pickelhaube

"Alfred Kühlewindt, who took this photograph, was allowed to enter the battlefield as a war photographer in the fall of 1914. Many photographs of the German front line were staged. The new manner of waging war with long-range artillery, not to mention the no-man’s-land between opposing trench lines, made photographing battle scenes very difficult. As a result, photographs of still scenes (where exposure times were not an issue) circulated in far higher numbers than shots of active combat. " germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2125

artolog: Thanks for providing us with more information about the photographer. We'll include a bit of it next time we update.

I found this postcard with a color version of the same scene, (I suppose handcolored afterwards) but the cutting out is not the same. The postcard is bigger, on all sides but especially on the left side. Does this mean that your glass negative is not the original? Can you explain this.

The Bain negative is from a copy of a postcard version of the photo, which is cropped differently than the postcard you found.

LOC, you have spelled Kühlewindt's name wrong in the descriptive notes.

This photo was published in 'Der Krieg 1914/15 in Wort und Bild', Heft 23, p. 179 digi.landesbibliothek.at/viewer/image/AC09345259_23191415... The 'Winterschlacht in Masuren' (Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes or the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes) took place in February 1915, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_the_Masurian_Lakes

Thanks B-59 for finding the published photograph and for the information about the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes. We will add more details when we update the image description.

Caption B-59's first link is "Field Bakery on the March in East Prussia." This is a photo by Alfred Kühlewindt (1870-1945), who took a number of photos of the fighting on the Eastern Front. www.fotografenwiki.org/index.php/Alfred_K%C3%BChlewindt "Alfred Kühlewindt, who took this photograph, was allowed to enter the battlefield as a war photographer in the fall of 1914. Many photographs of the German front line were staged. The new manner of waging war with long-range artillery, not to mention the no-man’s-land between opposing trench lines, made photographing battle scenes very difficult. As a result, photographs of still scenes (where exposure times were not an issue) circulated in far higher numbers than shots of active combat." germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=2125

The guy at the top has a binocular trench periscope. See, for example, bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/threads/36601-binocular-periscope

swanq: Thank you for identifying the binocular trench periscope in this image. It is always great to have more information on the objects in the Bain photos.