This photo by the well-known Cologne industrial photographer Ruth Hallensleben (1889-1977) dates from the first winter of the war in 1939/40 and was taken from the street In der Sürst in the direction of Gangolfstraße. It shows the Martinsbrunnen fountain, which stands in front of the west portal of Bonn Minster. The sculptor Heinrich Götschmann named his fountain, erected in 1902, "Martinitreiben" (St. Martin's drive) - with children trying to catch geese for the feast on St. Martin's Day. The original bronze was cast in Walter Gladenbeck's foundry in Berlin-Friedrichshagen.

Around 1942, the bronze figures were melted down for armaments purposes and only recast from old plaster molds in 1958. Ruth Hallensleben's main field of work was industrial photography, which she took on behalf of companies and publishers; here she often depicted the connection between man and machine. Her pictures are characterized by high technical quality, whereby she usually worked with only a little artificial light. She also worked on portraits and in-depth landscape and architectural photography, to which she devoted herself increasingly after the Second World War.

Contact: Julia Zuber,  julia.zuberbonnde

The Fastelóvend is here and the city archives would like to present you with something suitable in this month. An old picture of the Bonn City Soldiers from the year 1922 was taken by the painter and portraitist Emil Krupa-Krupinki (1872-1924), who was also a customary painter without a name, so that the picture was taken for the Posskaate. The city archives also have all kinds of color prints and lithographs that Krupa-Krupinski would have made. His painting "Martinszug" (1924) hangs in the Bonn City Museum. Krupa-Krupinski, who was also known as the "laughing painter-philosopher", studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and was a member of the renowned artists' association "Düsseldorfer Malkasten".

At the same time, he met Bonn's Carl Nonn, who was an artist in Bonn at the end of the century. In 1905, Krupa-Krupinski held his first exhibition together with Walter Besig at the Cohen art gallery. In addition, he was also a founding member and the current president of the Bonn Artists' Association. The black and white poster is a lithograph from the twentieth century, measuring 9x14 cm. It's a nice piece for the Bonn City Soldiers. KrupaKrupinski, who also worked as a caricaturist, scribbled:

"The muckers with the dirty look
We reject them at the gate"
"Because today is the city soldier festival
The watchword is conviviality"

The Bonn City Soldiers' Corps was founded in 1872, with the uniform of the historical uniform of the cheerful Bonn Electorate Infantry Battalion being worn. "Prince Carnival has had an effective fighting force in the Bonn City Soldiers for over a hundred years, which actively supports him in the fight against grumpiness and muckraking."
(www.bonner-stadtsoldaten.de: The history of the Bonn Stadtsoldaten-Corps von 1872 e.V.)

We would like to thank Mr. Herbert Weffer for the translation into German.

The Bonn City Soldiers at Carnival in 1922

The carnival season is here and this month the city archive would like to present an old postcard of the "Bonn City Soldiers" from 1922. This postcard was created by the genre and portrait painter Emil Krupa-Krupinski (1872-1924), who also made a name for himself as a commercial artist. His pictures were often used as postcard motifs. The city archive owns around forty postcards as well as various color prints and lithographs produced by Krupa-Krupinski. Incidentally, his painting "Martinszug" (1924) can be seen in the Bonn City Museum. Krupa-Krupinski, the so-called "laughing painter-philosopher", studied at the art academy in Düsseldorf and was a member of the renowned artists' association "Düsseldorfer Malkasten", among others.

It was here that he met the Bonn painter Carl Nonn, who rented an artist's studio for him in Bonn at the end of the century. In 1905, Krupa-Krupinski's first exhibition took place together with Walter Besig at the Cohen art dealership. He eventually became a founding member and the first chairman of the "Bonn Artists' Association". The black and white postcard, a lithograph from the 1920s with the classic dimensions of 9x14 cm, depicts a scene of the Bonn city soldiers in a humorous manner. Krupa-Krupinski, who also worked as a caricaturist, underlines the scene with the following words:

"The muckrakers with the mischievous look
We reject them at the gate"
"Because today is the city soldier festival
The watchword is: conviviality"

The Bonn City Soldier Corps was founded in 1872, with the uniform corresponding to the historical uniform of the former Bonn Electoral Infantry Battalion. "Prince Carnival has had an effective fighting force in the Bonn City Soldiers for over a hundred years, which actively supports him in the fight against grumpiness and muckertum." (www.bonner-stadtsoldaten.de: Die Geschichte des Bonner Stadtsoldaten-Corps von 1872 e.V.)

