Third Party Press

Imperial photo with soldier info

Warrior1354

Warrior1354

ax - hole
Not a rifle or bayonet but I think this fits in this category on the forum. If it doesn't fit in this section please move it. When I purchased this photograph over the summer last year. It was because this particular photograph. Was a real nice clear photograph of an Imperial german soldier. He was assigned to the Reserve Infantry Regiment 244th. What I was not expecting. Was it to have information of this particular soldier on the back side of it. I was wondering to our collectors in Germany. If there might be some information about this soldier. If anyone here locates his information it would be interesting to hear his story. Thanks

1000008019.jpg
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Otto Marquardt (painter) Soldat in III.Batallion Sachsisches Reserve Infanterie Regiment nr.244, 53.Division, 27 Armeekorps? 9.Kompanie am 9.10.1914 in Chemnitz. Leipzig - Kleinzschocher

Kleinzschocher - Mein Stadtteil - Stadt Leipzig

Kleinzschocher ist ein kleinerer Stadtteil im Südwesten des Stadtgebietes, wenige Kilometer vom Stadtzentrum entfernt. Kleinzschocher bietet durch seine Nähe zum Volkspark, dem Sportbad an der Elster und dem Sommerbad zunehmend jungen Familien ein Zuhause. Neubauten und Gründerzeithäuser...
www.leipzig.de www.leipzig.de

RIR 244 – GenWiki

wiki.genealogy.net wiki.genealogy.net
 
Warrior1354 said:
I was wondering to our collectors in Germany. If there might be some information about this soldier. If anyone here locates his information it would be interesting to hear his story.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately I have to disappoint you regarding the whole story of this soldier for multiple reasons:

1) Germany takes data privacy very seriously. If you want to research people, you have to have a valid reason and sent certain filled out forms back to the state military archives. I.e.: if you research your own family members, or in case you do research for a scientific paper intended to be published, which has info about this person,etc. There are some more options you can choose from which valid reason suits your needs best, but having random "Max Mustermann " looking up the unrelated (dead) stranger "Hans Müller" on the internet is a big no-go here in Germany.

2) Even if such websites like the US ones exist (type in the name, and receive the whole military files including vaccinations/STDs/etc.), you'll never receive the whole picture where someone served from beginning to end. During WW2 the military archives in Potsdam near Berlin were bombed out completely, so only fragments survive of what was once an enormous library of military personnal info reaching all the way back to the 30-years-war in the 1600s.
When I inquired about my Great-Grandparents, I only received excerpts from various field hospital medical records which showed his unit at that point in time in the field hospital. It's basically logbook style: when he got in, what his health problems/injuries at that time were, when he left and to which unit he was assigned back. But It doesn't tell me when he joined/was transferred to a certain unit during the war. These excerpts are only "snapshots" in time. For other ancestors, I didn't get lucky and the archives didn't find anything about the person at all.

But there are certain "free-to-use" tools, like searching in the "Gefallenenlisten" (Lists of fallen/injured soldiers) https://des.genealogy.net/eingabe-verlustlisten/search or inquire at the "Volksbund" for war graves in case the soldier was KIA and buried https://www.volksbund.de/erinnern-gedenken/graebersuche-online (requires registration). The first one are digitalised lists of soldiers that were publicly displayed back in WW1 and mostly showed only name, DOB (only Day & Month) and KIA/WIA status, as to not inform potential spies about military intel.

So the only "hard" info you'll probably ever have in regards to his military service and unit(s) is the one on the card at that point in time:

Otto Marquardt, Maler ["Painter", probably for houses."Maler" can both mean "artist painter" and "gives houses a paint coat" in german]
Soldat im 3. Batl. Res.Inf.Rgt. No.244
53. Division, 27. Armeekorps, 9. Kompagnie
am 9.10.1914 [for my american friends: DD/MM/YY, not MM/DD/YY ;)]
Leipzig-Kleinzschochau
Dieskaustr. No. 103 I [his address with apartment No. in Leipzig]
 
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Sir Mortimer said:
Unfortunately I have to disappoint you regarding the whole story of this soldier for multiple reasons:

1) Germany takes data privacy very seriously. If you want to research people, you have to have a valid reason and sent certain filled out forms back to the state military archives. I.e.: if you research your own family members, or in case you do research for a scientific paper intended to be published, which has info about this person,etc. There are some more options you can choose from which valid reason suits your needs best, but having random "Max Mustermann " looking up the unrelated (dead) stranger "Hans Müller" on the internet is a big no-go here in Germany.

