For Posterity

On Monday afternoon, I had a special appointment: an interview with a curator of the photographic collection of the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art. The occasion was my donation of an album of (second world) war-time photos my paternal grandfather had taken and painstakingly pasted into an album, with remarks on the reverse side, written in Kurrent handwriting aka "German cursive", therefore difficult to decipher for people nowadays. I had always known that my grandfather had a camera with him when he was a soldier and for decades his old camera was prominently displayed in our living room shelf (my memory actually played tricks on me and I had plans to donate it together with the album,until I remembered that my father had given it to a family friend who collects cameras a while back). I had never seen that album, obviously army-issued with the front page saying "meine Dienstzeit" (my time of service) until my mother showed it to me when she was organising the things (mostly his vast stamp collection) my father had inherited from his father. My grandfather died when I was only fourteen years old and I only knew him as an introverted, rather grumpy, but always friendly to me, old man. I only found out much later that he was a prisoner of war and only returned home years after the war, scarred physically and psychologically. For as long as I can remember I have been  interested in photography and developing black and white photos with my dad is a core childhood memory. I like to think that my grandfather (and possibly someone in the family line before him) laid the foundation for this passion and felt the need to conserve his album for posterity. I have no idea whether any of his photos will ever end up in an actual exhibition at the museum or whether they will just stay in an archive, but it makes me happy to know that I contributed to his legacy not being forgotten.