If you have any questions, please contact  julia.zuberbonnde

A special treasure of the Bonn City Archive is the Chronica by Caspar Hedio, published in Strasbourg in 1530. It is the oldest book of the approximately 150,000 volumes in the City History Library. This is the first edition of the 752-page work by the publisher Georg Ulricher von Andla. The German historian, theologian and reformer Caspar Hedio, also known as Caspar Heyd, was a student of Matthäus Zell, Wolfgang Capito and Ulrich Zwingli, among others.

Hedio was born in Ettlingen in 1494 and died of the plague in Strasbourg in 1552. He translated numerous treatises of the Church Fathers, i.e. those early Christian authors who founded Christian doctrine. His work Chronica, presented here, and the World Chronicle, published in 1539, are characterized by pronounced reformatory tendencies. These two works made Hedio the first Protestant church historian.

The "Chronica der altenn christlichen Kirchen aus Eusebio / Ruffino / Sozomeno / Theodoreto / Tertulliano / Justino / Cypriano / und Plinio durch D. Caspar Hedio verteutscht" is an adaptation and continuation of older church histories. The condition of the book is good for its age. The corners are heavily bumped and there are traces of woodworm damage. The wooden cover binding is covered with pressed pigskin and was once held by two brass clasps, which are unfortunately only partially preserved.

Jos[eph] Kryph's handwritten ownership note dated March 17, 1622 is on the inside of the cover. Hedio's Chronica is now also available online - but it is quite something else to hold an original book in your hands that is almost 500 years old. Are you interested? Then we will be happy to show you the book in the reading room.

Handwritten curriculum vitae of Walter Braunfels (1882-1954), composer and pianist, from the estate of Dr. Julius Hagemann (1863-1939), undated (Stadtarchiv Bonn SN 74 No. 2).

"... in the last years of grammar school music took such a back seat for me that I finally went to Munich (and later to Kiel) as a student of jurisprudence and national economics. Soon, however, I was so completely absorbed by music that I went to Vienna to study with [Theodor] Leschetitzky in the fall of 1902. [...] In the fall of 1903 I returned to Munich, where I first studied with Theville [Ludwig Thuille] and [Bernhard] Stavenhagen...". This is how Walter Braunfels describes his turn to music and his career up to 1909. He names the operas "Falada (04/05) [...] and Princess Brambilla (06/08) which is almost finished ..." as his most important works. On March 25, 1909 - 105 years ago - the world premiere of his work "Princess Brambilla", a fantasy play based on E.T.A. Hoffmann, took place at the Staatstheater in Stuttgart.In 1933, Braunfels was dismissed by the Nazis as a so-called "half-Jew" as director of the Musikhochschule Köln. Between 1933 and 1937, he lived in Bad Godesberg, Kurfürstenstraße 10, during which time he wrote his opera "Der Traum ein Leben". It is currently being performed at the Bonn Opera; the premiere took place on March 30, 2014.

The donor of the estate, Dr. Julius Hagemann, was a doctor (including working as a surgeon at St. Franziskus Hospital in Kessenich) and patron of music. His work came to an end during the Nazi era in 1938 due to his Jewish ancestry. He emigrated to India at an advanced age, where he died soon afterwards (1939).

Further information on his life and work can be found at:  www.theater-bonn.de and www.walterbraunfels.de. (opens in a new tab)

Exactly 110 years ago, on April 30, 1904, the 14th official World's Fair opened in St. Louis under the title "World's Fair - Louisiana Purchase Exposition". Under the umbrella of the German Cities Exhibition and under the leadership of the Reich Commissioner for the World's Fair, Theodor Lewald, numerous German cities presented themselves until December 1 on the largest exhibition grounds to date in what is now Forest Park and on the adjoining campus of Washington University as part of a collective exhibition on cities.

