M5-9_walter_frankenstein

Walter explains: "My older brother Manfred was a keen photographer. He started taking photos at the end of the 1920s. I became interested in what he was up to and got to take part and learn to use the camera and develop photos in the darkroom. We used our bathroom since there weren’t any windows. At that time we used a little frame with a pane of glass. You placed it underneath and then put another pane of glass on top. Then you took it out of the darkroom, held it up to the sun and counted one, two, three, four, five… Then we went back into the darkroom and fixed, or developed, the image. My first camera consisted of a small box with a lens at the front. There were a handle and a shutter button. I took many pictures both before and during the war. When Leonie and I decided to go underground, I gathered up all the photos, put them in a metal tin and buried it in Grunewald. I packed the photos in a watertight metal tin and buried them at a location where three trees stood forming a triangle next to a lake. Three months after the liberation I dug up the tin. The originals are now at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, but I have copies of them in my private album. My childhood and a large part of Leonie’s and my time in Berlin are on those photos. I am glad that I managed to keep them. They are all that I have left from that time."