Students working in the USC Libraries' Special Collections department routinely come into close contact with amazing archival materials. Here on Libwire, we're sharing occasional dispatches from these students about the collections they work with. Here's USC undergraduate Emily Hodgkins on the Jacobsohn Collection on Germany Between the Wars, which she recently helped process:
Leo Jacobsohn was born in Putzig, a small town in the state of Prussia in the former German empire (modern day Puck, Poland), on May 21 or 22, 1881. He received his doctorate of medicine in 1905 and in 1909 moved to the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. There he was eventually on staff at the Moabit Hospital, simultaneously working to develop a private practice in the city for internal medicine and neuropsychiatry. One of Jacobsohn's main hobbies was collecting print ephemera, and he began a collection of newspaper clippings in the months leading up to World War I. Because he maintained close connections with important members of Germany's civil and military circles through his practices, Jacobsohn was eventually able to expand his collection of print extensively, incorporating items that were not available to the general public. Working in the health commission of the city of Berlin during World War I, Jacobsohn also amassed a comprehensive ration card collection. After World War I ended, Jacobsohn continued to collect posters, newspaper, pamphlets, and flyers; he eventually gathered a huge variety of materials regarding the postwar German revolution of 1918-1919 and the politically charged Weimar period (1919-1933).
Hodgkins chose two items from the collection to highlight. The first is a mysterious flour sack:
When I found this flour sack in one of the Jacobsohn collection boxes, I wasn’t sure at first what it was. It was clear that it was some sort of textile that someone had taken time to paint in detail, but there was no attached documentation to hint at its intention or purpose. After a number of searches regarding Sperry Mills, American Indian brand flour, and flour during World War I, I stumbled upon an online exhibit at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Archive’s website that answered my questions.
While World War I raged in Europe from 1914–1918, the United States did not get involved militarily until 1917; however, in a show of support for the Allied powers, the nation would often provide food or supplies. It was during this period that future president Herbert Hoover established the Commission for Relief in Belgium, a means to help provide food to Belgian (and eventually French) citizens devastated by the war. Throughout this period, 697,116,000 pounds of flour (as well as possibly sugar and grain) were shipped through German blockades to those in need on the other side.
In a show of gratitude, those who received flour would often take the now-empty sacks and decorate, paint, embroider, or otherwise transform them into works of art or other practical items and send them back to America. This is likely one of those sacks, painted in the theme of the American Indian logo that would have been pre-printed on the bag, with a Belgian and an American flag waving on each side of the company name. The artist signed his work, but as it is almost impossible to decipher, his identity remains a mystery—as does how Jacobsohn, a German doctor, obtained it.
The second item is a theater program:
When World War I broke out, it was in many ways abrupt and unexpected that a war of that scale would soon descend upon the continent. This meant that in 1914–1915, there were a number of German citizens or people with German heritage living short- and long-term in the United Kingdom. Particularly after the sinking of the Lusitania by German u-boats in 1915, the government began to move Germans into internment camps. One of the prominently known camps was Knockaloe, on the Isle of Man.
About 23,000 prisoners were held there on 23 compounds, and treatment was often similar between civilian and military prisoners. One of the main concerns faced by the Germans at Camp Knockaloe and other similar places was the extreme boredom; often without much to engage them, the prisoners would make their own activities and created their own home away from home. One of the most popular activities at Knockaloe was putting on theater productions that were written, produced, directed, and starred in solely by those at the camp. They would have been very homegrown productions, but photos from an album in the Jacobsohn collection show that they were surprisingly well-staged, with costumes, make-up, and props. Someone would have been in charge of designing and printing show bills or programs, as seen in the example in the photo.
This play, a comedy (Lustspiel) in four acts called Die Barbaren, was put on at Knockaloe in December 1916 and January 1917. Set in France during the winter of 1870-71 at the castle of a marquis, it featured five songs, 16 principal parts (including female characters, even though it was an all-male cast), and an ensemble of soldiers. For an excellent visual of these sorts of internment camp plays (while from another camp entirely), there is an album within the collection with a number of photos from similar types of productions at Stobs Internment/Prisoner of War Camp in Hawick, Scotland (Box 22, Folder 8).
