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Topic: Tsarskoye Selo
Dimitri Silbermann, a Berlin-based collector and researcher, has shared with the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve the digital copies of nineteen photographs from his private collection showing Tsarskoye Selo in about the end of 1941.
Mr Silbermann established that the original 6 x 9 cm pictures were made by an amateur photographer from the 58th Infantry Division, a unit of the German Army (Wehrmacht) under Generalleutnant Friedrich Altrichter then quartered in Uritsk (now South Western St Petersburg).
Being of historical importance, these photographs greatly compliment the Museum collection which so far has had wartime pictures taken as early as 1942, when a number of the Tsarskoye Selo monuments were already destroyed and the objects left behind were looted and moved to Germany.
The photos of 1941 show the Nazis posing complacently on the background of yet intact interiors of the Catherine Palace and having a coronation mockery scene possibly in one of the Antechambers. We can see the pre-war décors in the park pavilions, the later completely destroyed icons in the Palace Chapel, the bronze Hercules and Flora still on their pedestals at the Cameron Gallery.
Many details from the history of the German occupation of Pushkin town are unknown yet. Archived in hundreds of places around the world, the documents of that period are still waiting to be researched. That is why any photographic materials showing Tsarskoye Selo with its palaces and parks during 1941–44 are so important.
© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Preserve. 04 September, 2012
Updated: Wednesday, 5 September 2012 8:09 AM EDT
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