Seven war chronicle albums of a bi-lingual German officer who fought on the East front during WWII. 1938-44/compiled 1949. Circa 650 vintage gelatin silver prints. Various sizes between circa 10 x 7,2 cm, 8,5 x 11 cm. Each mounted to album page and annotated in white/black ink in German and Russian below the images on the mount, bound in 7 contemporary half canvas and canvas albums (egdes slighty rubbed, some traces of use).

Extraordinary albums of a German officer who was probably from a family of Russian immigrants with German citizenship. He was an amateur photographer who grew up in Berlin and the second album shows many private snapshots of Berlin in the 1920s. In 1939 he was called up for military service and was trained as an interpreter in a reconnaissance unit. After several images of barrack life in Halle/S. the first images of war appear from 1940: ruins in Warsaw, daily life in the bombed city and images of repression against the Jewish people. The attack on the Soviet Union is documented here by photos of destroyed airplanes, abandoned military equipment, burning villages and endless marching columns of Russian prisoners of war. There are also images of prison camps and Jewish people being interned in the Baryssau ghetto (Belarus), daily war life and destroyed villages and cities such as Smolensk and Kiev. All photos are extensively described and several manuscript pages are glued in one album, as well as some loose pages. The phrases are occasionally arrogant, often judgmental and tend to be 'anti Bolshevik'. There are no comments concerning the murder of Jewish people, but there is an image of a public notice announcing the shooting of 50 Jews in Baryssau. The officer compiled these albums circa 1949 using vintage photographs from 1940 - 1944 and several other historical artefacts. – Some traces of use.