münchen

The building in the background today is the Palace of Justice, where the higher courts are housed.

Amazing.

Renaud Camus: Thank you for your comment, and close attention! You are right, considering that Princess Ileana was born in January 1909 and is clearly still quite young in this photo, so her mother was Crown Princess Marie at the time, not Queen. This photograph was likely acquired by the Bain News Service in October 1914 when she became Queen of Romania. It was not uncommon for Bain to use older portrait photographs in this way. In the interest of preserving the archival record, we try to leave Bain's given titles (in this case, Queen of Rumania), but we can add more information to the record to clarify that this photo dates from an earlier year.

see also

Photo by Atelier Elvira, Munich: "The Hofatelier Elvira (tr. Court atelier Elvira, also known as Atelier Elvira or Salon Elvira) was a photography studio in Munich founded by jurist and actress Anita Augspurg and friend photographer Sophia Goudstikker in 1887 and is notable as the first company founded by women in Germany. A branch also existed in Augsburg from 1891. They became especially famous for their work in the feminist movement." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofatelier_Elvira

Was the synagogue destroyed in 1938 but the photo taken at a later date? The Frauenkirche in the background appears also to be damaged.

The synagogue was destroyed in June 1938, but you are correct....I think the Frauenkirche looks damaged. I will look at the original picture and get back to you, I think maybe the catalogue record is incorrect, and the individual doing the cataloging put June 1938 assuming it was taken shortly after the synagogue was destroyed. Incidentally, the synagogue in Munich was destroyed in June 1938, many months before the Kristallnacht. It was the first synagogue to be destroyed in Germany in the Nazi period.

After doing some research, you are correct that this photograph was taken after the war. Leo Baerwald, whose image this was, fled the Nazis, immigrating to the United States in the early Nazi period. He had been an active member of this synagogue in Munich. After the war, he went back to Munich and took photographs of the devestated site, in the now-destroyed Munich. I am going to mention the mistake in the dating of these photographs to the administration here, and we will update these records in our catalog. Michael Simonson Leo Baeck Institute