Lost and Found - Part 1

Here I am! I’m back! Did you miss me? I missed all of you – I didn’t even have a chance to keep up with everyone’s blogs.

After the craft room upheaval last month, I thought I would put things away and get back to sewing. Ha! I got completely distracted by all the wonderful treasures I discovered. Some of them I had completely forgotten about, while I’d been looking for others for years and had just about given up on them.

I have just about finished scanning and photographing all these goodies and I want to share them with you.

The first treasure is something I found in a giant stack of random papers in a local antique shop. I think it’s pretty cool because of its age, and because the German is printed almost entirely in the old script.

[click to see larger images]

The Housewife
Bulletin of the Women's World in America
1904        January           1925
Happy New Year!

 

My grandmother came to the U.S. from Germany in the 1920s as a young woman, all by herself. She probably had culture shock and bouts of homesickness. I imagine she learned to speak English very quickly, but it would have been a great comfort to read a magazine like this.

There are photos of winter fun in Switzerland.

  

Short stories, serialized novels and poems (along with gorgeous nouveau style art).

 

Because no German lady would waste a moment in idleness, a page of “Modern Handicrafts for Spare Time” – subtitle “to pass the time on long winter evenings”.

Under “Everything for Home and Hearth”, ladies asked for their favorite books and records in German, shared recipes and stories, and one asked if other readers could send letters or cards with stamps for her son (who probably now has a priceless stamp collection!).

Here is my best effort at a translation of the almond cake recipe. It’s interesting to see how different it is from the detailed directions we are given in modern recipes.

Almond Cake

A half pound of chopped, raw (unabgezogene?) almonds are added to a mixture of 6 eggs, ½ pound of sugar, and the grated peel of a lemon, that has been beaten until foamy. Next add 2 ounces of flour, as well as the "snow" (I assume this means beaten whites) of 6 egg whites. Line a cake pan with butter, then spread finely crushed zwiebacks or toasted breadcrumbs, fill the pan with the cake batter, and bake at moderate heat for about ¾ hour.               From Mrs. Laura M., Iowa

 

The advertisements are mostly straightforward and understated, which surprised me. There are none of the cure-all claims one usually sees in publications even today. There is a full page dedicated to a hemorrhoid pill, but other than that, they are mostly one-column ads like the ones above.

Of course no women’s magazine would be complete without fashion, and here we have the pattern section. 

The reader could order these patterns from the magazine itself. (I wonder if anyone still has these mail order patterns stashed away somewhere.)

And that’s Die Hausfrau – January 1925!

Katrina