Life, via Paperwork
The myth about Germany I grew up with was that it's very precise. "German Engineering" and all that. While there's surely some truth in it, I'd amend the myth and say that Germany is very detail-oriented. German government offices (Behörden) love paperwork, and love it even more when it can be signed and stamped. Therefore it's not surprising that digging through German fleamarkets and junkshops (Flohmärkte und Trödelläden) you find a lot of official documents.
There's a place not far from our place that primarily sells old furniture, but will occasionally have books and papers, likely bought as part of an entire apartment that was cleared out after the owner's death. Earlier this month I found a small stack of papers there for 5€, after missing out on a great-looking old encyclopedia a few days earlier because I had no cash on me. It's easy to undersand why a now-grown child, or even grandchild wouldn't have a use for these mundane papers, but I find them fascinating and intimate. I sometimes feel uncomfortable reading them, because even though it's all public information, they're not things you expect to share with strangers. It's fairly likely that the descendants of the people depicted in these documents didn't expect them to be rescued from the dump and used in collages (and photographed for a blog). I hope I'm not disrepecting anyone's wishes, using them this way. Rather I hope that I'm keeping a time period alive, and giving a personal perspective on it. "History" is all about governments, wars, and social movents. "Stories" are about people, where they lived, what they did with their days, and what mattered to them. The stories in these documents are definitely found in the spaces between them, not right on the pages, but I think there's something there.
This is just a selection of what I found, described clockwise from upper left:
A "Versichertenausweis" is an insurance card, this one issued in 1952 to a woman named Sonja Gelber, born in Dresden, 1931. In 1952 Dresden was a part of the DDR (East Germany).
By 1961 she'd married, now going by Sonja Brutscheck, and worked as a postal clerk (Postfacharbeiterin) in Dresden.
1954, Berlin. These cards belong to Kürz Brutscheck - though I'm certainly misreading the first name. Kürz is an adjective and not commonly used as a name. I also can't properly read his occupation, it appears to begin with "Tief..." or "Tier...", meaning he could be a civil engineer, a guy who digs tunnels, or someone who works with large animals.
1942, Diptheria immunization certificate.
1952, Insurance card and record.
Sonja Gelber's Arbeitsbuch, used to record her employment history, issued in Dresden, 1945.
Frau Gelber was in school in Dresden from 1937-1945, graduated at 14, then started working as a housemaid (Haushelferin) at a bakery. She moved onto another housemaid-type role, then worked as a kitchen helper (Küchenhilfe) for four months in 1946. From there she worked a series of jobs at shoe factories from 1946-1953, first in Dresden, then Berlin.
Her 1951 Lohnsteuerkarte (payroll tax document) lists her occupation as “Stepperin”. A Stepper (man) or Stepperin (woman) was responsible for sewing the ornamental details on shoes, like wingtips, or the three stripes on an Adidas football sneaker. By early 1952 she’d moved to Kleinmachnow in Berlin-Brandenburg, and worked as an assistant clerk (Hilfssachbearbeiterin). Kleinmachnow is on the outskirts of Berlin, especially in the 1950s, which is perhaps why she moved to Berlin-Britz in November, now married and going by Sonja Edith Brutscheck. She registered her address with the police (still done today, called an Anmeldung, but through the Bürgeramt instead of the police) as Suderoder Str 37, Vorderhaus (front house), Berlin-Britz. Suderoder Str lies south of Tempelhofer Feld and not far from the Teltow Kanal, and today is a quiet and fairly typical street just barely outside “the Ring”, defined by the S41 & S42 Ringbahn (above ground train line). It’s also not far from my studio.
Her handwritten Lebenslauf (resume) in the first picture is fascinating, and documents every job worked between 1945-1991, including periods of unemployment and pregnancy leave. Aside from the jobs listed above, she worked at several health insurance companies, a department store (Herti), a company making rubber keys for typewriters (India-Tastenfabrik), and finished her career with twenty years at the Neukölln Bezirksamt (local government office).
Now having spent time with these documents, I’m not sure how I’ll use them in collage. I’m less likely to randomly cut them up, and would rather use them along with as much of their context as possible. I’ll sit with them for a bit. I have lots of other collage materials that are, at least on first glance, less personal. Thank you, Frau Gelber-Brutscheck for letting me learn a little bit about your life.