Society changed quickly after World War I: customs, technology, manufacturing all rocketed into the 20th century. Fashion is shaped and influenced by the society and events which surround it.
1920s fashion was the perfect blend between style and function. Beautiful clothes that allowed women to move. “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.” – Coco Chanel
1920s fashion is still famous because it was a huge shift from the previous era. Even 90 years after The Roaring Twenties ended, almost everyone still recognizes the style: Cloche hats, flapper dresses, high heeled shoes, men’s fashion (suits and sportswear),…
Take a look at these photos of couples to see what the 1920s fashion styles looked like.
The Civil War is the central event in America’s historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world.
Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the cost of 625,000 lives–nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914.
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.
The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861. Claiming this United States fort as their own, the Confederate army on that day opened fire on the federal garrison and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender. Lincoln called out the militia to suppress this “insurrection.” Four more slave states seceded and joined the Confederacy. By the end of 1861 nearly a million armed men confronted each other along a line stretching 1200 miles from Virginia to Missouri. Several battles had already taken place–near Manassas Junction in Virginia, in the mountains of western Virginia where Union victories paved the way for creation of the new state of West Virginia, at Wilson’s Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina where the Union navy established a base for a blockade to shut off the Confederacy’s access to the outside world.
But the real fighting began in 1862. Huge battles like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines’ Mill, Second Manassas, and Fredericksburg in Virginia, and Antietam in Maryland foreshadowed even bigger campaigns and battles in subsequent years, from Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to Vicksburg on the Mississippi to Chickamauga and Atlanta in Georgia. By 1864 the original Northern goal of a limited war to restore the Union had given way to a new strategy of “total war” to destroy the Old South and its basic institution of slavery and to give the restored Union a “new birth of freedom,” as President Lincoln put it in his address at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle there.
For three long years, from 1862 to 1865, Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia staved off invasions and attacks by the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by a series of ineffective generals until Ulysses S. Grant came to Virginia from the Western theater to become general in chief of all Union armies in 1864. After bloody battles at places with names like The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, Grant finally brought Lee to bay at Appomattox in April 1865. In the meantime Union armies and river fleets in the theater of war comprising the slave states west of the Appalachian Mountain chain won a long series of victories over Confederate armies commanded by hapless or unlucky Confederate generals. In 1864-1865 General William Tecumseh Sherman led his army deep into the Confederate heartland of Georgia and South Carolina, destroying their economic infrastructure while General George Thomas virtually destroyed the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville.
By the spring of 1865 all the principal Confederate armies surrendered, and when Union cavalry captured the fleeing Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865, resistance collapsed and the war ended. The long, painful process of rebuilding a united nation free of slavery began. (battlefields.org)
General Aldred Torbert and his staff during the American Civil War on the vine-covered veranda of a Virginia mansion occupied as their headquarters.Surgeons of the 4th Division of the 9th Corps are pictured in Petersburg, Virginia in 1864.A group of officers relax away from the battlefront at the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, 1863.Major General George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) was a US Army officer and cavalry commander in the Civil War and the American-Indian Wars.Brig. Gen. Joseph R. Anderson, of the Confederates (1813–1892) was a civil engineer and industrialist.Lieutenant Colonel A.B. Elder of the 10th New York Infantry.This portrait shows a General posing sternly against a sombre grey backdrop.Major General George Edward Pickett of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War.An unidentified African American woman is pictured in 1861 in this stunning framed photograph.An unidentified soldier in first lieutenant’s uniform, red sash, leather gauntlets, and spurs with cavalry sword, 1861.A Confederate sergeant in uniform – sometime between 1861 and 1865.Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand; at the main eastern theater of the war, Battle of Antietam, Sept.-Oct. 1862Surgeons of the 3rd Division before hospital tent in Petersburg, Va., Aug. 1864.John L. Burns, the “old hero of Gettysburg,” with gun and crutches in Gettysburg, Penn., July, 1863.Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, his friend Brigadier General John Rawlins (left), and an unknown lieutenant colonel in 1865.Union Captain Cunningham poses next to the command tent in Bealeton, Va., 1863.Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, 1863Three Confederate prisoners at Gettysburg, Pa. in 1863.Union Colonel James H. Childs (middle, standing) and several other officers at Westover Landing, Va. in 1862.General James LongstreetConfederate Colonel John Shackleford ‘Shac’ Green of the 6th Virginia Volunteer CavalryWashington, District of Columbia. Tent life of the 31st Penn. Inf. (later, 82d Penn. Inf.) at Queen’s farm, vicinity of Fort Slocum, 1861Allan Pinkerton (“E. J. Allen”) of the Secret Service on horseback in Antietam, Md., Oct. 1862.Major General Ambrose Burnside, the commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. He is best known for leading the army to a crushing defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg and for his distinctive facial hair, which later became known as the sideburn.The staff of Brigadier General Andrew Porter in 1862. George Custer (of the Battle of Little Bighorn fame) is shown reclining next to a dog on the right.General William Tecumseh Sherman in civilian clothes.Confederate General Robert E. Lee at his home in Richmond, Va. less than a week after surrendering.Cock fighting at Gen. Orlando B. Willcox’s headquarters in Petersburg, Va., 1864.Portrait of Rear Adm. David D. Porter, officer of the Federal Navy, 1860Artillery Officers, Fair Oaks, VA, June 1862Union Officers, Westover Landing, August 1862General Robert E. LeeBrigadier General David McMurtrie Gregg sitting with his senior staff, taken in June 1862, possibly near Fredericksburg, VirginiaMajor General George E. Pickett, who led the ill-fated ‘Pickett’s Charge’ at the behest of Robert E. Lee, against whom he bore a grudge for the rest of his lifeMajor General George H. Thomas pulled an arrow out of his own chest during battle.Confederate Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley was dismissed from the army after several blunders indirectly related to his alcoholismPortrait of President Abraham Lincoln, 1863.Capt. Custer of the 5th Cavalry is seen with Lt. Washington, a prisoner and former classmateSoldier Next to Sling Cart, Drewry’s Bluff, VA, 1865Powder Monkey, Charleston, SC, 1865Dead Union Soldiers, Gettsyburg, July 1863General William T. Sherman, November 1864General Joseph Hooker, 1862Col. J.B. Duman, C.S.A.General Joseph R. Anderson, C.S.A.Edwin Francis Jemison (December 1, 1844 – July 1, 1862) was a Private in the Confederate States Army who was killed in action on July 1, 1862 at the Battle of Malvern Hill reportedly by a direct hit from a cannonball, which decapitated him.Union Engineering CompanyBealeton, Virginia. Officer’s mess, Company E, 93d New York Volunteers, Aug., 1863Private Francis Brownell, Recipient of the First Medal of Honor Awarded During the Civil War, 1865Union Buried, Confederate Unburied, Antietam, 1862Ulysses S. Grant and His War Council, May 21, 1864Union Soldiers, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1861-1865Union Generals, Sheridan’s Valley Campaign, 1864Confederate Colonel John Singleton Mosby aka ‘The Gray Ghost’ of the 43rd Virginia Volunteer Cavalry BattalionUnidentified African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters, 1863-1865Confederate soldier and family, 1861-1865
Amsterdam, beautiful city built on pilings. An inexhaustible source of subject matter for innumerable photographers. Not that it’s such a megalomaniac capital – it’s more of a village with urban traditions. But it’s that smallness which often provides photography with the impact and attention it deserves.
Kees Scherer (1920-1993) was born in the Amsterdam working-class district called ‘de Jordaan’. Shortly after WWII, he began working as a freelance photographer and reached the pinnacle of photojournalism with high-profile reports about the flood disaster in the province of Zeeland (1953) and the Hungarian uprising (1956).
Scherer initiated World Press Photo in 1955 with Bram Wisman. In addition to his extensive work in colour, Scherer’s early work in black and white has also been receiving increasing attention in recent years. He depicted his favourite cities in exhaustive detail, namely Paris, New York, and especially Amsterdam.
Here is a collection of impressive black and white photos that Scherer documented everyday life of Amsterdam in the 1950s.
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury DBE (born October 16, 1925) is an English-American-Irish actress who has appeared in theatre, television, and film. Her career has spanned seven decades, much of it in the United States, and her work has attracted international acclaim.
