January 12, 2018
Vintage Photobooth
30 Comments

New Year Party – Germany 1957

I’m telling a wee fib about these photos. They were taken in March 1957, but they have always looked New Yearsy to me. There is a lot of love and youthful joie de vivre in the photos, don’t you think? I am quite envious of the young lady’s jacket with the Astrakhan wool collar. I have always wanted an Astrakhan coat!

I wonder if there is any significance to the fez style hat, given the crescent moon and eight pointed star decoration? Given the Groucho Marx style glasses and follicular accoutrements that accompany the hat, I doubt it has any serious connotations. And does our young man have a pierced ear?

Thanks for all the lovely welcome back comments from you all. I’m not yet up to doing very much blog reading just yet, please forgive me. I hope your new year has started well and continues that way as time passes.

30 comments
  3. oglach said:

    Hello, stranger. 🙂 I don’t know how I missed your first post back, but I’m happy to see you back in action.
    Maybe it’s not New Year’s in this photo, but if these two partied like this in March, I bet they had happy lives.

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    • Do you? I might have bid against you for it! Nice that we have them in common. I have a photo of two strips to send you. Will do that later today.

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  5. Marianne Clancy said:

    some of the sweetest photo booth yet!

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    • Thanks so much Marianne! And did you see that American Photobooth author Nakki Goranin has one of the same couple in her collection? I’m hob-nobbing with a great! 😄

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  6. Val said:

    Groucho Marx eat yer heart out! 😉 What a fun photo (and yeah, it does look like an earring of some sort.)

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  7. Vinville said:

    Great to have you ‘back in the saddle’ Katherine – I look forward to your posts, they are smile makers! 🙂 This one is no exceptions, I wondered the same things you mentioned, especially about the Fez and the earring…. hmmm… and we wonder still….

    I wish you a Happy Healthy New Year – Vin (hugz)

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    • Ugh, and I just asked you if you were Vin and there it is in a comment! Brain fog! 🙄

      Thanks for the lovely welcome back.

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  8. I’ll go with ‘New Yearsy’. Love to see PBJ back in action and hope for more lots more to come, not so much so I can see photobooth pictures with astute and pithy comments, but because I know you are doing and feeling better. That’s a fun couple.

    Oh, Katherine, don’t expend your energies reading people’s blogs (except for mine, of course), do what you do so well and show us more of your collection.

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  9. happy new year to you, too, Katherine!
    great photos but i think even if they are appropriately ‘new yearsy’ they are more likely to be shot in ‘karneval’-season in germany. the 4th of march in 1957 was ‘rosenmontag’ and i bet they are showing off their karneval outfit that they wore on their office karneval party :-))

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  10. funny pix 😁👍🏼 If the pix were taken in March, it could be that the reason for the disguise is Carneval. We in Germany have the tradition to wear a funny disguise at the Carneval days, days before the time of lent starts

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    • Thanks Marcus. I’m sure that is it! I have some Fasching real photo postcards in my collection but I never found out when it is held. I’m assuming that Karneval and Fasching are the same thing?

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      • Yes, Karneval and Fasching are the same thing. The word Fasching is more used in the south of Germany and I guess the word Karneval got its roots in the italian (?) language… … ‘carne’ ‘vale’ –> ‘without meat’ …because in the time of lent , the 40 days before Easter, Christians should not eat meat. So it’s tradition to use that time before lent to eat, drink and dance as much as you can.
        What I love about your image is, that at that time the photo was captured , a proper disguise was a hat 🎩, a mustache and some funny glasses 👓 or a funny make up. That’s it. Nowadays all people use to wear a self- or ready-made costume to represent a character like Spider-Man or princesses. Guys with short penises use to go as Pilots. Don’t ask me why. 😊😉

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        • BRILLIANT information Marcus. The short penises bit is hysterical!

          It sounds like the Americans have infiltrated yet another traditional European festival. How sad. At least it is still thriving and giving people pleasure.

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          • 😀 😉

            I really do appreciate intercultural influences, because it’s good for the progress of a society… …but when it becomes just commercial.. …but at least it’s always a good reason for party! 🙂

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  11. It was quite common in the past to have fun hats at parties. Both to New Year and other parties. My mother made hats for all the children for our birthday party. It was common with descriptions in the weekly magazines. Others bought their paper hats in the nearest store.

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    • That is wonderful information, thanks Karin. I would love to see some of the old magazine designs. We have lost a lot of creativity through mass production items being so cheap and convenient, haven’t we?

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  12. elmediat said:

    So they stretched out the celebration by a few weeks, or they are starting early on the arrival of 1958. Either way, they are in good spirits. 🙂

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