UNDATED – A CdV photo shows Ms. Witthinrich of Marutendorf in a studio in Kiel, Germany. © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: Kurt Jensen
The story behind the image
This is another photo of the lot I recently acquired – I call it The Roesler Lot – and I don’t know Miss Witthinrich, the lady on this photo. And I don’t know her relation to the Roesler family (i.e., why she appears in the lot.) But – I really like her photo portrait.
Let’s see what we can find out about her. A handwritten note on the back of this CdV just said:
Ms. Witt-Hinrich of Marutendorf.
Uh. That’s not a lot of information. The photo was captured by Kurt Jensen in his studio in Kiel, Germany, presumably before 1913, because around that time he began stamping the date on the back of his CdVs, and there is no stamp on the back of this photo.
The tall, narrow CdV format became fashionable from around 1905, so we can say that the image was captured sometime between 1905 and 1913 in Kiel. Marutendorf is a beautiful grange near Kiel, and it is well possible that Ms. Witthinrich was born in or near Kiel and worked at the grange.
I’d estimate her age as 18 to 21 years on the photo. This means she would have be born between 1884 (1905-21 yrs.) and 1895 (1913-18 yrs). Now, I did a little research and found two matches in the church records of Kiel St. Nikolai (but they do not really match, for different reasons). Also, there were no relevant matches in the Flemhude church records which would be the assigned church for Marutendorf.
On Ancestry I found several entries for ladies with the name Witthinrich who emigrated to the United States, and some of them are from the Kiel region, but their home addresses lack precision. So, I concluded that it would be pure guesswork trying to find out who she might have been. Too bad.
Yet I like her photo.
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | c. 1910 |
| Photographer | Atelier Kurt Jensen, KIel |
| Location | Kiel, Germany |
| Image Source | 5.2 x 11.6 cm CdV |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 48 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 24 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 4358 x 9558 Pixels |
| Copyright | © Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com/Photo: Kurt Jensen |
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