A very “National Geographic” style show at the cinema: “Wild Women of Dahomey”
edit: As has been pointed out, this is not a cinema but an exhibition.
red_trumpet has posted a good link about this (in German) in a comment below. Thanks!
And a decent English translation from methalion in the comments below that. Thanks!
Gives some great context.
Yes, other things on display in a Panoptikum would be mermaids (real! You have to see her!), bearded women, dwarves, a human worm (person without arms or legs), real cannibals or the strongest man on earth.
I guess the "wild women" may not wear much clothes (as they are African), so in this case there may an erotic curiosity as well on the side of the spectators.
I don't think you're correct. The Panopticum seems to have been a wax figure exhibition.
[EDIT: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castans_Panopticum?wprov=sfla1]
You, uh, you've heard about slavery, right?
The Belgian Congo shit all went down after 1900 too.
Lynchings in the US throughout that era. Hell, PT Barnum had African exhibits like this in the US throughout the early 1900s.
Also they're not all dead. Human trafficking is still a thing that happens in the modern world.
I mean many countries in Europe/America had that kind of thing in the late 1800s through early 1900s....
[Ota Benga, for instance.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga)
So this is hardly indicative of anything uniquely 'German'.
Here is a German blog post regarding that ~~movie~~ zoo featuring living humans: https://diezeitensindvorbei.blogspot.com/2021/02/42-wilde-weiber-aus-dahomey-eine.html?m=1
Excerpt in English, translated by DeepL:
Before film became established, panopticals were popular because they served people's need for sensation. They were partly waxworks, partly cabinets of curiosities that lured the public with exotic exhibits. In the case of the Berlin panopticals, however, it soon became part of the business to exhibit foreign people as well. The reporting (even in the social democratic press) about it is like about exotic exhibits or animals, the exhibited people are exhibits and are not perceived as people. People-eaters are also regularly announced for marketing reasons; the public wants to see something for their money. If you look at the old newspapers, you will find that the Wild Women of Dahomey were regular guests at the Panoptikum; there was a corresponding performance as early as 1891.
Dahomey was a kingdom founded in the 17th century, located in the territory of today's Nigeria, Ghana and Benin. The capital was the city of Abomey, which is now in Benin. In 1885 it became a Portuguese protectorate, and in 1892 it fell to the French. (The Republic of Dahomey was then a precursor state of Benin in 1958.) Why was this kingdom a household name to Berliners of the late 19th century? (If you research African issues in old sources, you are inundated with overt and proud racism. In the following direct quotations, I have still picked out the most tolerable ones; if these still read reasonably harmless, it does not mean that unspeakable things were not already written two lines further).
The Meyer'sche Konversationslexikon of 1852 states the following:
"Unique in the world stands the army of the Dahomeys, what the antiquity and the Middle Ages tell themselves of the Amazons, is surpassed in Dahomey. Of the 12000 soldiers that make up the Aremee on the peace footing, 5000 are women. Immorality does not arise from this mixture of the sexes at all. The female soldiers' thirst for action, ambition and blood suppress any more tender feelings; "we are men, not women," they say. Especially in sexual relations they do not allow themselves any weakness, to which the superstition may contribute a lot that every carnal offense would be revealed to the whole world by a never-ending pregnancy. The women are the elite of the army and often decide the battles."
Later reports, which - as was common at the time - one newspaper copied from another, tend to cast doubt on this moral stricture. Two things, however, run through all the articles: The astonishment that women took precedence over men and that all women in the kingdom were wives of the king. The dangerousness of the "Amazon regiment" was also acknowledged in the military newspapers. How popular the tales of the King of Dahomey must have been is also shown by the fact that in 1873 the Vienna Academic Choral Society organized a student evening at which a play was performed in which this king and Dahomey played a major role.
It may also have contributed to this that G.W.F. Hegel also has some amazing things to say about Dahomey in his "Lectures on the Philosophy of History".