Bonn also took part in this exhibition and provided eight general plans showing the urban development of the city of Bonn from Roman times to 1903. The city administration was honored with a diploma and a silver medal for its participation and "outstanding achievements at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis".

After the end of the World's Fair, the plans were given to the Chicago Municipal Museum for a special exhibition and eventually donated, as it would probably have been too expensive to transport them back. The second copies of the plans can still be found today in the map and plan collection of the city archive (shelfmark: SN 5 / Ba 10).

One of the most important holdings in the photographic collection of the Bonn City Archive is the extensive estate of the Bonn architectural photographer and master photographer Gerhard Sachsse (1920-1998). Gerhard Sachsse's photo of the month for June shows Jacob Diefenbach's delicatessen, which operated on Bonn's Sterntorbrücke from the early 1950s until 1970. It was so well known that it was mentioned in a radio interview in 2010:

"Bonn had now become the federal capital, and in the land of the economic miracle there was a great longing for lobster, game and liver pâté. Whether it was an embassy reception, tennis tournament or garden party in Godesberg: the finest cold platters came from Feinkost Diefenbach."
("Erlebte Geschichten", WDR5, 24.12.2010)

In Gerhard Sachsse's photograph, the lavishly filled Diefenbach store presents itself as a temple to delicacies. After the lean years, people want to indulge in culinary delights again. Delicatessen is all the rage, or at least that's what it was called in the years of the economic miracle. As the term is not uniformly regulated, it is naturally also subject to the spirit of the times. The term delicatessen usually refers to exquisite foods of the highest quality that are so expensive that they are not part of everyday staple foods.

In today's world, delicacies include foods and drinks such as Beluga caviar, Alba truffles, Wagyu beef (Kobe), Kopi Luwak coffee, Blanc de Blanc champagne and Tieguanyin tea. Kupferberg Gold and Deinhard sparkling wine and Jacobs coffee beans are modern and exude a touch of luxury. The fresh fruit and vegetables on offer include Dutch tomatoes and Goldparmäne apples, one of the best dessert fruit varieties, which is rarely grown today due to its susceptibility to disease. The highlight is the carefully arranged tropical fruit, bananas, oranges, honeydew melons, lemons and pineapples, which were indispensable for the fashionable dish of the 1950s, "Toast Hawaii".

In the spirit of the economic miracle, homage is also paid here to the belief in the lasting success of industrial mass production: the canned food popular at the time is declared to be the "finest canned food" and staged accordingly - veritable towers of canned food with Leipziger Allerlei, mushrooms, beans, tomatoes and asparagus are stacked up to the ceiling of the delicatessen. Thanks to the Jacobs coffee advertising sign in the photograph, which was created by the well-known graphic artist and press illustrator Kurt Glombig, the photo can be dated to the mid-1950s.

The black and white photograph by Gerhard Sachsse shown here has survived in the form of a negative glass plate measuring 24 x 17.5 cm. In photographic jargon, a "glass plate" is a glass pane coated with a photo emulsion, which was quite common until the 1960s. The invention of celluloid then made the production of photographic film possible from the 1930s onwards. Gradually, small and medium format film replaced the fragile and unwieldy glass plate.

Gerhard Sachsse was born on September 3, 1920 in Lengerich-Westphalia. He completed his apprenticeship with the Bonn photographer Käthe Augenstein, among others. After passing his master's examination in 1950, he opened his own studio in Bonn's Sternstraße in 1952. Gerhard Sachsse enjoyed a great reputation as an architectural photographer beyond Bonn's city limits. His work received several awards. He was appointed to the German Society for Photography. For many years, he held the office of head master in the Bonn Photographers' Guild and was also active as state guild master. Gerhard Sachsse ran his studio until 1983 and died in 1998 in Sankt Augustin near Bonn.

This month marks the 45th anniversary of Christopher Street Day. As this day stands for diversity and tolerance in society, the city archive would like to mark the occasion by presenting a new acquisition from the early 20th century. The photo shows an example of cross-dressing, the wearing of typical clothing of the opposite sex. Early daguerreotypes from the 19th century already show men in women's clothing.