Lansbury was born to Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury, an upper-middle-class family in Regents Park, central London; her paternal grandfather was the British Labour Party leader George Lansbury. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States with her mother and two brothers, and studied acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award. She appeared in eleven further films for MGM, mostly in supporting roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finest performances. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her a range of awards.
Amid difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). Moving into television, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons from 1984 until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films such as Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991) and 20th Century Fox’s Anastasia. Since then, she has toured in a variety of international theatrical productions and continued to make occasional film appearances.
Lansbury has received an Honorary Oscar and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, and an Olivier Award. She has also been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions. In 2014, Lansbury was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. She has been the subject of three biographies.
Monroe Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, 1913.San Francisco, 1912Point Bridge, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 190012th St. Bascule Bridge, Chicago, Illinois, 1906Grand Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, 1905Club house, Kennebunkport, Maine, 1901Skyline, New York from New Jersey, New York, N.Y., 1910South on the Boardwalk, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1905Casino, Riverton Park, Portland, Maine, 1906Louisville & Nashville Railway station. Pensacola, Florida, 1906Post Office and Eagle Building. Brooklyn, N.Y 1906Oliver W., the famous trotting ostrich at Florida Ostrich Farm, Jacksonville, Florida, 1903Sunset across the Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1910Ships aground in Pensacola Harbor, after the hurricane of 1906 – Pensacola, FloridaGrand Central Station and Hotel Manhattan, New York, 1903Quincy Market, Boston, Mass., 1904The Sternwheeler “Falls City”, Vicksburg, Mississippi, 1900.Mules on the levee, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1903.The main street of Richmond, Virginia, 1905Treasury Building, Washington, D.C., 1913Dexter Avenue and the Capitol, Montgomery, Alabama, 1906Wabash Avenue, Chicago, 1907Fifth Avenue, New York, 1913Broad Street north of Spruce Street, Philadelphia, 1905Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, 1917A Santa Monica, California beach scene in the early 1900sFremont Street, Las Vegas, Newada, 1910The Great Flood of 1913 in Rushville, IndianaParade, Mason City, Iowa, 1910Main Street, Salt Lake City, 1904.Concert at Lincoln Park,Chicago, Illinois, 1910Children in Augusta, Georgia, 1911Recreation dock (amusement pier), New York. 1900Rainy Day on Main St. Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1910Battery Park Hotel, Asheville, North Carolina, 1902Broad St. looking west, Charleston, South Carolina, 1910Main Street, Richmond, Virginia, 1905A New Orleans milk cart. New Orleans, Louisiana, c. 1903Forsyth Street, Jacksonville, Florida, 1910Washington, 1913Whittier, California Fire Department in 1904US troops in Brownsville, Texas. 1916Workshop of Sanitary Ice Cream Cone Co.,Oklahoma City. 1917Delivery wagon on 12th Street (now Flagler St.) in Miami, 1908.Houston 1918Center Street, Rutland, Vermont. 1904Crawford Street Bridge, Providence, R.I., 1906Allyn House, Hartford, Conn., 1908Market Street. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1916.Labor Day parade, Main St., Buffalo, N.Y.West Market Street. Indianapolis, Indiana, 1907.The Cherry Street Bridge over the Maumee River. Toledo, Ohio, 1909Baltimore, Maryland, from Federal Hall, 1903
Belgian painter Alfonse Van Besten (1865-1926) embraced technology, utilizing innovative color processes to transfer black and white photographs into vivid, at times lurid Autochromes. The tableaux of his Autochromes (a technology patented by the Lumière brothers in 1903 and the first color photographic process developed on an industrial scale) are often bucolic and romantic.
Here is a dreamy Autochrome photo collection that he shot from 1910 to 1915.
Farmers on cart, ca. 1912Ancient times, ca. 1912Children at play, ca. 1912Civic and military garb, ca. 1911Dahlias, ca. 1913Garden view, ca. 1914Grecian times, 1912Groupe antique composition, ca. 1912Innocence, ca. 1912Mime in love, ca.1912Mime in love, ca.1912Modesty, 1912Musing (Mrs. A. Van Besten), ca. 1910Nero playing the harp, 1912Pink and green wigs, ca. 1912Shepherd’s boy, ca.1913Still life with brown fruit, ca.1913Symphony in white, 1912Two girls picking cornflowers, ca. 1912Van Besten painting in his gardenWashing and bleachingWindmill at twilight, ca.1913Winter at Brugge unloading barge, ca. 1912Winter scene in park, ca. 1912Young girl amidst marguerites, ca. 1912
A beautiful photo collection that show albino girls named Nellie Walker, Millie Lammar in the 1870s, albino performer and Circassian beauty Aggie Zolidra, Aggie Zolutia in the 1880s, and some other beautiful girls.