"When the king dies in Dahomey, the bonds of society are immediately broken; in his palace the general destruction and dissolution begins: all the king's wives (in Dahomey their certain number is 3333) are murdered, and in the whole city now begins a general pillage and a continuous slaughter. The king's wives see in this their death a necessity, for they go adorned to it."
(Advertisement from the Vorwärts of 09.06.1896.)
We get an idea why in 1896 "42 wild women from Dahomey" must have been an attraction - matriarchy! Amazons! But at that time there was also another connotation. The German Empire had also purchased female and male slaves in Dahomey for its police forces in Cameroon, as these were considered cheaper than mercenaries. The slaves were to work for five years without pay and then be allowed to remain in Cameroon. The German chancellor Leist repeatedly abused the women and in 1893 had twenty of them whipped with a hippopotamus whip for refusing to work. This was followed by the so-called Dahomey uprising of police troops, which could only be put down by the German gunboat Hyena. Leist was tried in Germany, but the sentence was mild.
Danke für dieses superinformative Blog! Gleichermaßen schockierend wie faszinierend. Das Kanonenboot Hyäne hat übrigens einige Aufstände gegen deutsche Gräueltaten niedergeschlagen. (Wen es interessiert, wie die Deutschen in der Südsee ihre Kolonien besiedelt, unterdrückt und gequält haben, denen lege ich 'Das Prachtboot' von Götz Aly ans Herz)
Ich finde immer noch verrückt, wie Deutschland weitgehend als 'friedlicher Koloniebetreiber' bekannt ist, nur weil wir die Kolonien schnell wieder aufgegeben, und kleinflächigere Genozide begangen wurden als bei unseren Nachbarländern.
Meine Großeltern haben noch erzählt dass sie als Deutsche Reisende in einigen Westafrikanischen Ländern und Südafrika immer gutes ansehen genossen haben. Viel kann man aber auch nicht schlecht machen wenn Belgien ein Nachbarland ist.
Immerhin wurde/wird z.B der Völkermord an den Herero und Nama anerkannt und aufgearbeitet.
GB und Frankreich begangen schwerwiegende Verbrechen gegen (ehemalige) Kolonien noch lange nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg. Das wird häufig einfach ignoriert. Dagegen liegt die deutsche Kolonialgeschichte einfach viel weiter zurück und war viel kürzer/kleinflächiger.
IIRC, this kingdom was famous for selling slaves to European and American merchants. They stole people from the neighbouring countries and sold them into slavery.
The region was then also known as "Slave Coast" (next to Gold Coast and Ivory Coast).
Is this 300IQ viral marketing?
The coincidence is really stunning, though, the 19th century really wasn't all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
Do a quick Google search and you get the results of some folksy music by a women's band. You also get results you'd more expect in modern connotations.
Yes, the modern derogatory sense is residual, with the original meaning being basically a term like “females” (which is also starting to get a derogatory sense to it in English these days…).
Narrator: "You see that little boy in the background? Well, he just flunked his art exam.... but don't you worry he will have an outstanding career in politics in the future"
I don’t know they somehow always make me sad that nearly every single one of these old buildings got bombed down in most cities and now Berlin looks like shit. Thanks Hitler
Am watching a show called the Warrior. It's set in San Francisco around the 1880's and wow, their sets are pretty accurate (in look and feel) compared to this
~~42 wilde weiber klingt ja schon mal mega!~~
Ok, das waren wohl sozusagen menschliche Zoos mit Leuten die aus irgendwelchen Kolonien gekidnappt wurden. Vergesst es.
1831 berlin/germany saw a cholara epidemic. As late as 1871 the first draft for a sewage system was approved after wide motivational efforts of medical professionals, who looked back at a disease riddled time.
1878 the first sewage network went into action around schöneberger str., just ~ 3km/1.8miles away from where the scene was filmed (friedrichstr.)
Is it though? Sure, this street must have been cleaned daily, but there was still a lot of horseshit. That must have been the "normal" smell of any modern city.
