Research in the Mittelmann Leipzig Photo Archive

Abram Mittelmann had labelled both the glass plates and the protective sleeves with surnames. In the Mittelmann photo archive, this repeatedly raises the question: does this refer to the people in the portraits? Might visitors to the city also have visited the studio? Days later, once the visitors have left, the local residents collect the photos. Is it their name that is meant then?

The collection includes a photograph of an elderly lady: ‘Mrs Prof. Kassewitz’. In the 1930s, there was an Edith Kassewitz (born 1905) in Leipzig. She was the wife of Prof. Dr Simon Kassewitz, but at that time she was around 30 years old. It is impossible for her to be the person in the photograph.

Edith and Simon Kassewitz moved from Pforzheim to Leipzig in 1933 with their three-year-old daughter Eva. Simon Kassewitz had worked as a teacher in Pforzheim and, as a Jew, lost his post in the civil service in 1933. The Carlebach School in Leipzig offered him a new position as an English and French teacher. Edith maintained a very close relationship with her parents in Kassel. Consequently, her mother, Sara Rosenbaum (née Kayser, 1873), often stayed in Leipzig. On one such occasion, the two of them went to the Mittelmann shop, and that is where the surviving photographs were taken. This information comes from the memoirs of Eva Kassewitz, which include a photograph of her grandmother. Sara Rosenbaum managed to flee to India with her husband Paul in 1939. The Kassewitz family succeeded in leaving for Bolivia in June 1939.