The People of Old Germany 1860-1913 | RARE Photos Colourized and Brought to Life

Travel back to Germany between the 1860s and the eve of the First World War through a collection of rare archive photographs, carefully colourised and gently brought to life. From the back streets of Berlin to the islands of the North Sea, we meet the people who did the everyday work of old Germany: shoemakers and pedlars, Spreewald nannies and Sorbian villagers, silver miners and Ruhr colliers, Hamburg dock workers and coal heavers, shrimp fishers and island women, Baltic fishermen, Black Forest raftsmen and charcoal burners, Swabian brides, Bavarian farmers, and the emigrants who left for America. The photographs are the work of Heinrich Zille, Max Missmann, Johann Hamann, Wilhelm Dreesen, Paul Sinner, Hermann Krone, Ermenegildo Antonio Donadini, Denis Galloway, Artur Wehrli, Ludwig Schradler and Augustus F. Sherman, among others. Every photo is credited below. How these pictures were made: each one is a real archive photograph. We restored it, added colour, and used AI to give it gentle movement. The faces are kept as they were photographed: we do not re-draw, smooth or "beautify" them. PHOTO CREDITS AND LICENCES (number = order in the film) Heinrich Zille / Zeno.org (public domain): 01 Shoemakers outside their workshop; 02 Pedlar with a dog cart; 03 Gathering leaves and brushwood; 04 Heinrich Zille's parents outside their house Max Missmann (public domain): 05 Hot-sausage seller Edmund F. Arras / Columbus Metropolitan Library via DPLA (public domain): 06 Spreewald nannies in a park Denis Galloway / Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania (CC BY-SA 4.0): 07 Women back from market; 08 Fishing from a punt Sächsische Volkstrachten (1896) / SLUB Dresden (CC BY-SA 4.0): 09 Father and daughter in Sunday dress; 10 Sorbian village musicians; 11 Catholic Sorbian women in confession dress; 12 Spinning-room girls Ermenegildo Antonio Donadini / Deutsche Fotothek (CC0 1.0): 13 Market day; 14 Building workers at their meal Arno Heinicke (public domain): 15 Miners at the sorting bench Unknown photographer (public domain): 16 Workers of the König Ludwig colliery; 40 A Dachau farmer with his children Johann Hamann (public domain): 17 Dock workers with their foreman; 18 Coal heavers coming home from the harbour; 20 The Blauer Lappen courtyard; 42 Emigrants at their meal Franz Schmidt and Otto Kofahl (public domain): 19 Loading at the Johannisbollwerk #OldGermany #ColourisedHistory #GermanAncestry