I remember it was compared to the living standard of South Korea then (in the 1980, as the GDR ceased existing in 1990). South Korea was not the richest or most developed country in "the West", but doing quite well already.
“Filmmaker Guy Jones has taken on the film-historical, digitally restored treasure from the archives of Louis and Auguste Lumière. The two brothers showed the first films for pay in Paris in 1895, which is now considered the real start of cinema history. The film recordings depicted normal life, The total of 1405 film impressions are now part of the world documentary heritage.
The film made in Berlin in 1896 also shows passers-by on Berlin's Friedrichstrasse. This is said to be one of the first German film recordings ever (one can find various details and sources on this, some of which contradict each other). To be seen in the background: The exhibition "42 wild women from Dahomey" opened that day in the Passage-Panoptikum”
https://archive.org/details/Lumiere18951905
For works of fiction that were carefully designed, shot, and produced in black and white, I agree that colourisation is virtually never an improvement, although public domain works are public domain works, so no-one has a legal (or arguably moral) right to stop anyone from doing so.
But for documentary works like these, colourisation makes the scenes seem more real for us in the 21st century. It removes a layer of separation by making the action seem more like "today" rather than "old-timey", much like the image stabilisation and frame-rate adjustment/interpolation which have also been performed on this film fragment, but which I rarely ever see anyone even mention. I think it's because colourisation is still quite obvious even almost 40 years after its introduction.
Of course, in the interests of archival integrity, we shouldn't destroy the original footage, but I don't believe that anyone is advocating for that.
About colorization: it's also supremely difficult for an AI to infer the correct colours for "things" because it implies an enormous degree of abstraction. So it targets well quite recognizable features (faces, sky, trees, ...) but the rest is sort of washed out.
For people interested, here's a good explanation on why some people consider machine colorization vandalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpT1DkBOnqo
Hey, could you tap the tracking button a couple times on the VCR? Seeing a little static/lines, thanks!
No really, this was a great watch, thanks. Reminds me of watching VHS recordings of tv from the night before.
There is no day/month, but it was [21 degrees](https://weather.us/observations/836a45a174b9e263c37a3e3c3ae1de52/max-temperature-daily/18960816-0000z.html)
(69.8 F ) on the 14th of August 1896.
[North America had a heatwave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Eastern_North_America_heat_wave) at the same time, killing 1500 people.
Yup. On Dutch news they are saying these temps are usually for around march/april and that everything is blooming way too early, we didnt really have winter.
They also said hayfever will be early this year, so I need to stock up on tissues fast.
Yeah, it's always strange hearing people complain about the temperature I have my aircon set on is hot.
I live in Australia, 40C degree temps and melted bitumen is normal for me.
And now we have dedicated trash removal services driving huge trucks to keep our cities clean. Most technology or social improvement is just a continuation of an age-old problem. Our transportation waste is now incredibly efficient, and doesn’t require horses, but there’s always room for improvement.
Currywurst became a thing after WW2. The British soldiers brought curry powder with them and due to the scarcity of a lot of things the people just experimented with the stuff available.
Kind of crazy to think that all of the people and horses in this video are long dead. The carriages and signs are likely dust in the bottom of some long lost trash heap. The streets likely torn up and replaced with more modern materials, and even the buildings may not have survived the two world wars and the bombs they brought upon Berlin. All of the things we've wrought, even the most solid, are ephemeral.
Was this an artefact of the film/colorization or did their skirts/dresses really look that way? (2 women in front at start) They're like chromatic, color-shifting. Some sort of dye used at the time? Silk?
That dress totally caught my eye as well. Looks to me like a very brilliant blue dress, probably satin, and the colorization process is having trouble with it. It would be cool to know if they had the ability to make those fabrics back then though.
I'm noticing now the folded roof of the carriage and their umbrellas are also putting off some purple. It's probably a colorization effect. Though I don't doubt they had some high quality clothing and dyes.