The photograph presented today was taken in 1910 in the Bonn photo studio of the Gollas brothers. The Gollas brothers - Fritz (1870), Carl (*1879) and Georg (1874-1915) - all three worked as photographers: Carl and Fritz initially in Strasbourg and Georg in Bregenz. The latter moved to Bonn in October 1900, presumably to work in the new branch of the Bremen photography chain Jean Baptiste Feilner (Bahnhofstrasse no. 13; from 1910 no. 22), which Emil Koch had already opened in 1890.

Carl followed him to Bonn in 1903, but moved to Koblenz just two years later, where Feilner had been running another branch (Goebenplatz 12) since the end of 1904. In the same year, the brothers took over Feilner's Bonn studio, which was probably mainly run by Georg. In 1911, Georg married Maria Luise née Zahn (1885-1980) from Bonn and probably took over Feilner's Koblenz studio the following year. Albert Melzer continued to run the Bonn studio, which remained in the same location, then operated by various photographers, until 1938.

The black and white photo, measuring 10.1x14.7 cm, shows a person in women's underwear posing relaxed on a two-seater. Due to the feminine facial features, the wavy hair, the dainty ring jewelry and the rose in his lap, it is only at second glance that it is clear that this is a young man. The physique with its broad neck, broad shoulders, strong joints and muscles has a strong masculine character. A negative retouching is visible at the Adam's apple.

It is also noticeable that no armpit hair is visible and the eyebrows appear plucked. This is remarkable insofar as armpit hair was generally only removed in Europe after 1945. In the first erotic photographs from the 19th century, the models still show their armpit hair in a lascivious manner and in America before 1914 only a few women who worked in the theater and in revues practiced this method of body hair removal.

The interpretation of the photograph is still a mystery. On closer inspection, however, it is unlikely that the depiction is the result of a student test of courage, a joke or a costume worn at a carnival. A plausible explanation would be the depiction of an actor who had himself photographed in a female role: men in female roles were very popular with theater audiences at the turn of the century.

Unfortunately, research into a theater production staged in Bonn in 1910 that cast such a role has yielded no results. The photo rather suggests a young lover who had himself photographed for his beloved. This is also suggested by the light-colored rose, which since ancient times - especially the white one - has been considered a sign of secrecy. The young man's pose is reminiscent of Francisco de Goya's "Naked Maja" (1795-1800), which also exists in the version of a "Clothed Maja" (1800-1807) - an erotic motif is obvious.

If you, dear reader, have any further clues or another plausible explanation, please let us know in a short email. We are always very grateful for suggestions.

On August 1, the Bonn "General-Anzeiger" and the two other Bonn dailies, the "Neue Bonner Zeitung" and the "Deutsche Reichszeitung", publish a news item that removes the last uncertainty from the Bonn population: On July 31, 1914, the German Emperor Wilhelm II declares a state of war for the German Reich. The "General-Anzeiger" captures the political situation in a headline that is as short as it is concise: "War." On August 1, 1914, Wilhelm II orders mobilization and declares war on Russia.

The readers of the "General-Anzeiger" now had to get used to a completely new newspaper design and reporting. On July 31, 1914, the newspaper appeared for the last time with a front page consisting solely of advertisements of all kinds. Since the first edition of December 1, 1889, news items had appeared in small print on the inside pages between the advertisements, some of which were full-page. From August 1, 1914 to the present day, news from Bonn and around the world has dominated the appearance of the "General-Anzeiger".

A look at the Bonn newspaper landscape in the summer of 1914 shows how differently the daily newspapers reported on the start of the war. The "Deutsche Reichszeitung", for example, had already been using the word "war" in headlines on the front page since the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The "Neue Bonn Zeitung" and especially the "General-Anzeiger" are much more restrained in this respect.

In addition to the daily newspapers, special editions are printed over the next few days, providing information on further current events. News of the mobilization order (August 2, 1914), further declarations of war, such as Great Britain's entry into the war (August 5, 1914), and war reports appear in quick succession. At this time, crowds of people besiege the newspaper offices in anticipation of the latest news.

