From idyllic landscape views to the trenches: seeing the First World War through an army doctor’s photographs

black and white photograph of three uniformed soldiers

Carl Hartog (first from left) with two colleagues, Douai, January 1914 © Jewish Museum Berlin. Donated by Virginia Van Leer Dittrich

Visitors can see an album with photographs of places along the Western front in our cabinet exhibition “The First World War in Jewish Memory” for only another few days. The album is part of the bequest of a Berliner gynecologist Dr. Carl Hartog (1877-1931), having been given to the museum at the end of 2001 by Hartog’s granddaughter Virginia Van Leer Dittrich.

Born the son of a leather manufacturer in 1877 in Goch on the Lower Rhine, Carl Hartog studied medicine in Munich, Bonn, and Würzburg. He subsequently established a practice as an ob-gyn in Berlin but, having already done a half year of military service as a student, he stayed loyal to the military as a working professional.  continue reading