Photograph Album and Archive of Latvian Displaced Persons Camp and Theatre Performances
Large archive centered around an album of resettlement, family life, and theatre performances within Latvian Displaced Persons Camps in Germany following WWII — majority of views likely of the camp at Augsburg, judging from signage and countryside terrains.
Price: $2,500.00
Photograph Album and Archive of Latvian Displaced Persons Camp and Theatre Performances
The unnamed compiler appears to have been active in the Latvian National Theatre before the war and had a vital role in the performances staged within various DP Camps between 1945 and 1950, with at least Esslingen and Augsburg as named locations in notations to performance images. In his 2014 book, DPs: EUROPE'S DISPLACED PERSONS: 1945–51, Mark Wyman writes of the desire to maintain national pride and customs in the camps: "Professor Alfreds Straumanis, a former actor and director in Latvian DP theatre, said that this desire was especially prominent in the extensive network of theatrical companies that spread through the Latvian camps. These had an immediate base to grow on, since most the former Latvian National Theatre actors [...] were in the Meerbeck DP camp; in fact, some fifteen of that organization's best professionals where joined by some twenty others who also had professional theater experience in Latvia." (163) Notable images include a series of the family living in a boxcar; many views of camp processing procedure; a ca. 1950 trip aboard the USS General R. L. Howze transport from Europe to The United States; dozens of theatre production photos; ancestral CDV's and pre-war family photos; several sketches depicting life in the camps; as well as theatre images of Latvia. The family appears to have settled in the U.S. (Washington state) following their 1950 passage, and continued to perform in traditional Latvian theater, even traveling to Bolivia for performances. Approximately 65 post-war, family images are also among the more than 300 scarce, primary views of Latvian DP Camp life and traditional Latvian theatre before and after World War II.
The Object
[Various]: n.p, [ca. 1945-1960]. Oblong string-bound folio album. 13 black paper leaves with 241 black and white snapshot photographs densely mounted both recto and verso. With an additional 130 black and white and 11 color photographs loose. 382 in all. Album leave have some waviness from adhesive. A few prints perished. Loose prints mildly curled, worn. Entire contents housed in new archival box. Overall very good.
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