The special editions of the "Bonner Zeitung" are available in digital form and can be viewed on the archiv.nrw.de portal as part of the City Archive and City History Library's presence.

The City History Library has a total of 163 newspaper titles - including numerous daily newspapers. The oldest editions date back to the 1770s. 25 titles can be viewed on microfilm. All issues of the "General-Anzeiger" since 1889 are kept in printed form and also on microfilm.

"The resumption of classes on August 24 after the end of the summer vacation was abruptly interrupted. The tension between Germany and Poland, which had existed for weeks, erupted on the last day of August into a bloody clash of arms between the powers involved. Since the early morning of September 1, German cannons have been firing into Poland. In the interests of civilian air defense, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Göring, issued the following daily order by radio message:

"Classes are canceled throughout the Reich until further notice. - "

The German declaration of war on Poland and the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, 1939 had a direct impact on the everyday life of the population - the effects were particularly noticeable in everyday school life, as can be seen from the records of the school chronicle of the Catholic elementary school in Lessenich (Laurentiusschule). The war had a visible impact on school life and teaching, particularly due to the conscription of numerous teachers. "On 9.9.39, our principal, main teacher Masshöfer, was called up to the Wehrmacht," reports the school chronicle of the Catholic elementary school in Ippendorf. On the very day of the German invasion of Poland, the billeting of an anti-aircraft battery in the Ippendorf school led to considerable room occupancy:

"The two school halls in the rear building were taken up by it, the lower one set up as a kitchen, the upper one as a squad room. There are two field kitchens and a barrack on the school grounds, and at times vehicles too."

On August 28, 1939, four days before the German invasion of Poland, the population of Bonn had already been informed of the state of emergency in the operational area by means of a poster announcement. This "area of operations" also included the city of Bonn, as was clear from the added addendum by the Mayor of Bonn, Rickert, which meant that Bonn was included in an announced Rhineland deployment area for the planned offensive against France, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg even before the start of the Polish campaign.

While the population had already been confronted with the first indirect signs of the imminent threat of war a week earlier through a blackout exercise lasting several days in Bonn and Beuel, the direct military involvement of the Bonn area was expressed in the following period primarily through the billeting of Wehrmacht troops for the forthcoming western offensive.

On September 2, 1939, one day after the outbreak of war, the first fallen soldier from Bonn is recorded in the civil death registers: the 24-year-old student Heinrich Hagen, a rifleman in the 6th Company of Rifle Regiment 4, was "killed in action" in Toporow, Poland. By the end of the war in May 1945, the Second World War, which claimed around 60 million lives worldwide, would cost the lives of over 4,000 soldiers and civilians from Bonn.

To coincide with the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Documentation Department at the City Archive is presenting a writer who has repeatedly caused controversy: Elfriede Jelinek. The photo from 1989 was taken by the well-known Bonn photographer Franz Fischer and shows the now internationally recognized and multiple award-winning author (including the 1998 Büchner Prize and the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature) in a pensive pose in a room at the Hotel Beethoven in Bonn before an interview on the occasion of a dance theatre adaptation of her novel "Die Klavierspielerin".

Four of her plays were premiered at the Bonn Theater, mostly under protest from the audience and boycotted by the Bonn theater community. The scandal-ridden premieres under artistic director Peter Eschberg secured unprecedented nationwide attention for the Bonn Theater: 36 newspapers with a total circulation of 8.9 million copies reported on the "Theaterschock in Bonn" (Express of 27.9.1982) alone, the production of "Clara S." in Hans Hollmann's staging. The fact that the feminist author made Clara Schumann, of all people, a sacrosanct figure in Bonn, the protagonist of her play, which is intended to show the destruction of female creativity, as Jelinek explained in an interview with the GA, deeply infuriated the Bonn audience.

However, these extremely strong reactions did not prevent the director of the Schauspiel Peter Eschberg from staging further world premieres of works by the writer, who was also heavily criticized in her native Austria, in the following years. The discussions about the themes and quality of these productions can be read in detail in the publicly accessible collection of newspaper clippings in the Bonn City Archive. The extensive photographic collection, which also includes the Franz Fischer collection, can also be found there.