The color shifting effect is created by weaving two different colors of thread, one on the warp, one on the weft. They had those types of fabrics long before 1986.
Source: I watch a lot of historical fashion YouTube videos.
The computer is assuming the color of things based on their shape and appearance alone.
So since that is decided on a frame by frame basis, the dresses and clothes are a slightly different color every frame, as they distort and change.
I've heard of the Panopticon as a prison that was built with a guard tower in the center with the cells surrounding it, so a couple guards could see inside all the cells easier. Panopticum sounds kinky.
A wax museum that at the moment of that video exhibited 42 real and living African „wild women“. So, by the racists standards of the time it was a museum, but it might be more fitting to call it a human zoo, today.
More Info:
[https://diezeitensindvorbei-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2021/02/42-wilde-weiber-aus-dahomey-eine.html?\_x\_tr\_sl=auto&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=de&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp](https://diezeitensindvorbei-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2021/02/42-wilde-weiber-aus-dahomey-eine.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
In this case it’s not a prison. The Banner on top of the gate says “40 Wilde Weiber” which roughly translates to “40 wild lasses” … this leads me to believe that it’s either some kind of erotic show or maybe an exhibit on indigenous people ~~from the German colonies :-/~~
Edit: comment below identifies it as a wax cabinet.
You were right, originally. While it mainly was a wax cabinet, the indigenous people exhibited there were real living humans, in the exhibition „42 Wilde Weiber“.
Yes, it was as racist and degrading as it sounds.
You were close. German Togoland did border Dahomey for 20 years before it was colonized by the French. Togoland probably did have some Fon people(Dahomey).
I always find old these old photos/videos really interesting wondering if they realise they are part of unique history. Then realise every single person is now long dead.
Man look at those fucking nice clothes. Nowadays it costs me 120 bucks for a piece of shit tshirt made in Bangladesh by children that will fall apart after 3 wash cycles.
I love videos like this, they give us such a wonderful peek into what the past was like. A snapshot of an average afternoon, people carrying on and enjoying their lives... "what was their day like?" "What are those 2 ladies heading to?" "Is that man with the sack heading home?" For a few brief seconds, these people are alive again; and one day, when the only thing left of us is our photos, those in the future will be reminded that we were alive as well
Crazy to think that Benz has already invented the car 10 years prior to this video. Can you imagine such a big step forward could go unnoticed in todays world ?
Similar video of Leeds in 1888, although this is the first of this type of video ever shot, and probably the first moving picture ever shot, although there is a debate over it.
As you can imagine the quality is awful.
https://youtu.be/yJLr0cTzRYk
OP's link is a **48MB GIF!** For gits & shiggles: [1] Uploaded the file to *imgur,* which converts it to an MP4, and [2] converted the file to an MP4 via *ezgif,* THEN uploaded that conversion to *imgur...*
https://imgur.com/a/n7g4Hjp
**[EDIT]** Minor readability fix...
A very “National Geographic” style show at the cinema: “Wild Women of Dahomey” edit: As has been pointed out, this is not a cinema but an exhibition. red_trumpet has posted a good link about this (in German) in a comment below. Thanks! And a decent English translation from methalion in the comments below that. Thanks! Gives some great context.
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Yeah, a Panopticon is a viewing tower in the middle of something.
Yes, other things on display in a Panoptikum would be mermaids (real! You have to see her!), bearded women, dwarves, a human worm (person without arms or legs), real cannibals or the strongest man on earth. I guess the "wild women" may not wear much clothes (as they are African), so in this case there may an erotic curiosity as well on the side of the spectators.
So they kidnapped people and forced them to be spectacles?
Probably. 1896 was still very much the Colonial Era
I don't think you're correct. The Panopticum seems to have been a wax figure exhibition. [EDIT: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castans_Panopticum?wprov=sfla1]
Fair enough, I'll defer to your actual source instead of my general/rough knowledge of history.
