Aunty Mary’s Wedding in 1911
Today is the anniversary of my Great-aunt Marie‘s birthday and while rummaging through old family photographs I came to an old wedding picture from 1911. It is the family on my maternal side and you can spot my future mother, as an almost eleven-year-old (one month short of her birthday). She is the tall girl in the white dress at the right.
There are thirty-one people in the picture and I have known thirteen of them. My children and grandchildren would share DNA with twenty-one of them. But such is life, that most of my descendants would have no idea of them.
The bride I knew as “Tante Mariechen”. Aunty Mary was extremely kind and a war widow. Her husband died of war wounds in July 1918, four months before the war ended. She had a rocking chair in her apartment in “Kopischstrasse”, Berlin. It is one of the shortest streets in Berlin and at the corner stands a landmark of Kreuzberg, the old water tower.
My Great-Aunt Marie (not the bride) whose birthday it is today, is standing in the back row, second from the left. She was born in 1873 and lived through an age of innovations and two world wars, a revolution and civil war, as well as the hyper-inflation. On her 80th birthday, there was an uprising in East-Germany and fittingly, her birthday became a national holiday.
I will never forget her!
Berlioz1935's Blog 
It is amazing that you know who all these people were in this 104 year old photo. Of course all these people are dead by now. I did get to know you great-aunt Marie (Tante Mietze) and of course I remember your mother very well. Are there any other people in the picture that I did get to know?
I don’t think so. But you know the daughter of the girl sitting in front of the groom. The girl in the picture is the mother of Ingrid, she looks very much like Ingrid. In later years, she did not look like Ingrid at all.
Oh, Ingrid is a lovely person. Visiting Ingrid and her husband was always one of the highlights of our Berlin visits.
Those wedding photos are always fascinating to look at. A great photo Peter.
this is absolutely amazing! you know how to take care of things!
I love the stories behind old photos and the way the past reaches out to touch the present with their lives.
There is another connection. The bride had a younger sister, probably too small to be at the wedding. She, much later in life, married a stepson of my Aunty Marie.who was not married at the time of this picture.
Family ties – they are so important in understanfing who we are. I can’t imagine the vacuum that would be not knowing your genetc history … the world must look such a different place.