In an earlier piece (see here) I mentioned that I discovered a curious cache of photos in the box in which I received my enlarger. So … story time!
I bought the enlarger from a lady in Vienna, herself of Polish origin, who had acquired the item for her own artistic purposes – that is all I (initially) knew of the backstory. The photo cache in the box, however, would seem to suggest that the enlarger once belonged to a photo lab in Mariahilfer Straße, a busy shopping street in Vienna’s sixth district. It was owned and run by one Helmut Niedermeyer, founder of a photo shop that eventually turned into a (now long defunct) successful consumer electronics chain.
One of his customers, whose name is merely noted as “Koman” on one of the envelopes in my photo cache, in early 1975, was unhappy with the photos they had handed in for developing and prints. “Too yellow | shiny”, a note on one of the envelopes states.
The envelopes contained negatives, including several rolls of 35 mill colour negative films, two sets of small-format 110 film (which I cannot scan), and a couple of rolls of medium-format film with photos of tubes, pipes, and the like, which may be unrelated. The 35 mill and 110 films clearly belonged to the same person(s), as they show the same individuals and the same settings.
As far as one may guess from the date on the envelope and the photos themselves, the pictures were taken in 1974 and perhaps even in 1975 still, in Vienna, in St. Pölten, and a hotel in the vicinity of Passau (Abrahamhof, long defunct, but see this exploration video).
The central figure in the photos is a lady, presumably the partner of the photographer, and a family cat, posing mysteriously together in this photo, partly hidden by a somewhat sad-looking pot plant:
The identity of the lady is unknown to me, and I have neither the knowledge nor the skills to identify her. The photos make it clear, however, that this lady performed as an actress and singer on stage, especially, but probably not exclusively, in one particularly bonkers-looking performance with some cosmic theme:
Any attempt to contact someone knowledgeable in Vienna University’s Drama department, so as to learn more about the individuals involved, remained unanswered. All searches for obvious combinations of relevant plays, years, and Vienna stages drew a blank, as did searches using the name “Koman”, as written on the envelope.
Several photos depict the actress-singer, her colleagues, and the entire troupe centre-stage, giving a notion of an exuberant, partly even burlesque performance:
Some of the photos give an idea of the efforts that had gone into staging and costume, including a pre-Madonna use of the cone bra:
In some of the photos a suit-clad (and somewhat … hands-on, shall we say) gentleman appears together with the performers. His identity, too, remains unknown to me, though I am inclined to believe that he was presumably related to the theatre in which the performance took place:
A couple of photos, which need not be displayed here, even show some of the female performers topless, including one in which the gentleman pictures above triumphantly descends the stairs with visible delight, with some topless female performers in the background.
The following pictures may or may not pertain to performances of other plays:
But there’s not just the stage. The photo cache also allows for an incredible glimpse into the family home, including its furniture, a Christmas party, and – of course – a cat.
Some impressions from the family home:
Particularly haunting (perhaps not least due to the fact that the girl depicted in these photos should be approximately my own age, only a couple of years older than myself) are the photos of a family Christmas party in which a little girl gets her presents and all the attention of the family:
Among the cat photos, of which there are many, arguably the most surreal material constitutes what I would like to call the ‘Pink Panther series’:
Moving away from the family home, a small number of photos show what would seem to be two couples on holiday at the aforementioned Abrahamhof near Passau in Germany, just across the German-Austrian border. One of the two gentlemen pictured here ought to be the photographer who took the majority of these photos, but there is no way of knowing which one, of course. (And I don’t believe that the bald gentleman with the glasses is identical with the hands-on chap depicted above.)
I love looking at old photos and photo albums, and here it would seem that a complaint about the quality of prints led to a forgotten, uncollected cache of photos. If someone is able to go full-on Sherlock Holmes on these pieces and find out who the individuals are, Koman or otherwise, and if perhaps the girl in the pictures is still alive, I’d gladly reunite them/her with their long-lost family possessions – a blast from the past, for a family that had created its own little photographic shrine at home:
To me, anyway, this was an absolutely fascinating discovery, showing an aspect of Vienna around the time of my own early childhood, in colour, that I had never seen. And for that alone I am very grateful, whatever the story behind the pictures.
An interesting end note, perhaps, on the films used: the photos were mostly taken on Kodachrome colour negative film, some also on an Afga roll. While the Agfa has remained faithful to the colours of the setting, almost all Kodachrome pieces show a distinctly chlorine greenish shade.
Postscriptum: Some Detective Work
Revisiting some of the pictures on a 110 roll, I finally managed – I think! – to read the names on a headstone:
I believe that this was the burial of Leonhard and Wilhelmine Rott, both buried on Vienna’s Meidling cemetery. According to Vienna’s very convenient burial search (here), Wilhelmine was buried in early January 1975, which checks out with the other dates available to me.
A subsequent burial listed for Leonhard and Wilhelmine Rott (see here), lists further persons buried in the same spot: Emil Koman, Peter R. Hofstätter, and Hertha Anna Theresia Hofstätter.
Koman was also the family name of the person who returned the photos for reprinting. And one Emil Imre Koman (b. 1920, d. 1983) apparently was an electrical engineer, running a company called EMKO, in Vienna in as early as the 1950s.
According to information available from Vienna’s city archives, this Emil Koman was born in Cluj, an area in which he stayed until 1940 (specifically, he lived in Câmpia Turzii). Aged 20, he left for Vienna in 1940, i. e. in the year in which Transylvania became part of Hungary again (whether these two events are related, is unknown to me). From 1946 onwards, Koman lived in Hietzing, Vienna’s 13th district, where he resided and operated his business in St.-Veit-Gasse. According to the registers available to me, at least until 1959 he lived together with a wife called Hertha (b. 1925) and two children (Georg, b. 1945, and Renate, b. 1947). Around that time, however, he would appear to have divorced.
Peter R. Hofstätter is the name of a Vienna-born social psychologist (read more here and here). A photo of him is available here. Might he be identical with the person on the third holiday photo, here? He was married, in a second marriage (of 1967, according to the International Who’s Who), to Hertha Hofstätter, née Rott (see their wedding announcement here), presumably a daughter of Leonhard and Wilhelmine Rott. (Note that this is not the same Hertha as Koman’s (ex-)wife, as Hertha Rott-Hofstätter was born in 1921, not 1925.) Her burial is also indicated for the same plot, though her name does not appear on the headstone (see here).
So was Emil Koman, by the time of his death, in a relationship with a second daughter of the Rott family, allowing him to preside, so to speak, over this burial plot?
Incidentally, Wilhelmine Rott died on December 19th, 1974. Many individuals in the Christmas photos wear black, and there is a candle lit next to the photo gallery. Are these observations related?
And why is Koman’s name written in golden letters, while all the others are not, even though Koman was not the last individual to be buried here? (Koman died in 1983, Peter Hofstätter in 1994, and Hofstätter’s second wife Hertha as late as 2006.)
So, still not a lot of progress with the actress and the remaining family, and still a lot of questions. But at least a first lead.