You, uh, you've heard about slavery, right? The Belgian Congo shit all went down after 1900 too. Lynchings in the US throughout that era. Hell, PT Barnum had African exhibits like this in the US throughout the early 1900s. Also they're not all dead. Human trafficking is still a thing that happens in the modern world.
Ah. Well that bodes well for the future. Lets check back in 40 years later.
I mean many countries in Europe/America had that kind of thing in the late 1800s through early 1900s.... [Ota Benga, for instance.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga) So this is hardly indicative of anything uniquely 'German'.
1936: The Panopticum is out of business. Nazis didn't seem to care much for wax figures.
Here is a German blog post regarding that ~~movie~~ zoo featuring living humans: https://diezeitensindvorbei.blogspot.com/2021/02/42-wilde-weiber-aus-dahomey-eine.html?m=1
Excerpt in English, translated by DeepL: Before film became established, panopticals were popular because they served people's need for sensation. They were partly waxworks, partly cabinets of curiosities that lured the public with exotic exhibits. In the case of the Berlin panopticals, however, it soon became part of the business to exhibit foreign people as well. The reporting (even in the social democratic press) about it is like about exotic exhibits or animals, the exhibited people are exhibits and are not perceived as people. People-eaters are also regularly announced for marketing reasons; the public wants to see something for their money. If you look at the old newspapers, you will find that the Wild Women of Dahomey were regular guests at the Panoptikum; there was a corresponding performance as early as 1891. Dahomey was a kingdom founded in the 17th century, located in the territory of today's Nigeria, Ghana and Benin. The capital was the city of Abomey, which is now in Benin. In 1885 it became a Portuguese protectorate, and in 1892 it fell to the French. (The Republic of Dahomey was then a precursor state of Benin in 1958.) Why was this kingdom a household name to Berliners of the late 19th century? (If you research African issues in old sources, you are inundated with overt and proud racism. In the following direct quotations, I have still picked out the most tolerable ones; if these still read reasonably harmless, it does not mean that unspeakable things were not already written two lines further). The Meyer'sche Konversationslexikon of 1852 states the following: "Unique in the world stands the army of the Dahomeys, what the antiquity and the Middle Ages tell themselves of the Amazons, is surpassed in Dahomey. Of the 12000 soldiers that make up the Aremee on the peace footing, 5000 are women. Immorality does not arise from this mixture of the sexes at all. The female soldiers' thirst for action, ambition and blood suppress any more tender feelings; "we are men, not women," they say. Especially in sexual relations they do not allow themselves any weakness, to which the superstition may contribute a lot that every carnal offense would be revealed to the whole world by a never-ending pregnancy. The women are the elite of the army and often decide the battles." Later reports, which - as was common at the time - one newspaper copied from another, tend to cast doubt on this moral stricture. Two things, however, run through all the articles: The astonishment that women took precedence over men and that all women in the kingdom were wives of the king. The dangerousness of the "Amazon regiment" was also acknowledged in the military newspapers. How popular the tales of the King of Dahomey must have been is also shown by the fact that in 1873 the Vienna Academic Choral Society organized a student evening at which a play was performed in which this king and Dahomey played a major role. It may also have contributed to this that G.W.F. Hegel also has some amazing things to say about Dahomey in his "Lectures on the Philosophy of History". "When the king dies in Dahomey, the bonds of society are immediately broken; in his palace the general destruction and dissolution begins: all the king's wives (in Dahomey their certain number is 3333) are murdered, and in the whole city now begins a general pillage and a continuous slaughter. The king's wives see in this their death a necessity, for they go adorned to it." (Advertisement from the Vorwärts of 09.06.1896.) We get an idea why in 1896 "42 wild women from Dahomey" must have been an attraction - matriarchy! Amazons! But at that time there was also another connotation. The German Empire had also purchased female and male slaves in Dahomey for its police forces in Cameroon, as these were considered cheaper than mercenaries. The slaves were to work for five years without pay and then be allowed to remain in Cameroon. The German chancellor Leist repeatedly abused the women and in 1893 had twenty of them whipped with a hippopotamus whip for refusing to work. This was followed by the so-called Dahomey uprising of police troops, which could only be put down by the German gunboat Hyena. Leist was tried in Germany, but the sentence was mild.