He is very familiar to Bonn residents thanks to his detailed documentation of the art scene.
However, it is less well known that, in addition to the visual arts, he also focused on the rich literary scene of the former German capital.

November 11 is the feast day of St. Martin of Tours (316/317-397), who, according to legend, shared his cloak with a beggar over 1600 years ago and has been considered the patron saint of travelers, horsemen and the poor ever since. He was the first person in the Latin Church to achieve sainthood not through martyrdom, but through his heroic deeds. As one of the most famous saints in the West, St. Martin is the patron saint of many churches, most of which are very old.

The church of St. Martin, which was built around the Cassius monastery, was first mentioned in writing in 799. It was initially a private church and was donated to the monastery in 804 by a landowner named Rungus. It is one of the four old parish churches in Bonn.

Around 1150, under Provost Gerhard von Are, the small, circular central building with a two-storey ambulatory, a west porch and a small semi-circular east apse for the altar was erected on the site of the previous buildings. A medieval parish church as a circular building is very unusual and can probably be explained by the fact that von Are wanted to create a monumental group of buildings in the style of central mausoleums or baptisteries.

A renovation in the second half of the 17th century greatly altered the exterior of the elegant, beautifully decorated rotunda due to the addition of enormous supporting pillars. After the arrival of French revolutionary troops (1794) in Bonn, services were rarely held in St. Martin's Church and it fell into increasing disrepair.

In 1804, the service was finally moved to the church of the dissolved Cassius monastery, which was given the Martinspatrocinium and then also the parish rights. Finally, an application was made to demolish St. Martin's Church, but this was rejected by the art-loving French prefect on the grounds that St. Martin's was of great importance "as the cradle of religion and the oldest building in the town". In 1812, the church collapsed during a storm and was subsequently demolished. The floor plan of the circular building, with a diameter of 18 meters, can still be seen today: It is embedded in the asphalt on Martinsplatz by porphyry blocks.

The brush drawing of St. Martin's Church, measuring 28.3x32.4 cm, was created in 1809 by Johann Baptist Büttgenbach. St. Martin's Church is depicted from the southwest, with the eastern apse of Bonn Cathedral still visible on the left-hand side of the picture.

According to Dieter Schaefer's master's thesis, Büttgenbach was born around 1785 as the son of Christian Budgenbach (Büttgenbach).
son of Christian Budgenbach (Büttgenbach *Bonn October 21, 1753) and Anna Maria Müllers
was born in Bonn. In the years 1813/14 Johann Baptist Büttgenbach worked as a land surveyor and geometer.
and married on April 14, 1813 Maria Elisabeth Josephine Petronella Müller
dicta Dumoulin in Bonn with whom he had a son Christian Friedrich Büttgenbach (* Bonn 16.
February 1814). The handwritten Bonn marriage register in French from 1813 can still be used as a source; otherwise, unfortunately, nothing further is known about the artist.

It is also interesting to note that the city archives have a lithograph of Bonn's
St. Martin's Church by the artist Joh. Gernau, measuring 25.2 x 32.5 cm, which is dated
May 20, 1813 - a time after the church was demolished. This sheet makes it clear that Gernau used Büttgenbach's brush drawing as a model, as he himself adopted the staffage figures from the latter. From this it can be concluded that at least Johann Baptist Büttgenbach's drawing cannot have been completely unknown.¹

¹ See: Dieter Schaefer: Administrative officials in Bonn between the Ancien Régime and Prussian
rule (1790-1815); Master's thesis Bonn 2004, p. 15.

There have always been floods on the Rhine. Some floods and ice flows have left lasting memories, others have been forgotten. More or less damaging, sometimes catastrophic, the recurring floods are a part of life in Bonn too. The water levels for the city of Cologne were documented as early as the 14th century. In Bonn, these have been preserved since 1784, making it possible for us today to understand the extent of past events.

The City Archives and the Bonn City History Library hold several interesting documents about the floods on the Rhine and in Bonn in particular: pictures, letters, chronicles, handwritten and printed reports and treatises, some of which are contemporary. We would like to present one of these sources in the current time slot.