byronic :: mad bad and dangerous to know

I spent the weekend in Frankfurt with my husband’s family for one of their annual reunions. We had a chance to go through boxes and boxes of stuff which BT inherited from his mother, and found some incredible pieces of history: letters written in Sütterlin script; newspaper cuttings documenting local events, such as the retirement of my husband’s great-grandfather (a theatre tickets seller); official documents stamped with Nazi insignia (house deeds, birth and death certificates, postcards); and a wonderful collection of ancient photographs, including the one above.

Here  are (L-R): BT’s grandfather Andreas (whose name BT carries as a middle name) and beloved grandmother Babette (dressed as Charlie Chaplin!); her brother Georg (the James Joyce lookalike, who can be seen in similar outfits in various photographs from different eras, indicating that this is no carnival costume) with his then-girlfriend (whom he didn’t marry - scandal!); another brother called Hans (who was shell-shocked in WWI) and his future wife Mariechen. The photograph was probably taken in 1922.