ABBA are a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The group’s name is an acronym of the first letters of their first names. Widely considered one of the greatest musical groups of all time, they became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1974 to 1983. They have achieved 44 hit singles.
In 1974, ABBA were Sweden’s first winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Waterloo”, which in 2005 was chosen as the best song in the competition’s history as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the contest. During the band’s main active years, it consisted of two married couples: Fältskog and Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad and Andersson. With the increase of their popularity, their personal lives suffered, which eventually resulted in the collapse of both marriages. The relationship changes were reflected in the group’s music, with latter compositions featuring darker and more introspective lyrics. After ABBA disbanded, Andersson and Ulvaeus continued their success writing music for the stage, while Fältskog and Lyngstad and pursued solo careers.
Ten years after the group disbanded, a compilation, ABBA Gold, was released, becoming a worldwide best-seller. In 1999, ABBA’s music was adapted into Mamma Mia!, a successful musical that toured worldwide. A film of the same name, released in 2008, became the highest-grossing film in the United Kingdom that year. A sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, was released in 2018. That same year it was also announced that the band had reunited and recorded two new songs after 35 inactive years, which were released in September 2021 as the lead singles from Voyage, their first studio album in 40 years, to be released in November 2021. A concert residency featuring ABBA as virtual avatars – dubbed ‘ABBAtars’ to support the album will take place from May to September 2022.
They are one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales estimated at 150 million records worldwide. In 2012, ABBA was ranked eighth-best-selling singles artists in the United Kingdom, with 11.2 million singles sold. ABBA were the first group from a non-English-speaking country to achieve consistent success in the charts of English-speaking countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines and South Africa. They are the best-selling Swedish band of all time and one of the best-selling bands originating in continental Europe. ABBA had eight consecutive number-one albums in the UK. The group also enjoyed significant success in Latin America, and recorded a collection of their hit songs in Spanish. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2015, their song “Dancing Queen” was inducted into the Recording Academy’s Grammy Hall of Fame.
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When we think of the Nazis’ crimes against humanity, the most obvious example is the horrific, systematic murder of about 6 million Jews across Europe. However, the Holocaust does not represent the full extent of Nazi genocide.
In total, aside from enemies killed in battle, the Nazis murdered approximately 11 million people. One of the groups most devastated was non-Jewish Polish civilians. The Nazis killed at least 1.8 million ethnic Poles, with some estimates ranging as high as 3 million.
They carried out these killings in Nazi-occupied Poland in service of their principle of Lebensraum, a colonialist concept that called for Germany to expand its borders to the east and take others’ territory — often by killing them — so that ethnic Germans might settle it. Ultimately, the Nazis put this principle into action in the form of Generalplan Ost.
This initiative detailed the planned extermination of the Slavic peoples who lived east of Germany and the resettlement of their land with ethnic German peoples. At best, the plan showed an utter disregard for Polish civilian lives. At worst, it called for their systematic extermination.
The Nazis hoped that their invasion of Poland in 1939 would ultimately allow them to remove or exterminate tens of millions of Poles and other Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe in order to make way for the planned resettlement of the area with “racially pure” Germans.
Hitler’s speech to his generals in August 1939 upon the invasion of Poland (and the beginning of World War II) explicitly and chillingly stated exactly how his soldiers were to treat Polish civilians who fell under their control: “Kill without pity or mercy all men, women or children of Polish descent or language.”
Likewise, SS leader Heinrich Himmler said, “All Polish specialists will be exploited in our military-industrial complex. Later, all Poles will disappear from this world. It is imperative that the great German nation considers the elimination of all Polish people as its chief task.”
Indeed, the Nazis hoped to execute 85 percent of all Poles and keep the remaining 15 percent as slaves.
