of esp. the photographs showing main sights (bottom left and right) as well as the “personal interest” references, such as the middle pictures, which Erich Sonntag subtitled with the words “mein Friseur” (my hair-dresser; the one in the first line); and the one below showing the “Soldaten Kino der Propaganda Komp.” (the soldiers’ cinema by the propaganda company; the middle picture in the second line).
Stay tuned for the next posting with a few more lines from Erich Sonntag’s diary and, of course, more pictures and postcards.