Letters from the Eastern Front (German)

marcsignal

I was very lucky to get these 2 letters from a good source here in Germany. They are letters from a soldier serving somewhere on the Eastern Front, written in Pencil, and remarkably escaped the censors blue pen, so it's a good indication they contain just personal information. They both begin 'Liebe Mamma' (Dear Mam), and are both dated 1943.

I have had some of them roughly translated, and one of the soldiers asks his mother 'to send him a warm coat, like Papa's'.
Sad in their own way, and gives some indication of the hell those lads had to go through.

The pics are pretty clear, so maybe someone with better German than me can read the old script and translate them accurately ??

Lockstep

Thanks for that.

trout

I have reasonable German, and my sister teaches German for a living ... will have a bash at this later this evening.
The script is a little hard to read though.

axer

Good luck trying to translate that if you are not a native german. My german girlfriend is here beside me (we live in germany) trying to read it and says firstly the hand writing is old school which makes it hard to even read it. Also many of the words are old words which wouldnt be used nowadays. Ill print it out see if her mother can read it.

trout

Yeah ... finding the script hard to decipher; I've handed this over to my sister ... let's see if she can do better

axer

trout wrote: »

Yeah ... finding the script hard to decipher; I've handed this over to my sister ... let's see if she can do better

If your sister has problems I will get my girlfriend's mother to look over it at the weekend and will hopefully get time to transcribe it.

The girlfriend's grandfather also served on the eastern front. Returned home in '45 with a missing leg and a bad back (bullet hit the spine or something). Was then picked up by the russians and shipped to some russian camp somewhere for 3 years before being sent off to Buchenwald for 2 more. Returned home in 1950 and died 3 years later of brain hemorrhage.

axer

I got my girlfriends mother to read over them. They were hard to make out as the pictures of the letters are slightly blurred. I'm not sure if the OP has the letters or just has the photos of them but if you can scan them (or at least retake the photos again as clear as possible) then it would make the translation alot easier to do.

trout

My sister is cursing me ... she says the script is such that she cannot make out some of the letters, never mind the words. She spent an hour or so trying to decipher the text.

I think we need some native German speakers, in their 70's or 80's, to have any chance.

Is there a boards.de ?

*goes off looking for language forums*

peasant

This might help:




http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Lese/Sutterlin0.htm

or not ..can't really make sense of it either

marcsignal

axer wrote: »

I got my girlfriends mother to read over them. They were hard to make out as the pictures of the letters are slightly blurred. I'm not sure if the OP has the letters or just has the photos of them but if you can scan them (or at least retake the photos again as clear as possible) then it would make the translation alot easier to do.

Thanks lads, yeah I have the original letters, I'll tryn get them scanned this weekend

Dave!

Any joy?

Morlar

Yep I think it'd be very interesting to read these translated contents too.

marcsignal

hi all, sorry for delay, i've since been back in dublin, a former girlfriend of mine passed away with cancer, but i will be posting scans as soon as i can.

Dr Strange

marcsignal wrote: »

hi all, sorry for delay, i've since been back in dublin, a former girlfriend of mine passed away with cancer, but i will be posting scans as soon as i can.

Sorry to hear that, marcsignal.

marcsignal

here they are guys, just got them both scanned

marcsignal

Actually, looking at those scans, they're nearly as bad as the photos

I'll tryn get em done again tmrw

Dr Strange

They are a bit better and I can make out most sentences but it's still difficult. I don't think it's Suetterlin though unless I have learned more than I thought by going through old German documents.