Nazi preparation for this destruction of Polish society had begun well before it came to fruition. Throughout the late 1930s, the Nazis had been drawing up a list of some 61,000 prominent Polish civilians (scholars, politicians, priests, Catholics, and others) to be killed. In 1939, Nazi leaders then distributed this list to SS death squads who followed the advancing German military forces into Poland in order to execute the civilians on the list as well as anyone else perceived to be a threat.
Indeed, the Nazis proceeded to execute the Poles on the list as well as about 60,000 others in 1939 and 1940 across Nazi-occupied Poland in what was called Operation Tannenberg. But this was just the initial phase of the Nazis’ planned destruction of the Polish people.
In addition to the systematic execution of specific individuals, the Nazis killed an indiscriminate murder of civilians once the German Air Force started bombing cities, even those that had no military or strategic value whatsoever.
It is estimated that more than 200,000 Polish civilians died due to aerial bombing in Nazi-occupied Poland in the months following September 1939 as the Nazi war machine rolled into their country and, in conjunction with the Soviet invasion from the east, quickly destroyed Polish resistance. For example, the town of Frampol was completely destroyed and 50 percent of its inhabitants were killed by German bombing for the sole purpose of practicing their aim for future bombing raids.
On the ground, German soldiers murdered Polish civilians at an equally horrifying rate. “Polish civilians and soldiers are dragged out everywhere,” one soldier said. “When we finish our operation, the entire village is on fire. Nobody is left alive, also all the dogs were shot.”
As the war progressed and Germany took full control of Poland, the Nazis put procedures of systematic genocide into place. The Nazis forced about 1.5 million Polish civilians from their homes, replacing them with Germans, and forcing the displaced into slave labor camps and some of the same death camps where Jews were slaughtered. About 150,000 non-Jewish Poles were sent to Auschwitz alone, with another 65,000 dying in the Stutthof concentration camp set up specifically for Poles.
Poles who did resist such mass deportations and killings, like those in the resistance who led the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, were arrested and killed en masse with the Nazis showing no mercy.
At the same time, the Nazis kidnapped thousands of local women during army raids of Polish cities. These women were sent to serve as sex slaves in German brothels with girls as young as 15 sometimes taken from their homes for this specific purpose.
Meanwhile, young Polish children with certain desired physical features (such as blue eyes) were also subject to kidnapping by German authorities. These children were forced into a series of tests to determine their capacity for Germanization. The children who passed these tests were resettled into “pure” German families while those who failed were executed or sent to death camps.
This fate befell about 50,000-200,000 children, with 10,000 of them killed in the process, and most of them never able to reunite with their families after the war.
These numbers, appalling though they are, scarcely do justice to what must have been the true horror for those who suffered in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Six Polish civilians stand before a Nazi firing squad. 1939.A Nazi prepares to shoot a man during the Piasnica massacres of 1939-1940, in which 12,000-14,000 Poles (intelligentsia, psychiatric patients, and others) were killed.Kazimiera Mika, a 12-year-old Polish girl, mourns the death of her older sister, Andzia, who was killed in Warsaw during a German air raid in 1939.Nazi officials mock Catholicism (one of their targets for eradication) inside a Polish church. Circa 1942.A victim’s hand sits perched on the edge of a crematorium furnace at the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp built to house and slaughter Poles. May 8, 1945.Czeslawa Kwoka, a 14-year-old Polish Catholic girl who was sent to Auschwitz. This photo was taken once she arrived at the camp and after an official there had beat her about the face with a stick. She died in the camp in 1943.Nazis execute some of the 56 Poles who were killed in Bochnia on Dec. 18, 1939 as a reprisal for a recent attack on a German police officer by a Polish underground organization.Ethnic Germans arrive for resettlement in Nazi-occupied Poland. Circa 1942.Nazis prepare to shoot Poles as part of a mass execution in Piasnica in 1939. This photo was stolen from the SS member who took it by Polish workers and later made public.Nazi soldiers dress up in robes in order to mock Catholic ceremonies at an unspecified town in Poland. Circa 1945.Men dispose of one of the 1,200 Poles summarily executed by the Nazis in the streets of Warsaw during an uprising there in late 1943 and early 1944.Polish children line up inside a Nazi labor camp in Dzierzazna. Circa 1942-1943.Nazi soldiers lead a group of Polish women into a forested area to be shot. Location and date unspecified.Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish monk who was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for providing shelter to Jews. While at Auschwitz, Kolbe switched places with a condemned man because the latter had a family and he didn’t.Three Polish men killed as part of a public execution for trading in sugar and flour in Kutno on June 9, 1941.A Nazi official conducts roll call at the Kinder KZ concentration camp for Polish children in Lodz. Date unspecified.Two Polish victims of summary execution by occupying Nazi forces hang from a lamppost. 1941.Nazis murder Polish civilians in Leszno by lining them up against a wall and shooting them. 1939.Polish civilians surrender after being arrested as part of a “lapanka” (mass round-up for purposes of immediate deportation) on Parkowa Street in Warsaw. 1939.Public execution of 54 Poles in Rozki village near Radom in 1942.Polish men watch as a Nazi firing squad picks their fellow prisoners off methodically. The Polish men in this photo were shot in retaliation for the death of one German soldier.Polish inmates of Pawiak prison, hanged by Nazis in Warsaw on Feb. 11, 1944.A Polish prisoner of war is interrogated by German officers after the failed uprising of Poles against the Nazis in Warsaw in 1944.Polish civilian arrested during a “lapanka” round-up and guarded by German soldiers in Warsaw. 1939.Polish hostages (including Roman Catholic priests) stand with their hands raised in Bydgoszcz in September 1939.
Ottoman clothing is the style and design of clothing worn by the Ottoman Turks.
While the Palace and its court dressed lavishly, the common people were only concerned with covering themselves. Starting in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, administrators enacted sumptuary laws upon clothing. The clothing of Muslims, Christians, Jewish communities, clergy, tradesmen, and state and military officials were particularly strictly regulated during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent.
In this period men wore outer items such as ‘mintan’ (a vest or short jacket), ‘zibin’, ‘salvar’ (trousers), ‘kusak’ (a sash), ‘potur’, ‘entari’ (a long robe), ‘kalpak’, ‘sarik’ on the head; ‘çarik’, ‘çizme’, ‘çedik’, ‘Yemeni’ on the feet. The administrators and the wealthy wore caftans with fur lining and embroidery, whereas the middle class wore ‘cübbe’ (a mid-length robe) and ‘hirka’ (a short robe or tunic), and the poor wore collarless ‘cepken’ or ‘yelek’ (vest).
Women’s everyday wear was salvar (trousers), a gömlek (chemise) that came down to the mid-calf or ankle, a short, fitted jacket called a hirka, and a sash or belt tied at or just below the waist. For formal occasions, such as visiting friends, the woman added an entari, a long robe that was cut like the hirka apart from the length. Both hirka and entari were buttoned to the waist, leaving the skirts open in front. Both garments also had buttons all the way to the throat, but were often buttoned only to the underside of the bust, leaving the garments to gape open over the bust. All of these clothes could be brightly colored and patterned. However, when a woman left the house, she covered her clothes with a ferace, a dark, modestly cut robe that buttoned all the way to the throat. She also covered her face with a variety of veils or wraps.
Bashlyks, or hats, were the most prominent accessories of social status. While the people wore “külah’s” covered with ‘abani’ or ‘Yemeni’, the cream of the society wore bashlyks such as ‘yusufi, örfi, katibi, kavaze’, etc. During the rule of Süleyman a bashlyk called ‘perisani’ was popular as the palace people valued bashlyks adorned with precious stones.
During the ‘Tanzimat’ and ‘Mesrutiyet’ period in the 19th century, the common people still keeping to their traditional clothing styles presented a great contrast with the administrators and the wealthy wearing ‘redingot’, jacket, waistcoat, boyunbagi (tie), ‘mintan’, sharp-pointed and high-heeled shoes. Women’s clothes of the Ottoman period were observed in the ‘mansions’ and Palace courts. ‘Entari’, ‘kusak’, ‘salvar’, ‘basörtü’, ‘ferace’ of the 19th century continued their existence without much change.
Women’s wear becoming more showy and extravagant brought about adorned hair buns and tailoring. Tailoring in its real sense began in this period. The sense of women’s wear primarily began in large residential centers such as Istanbul and Izmir in the 19th century and as women gradually began to participate in the social life, along with the westernization movement.