2) Even if such websites like the US ones exist (type in the name, and receive the whole military files including vaccinations/STDs/etc.), you'll never receive the whole picture where someone served from beginning to end. During WW2 the military archives in Potsdam near Berlin were bombed out completely, so only fragments survive of what was once an enormous library of military personnal info reaching all the way back to the 30-years-war in the 1600s.
When I inquired about my Great-Grandparents, I only received excerpts from various field hospital medical records which showed his unit at that point in time in the field hospital. It's basically logbook style: when he got in, what his health problems/injuries at that time were, when he left and to which unit he was assigned back. But It doesn't tell me when he joined/was transferred to a certain unit during the war. These excerpts are only "snapshots" in time. For other ancestors, I didn't get lucky and the archives didn't find anything about the person at all.

But there are certain "free-to-use" tools, like searching in the "Gefallenenlisten" (Lists of fallen/injured soldiers) https://des.genealogy.net/eingabe-verlustlisten/search or inquire at the "Volksbund" for war graves in case the soldier was KIA and buried https://www.volksbund.de/erinnern-gedenken/graebersuche-online (requires registration). The first one are digitalised lists of soldiers that were publicly displayed back in WW1 and mostly showed only name, DOB (only Day & Month) and KIA/WIA status, as to not inform potential spies about military intel.

So the only "hard" info you'll probably ever have in regards to his military service and unit(s) is the one on the card at that point in time:

Otto Marquardt, Maler ["Painter", probably for houses."Maler" can both mean "artist painter" and "gives houses a paint coat" in german]
Soldat im 3. Batl. Res.Inf.Rgt. No.244
53. Division, 27. Armeekorps, 9. Kompagnie
am 9.10.1914 [for my american friends: DD/MM/YY, not MM/DD/YY ;)]
Leipzig-Kleinzschochau
Dieskaustr. No. 103 I [his address with apartment No. in Leipzig]
Click to expand...
I appreciate all this information you provided sir. Thank you for providing all this. If by chance does it list in Germany that he survived the Great War?
 
Warrior1354 said:
I appreciate all this information you provided sir. Thank you for providing all this. If by chance does it list in Germany that he survived the Great War?
Click to expand...
If he's not a family member he likely can't reveal even that much.

To give a bit of background, once upon a time I did a bunch of research in the Thuringian State Archives. Everything was on the years 1945-1953, and one of the bits I eventually got published involved a newspaper op-ed written during that time by a particularly precocious 7th grader. I had to anonymize the name of that person because I could not prove that he was deceased for more than a certain amount of time (that I forget now). The rules are usually something like they have to have been born before X date or you need to be able to show that they have been dead for Y years and even then it gets complicated if they were alive in the last 50 years and have surviving relatives.

Keep in mind Germany is a country that had, in living memory, a dictatorship that spied on its citizens and convinced neighbors to inform against each other. Remember: I'm not talking about the Nazis. I have talked to people in their 60 and early 70s who pulled their Stasi files and found out a boy or girlfriend had been reporting on them. shite, once upon a time I had beers with one who did jail time because of that and didn't find out the DDR had fallen until someone let him out of his cell.

Which is all to say that PII and personal privacy are valued rather highly in the BRD today. This can be an annoyance when researching, but it's understandable.
 
I used both websites tonight and was very surprised to see many (74) relatives that served in the Franco-Prussian up to and including WWII. Relatives I had no idea of! Many thanks for the links.

G2
 
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