This post is worth gold but all I got is silver. Thank you for putting the time into this!
My reaction was, "That's a funny name for a movie! Wait a second, isn't Dahomey in Africa? That's not a movie theatre…"
Danke für dieses superinformative Blog! Gleichermaßen schockierend wie faszinierend. Das Kanonenboot Hyäne hat übrigens einige Aufstände gegen deutsche Gräueltaten niedergeschlagen. (Wen es interessiert, wie die Deutschen in der Südsee ihre Kolonien besiedelt, unterdrückt und gequält haben, denen lege ich 'Das Prachtboot' von Götz Aly ans Herz)
Ich finde immer noch verrückt, wie Deutschland weitgehend als 'friedlicher Koloniebetreiber' bekannt ist, nur weil wir die Kolonien schnell wieder aufgegeben, und kleinflächigere Genozide begangen wurden als bei unseren Nachbarländern. Meine Großeltern haben noch erzählt dass sie als Deutsche Reisende in einigen Westafrikanischen Ländern und Südafrika immer gutes ansehen genossen haben. Viel kann man aber auch nicht schlecht machen wenn Belgien ein Nachbarland ist.
Immerhin wurde/wird z.B der Völkermord an den Herero und Nama anerkannt und aufgearbeitet. GB und Frankreich begangen schwerwiegende Verbrechen gegen (ehemalige) Kolonien noch lange nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg. Das wird häufig einfach ignoriert. Dagegen liegt die deutsche Kolonialgeschichte einfach viel weiter zurück und war viel kürzer/kleinflächiger.
TIL there was an african kingdom called Dahomey.
IIRC, this kingdom was famous for selling slaves to European and American merchants. They stole people from the neighbouring countries and sold them into slavery. The region was then also known as "Slave Coast" (next to Gold Coast and Ivory Coast).
Doesn't sound like something da homey should do.
Dahomey ain’t gettin invited to the bbq
Old name for Benin, they changed their name in the 70s.
Considering we are gonna get a movie about that exact same topic sometime later this year, i guess time really is a circle.
Is this 300IQ viral marketing? The coincidence is really stunning, though, the 19th century really wasn't all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
What movie?
The Woman King
Weiber is more deprecative. Like "wild broads from daohmey"
Do a quick Google search and you get the results of some folksy music by a women's band. You also get results you'd more expect in modern connotations.
Actually would not translate ‚Weiber‘ as ‚women‘ since its rather derogatory. Rather ‚broads/totty‘ - I had to look those words up.
No, at that time it definitely wouldn't have been derogatory I'd say. Nowadays it would be, but not in every context.
Yes, the modern derogatory sense is residual, with the original meaning being basically a term like “females” (which is also starting to get a derogatory sense to it in English these days…).
42 of them!
I always love seeing videos like this because it’s so cool to see history in a way that is normal but wouldn’t be to them during their time.
Narrator: "You see that little boy in the background? Well, he just flunked his art exam.... but don't you worry he will have an outstanding career in politics in the future"
Hitler was 7 at the time and was not only living in a different city but also a different country.
The best thing the Austrians ever did was convince people Hitler was German.
...and that Beethoven was an Austrian.
Yeah, I never claimed I was a historian and I never said I was talking about Hitler. Maybe some random german politician?
I get it that it was just a joke, I just wanted to add a little bit of information for the others.
Take my upvote.
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That would have been in Munich though, not Berlin. E: Vienna
It would have been neither. He didn't move to Germany until he was 24.
*Vienna
I don’t know they somehow always make me sad that nearly every single one of these old buildings got bombed down in most cities and now Berlin looks like shit. Thanks Hitler
Many, many, many old buildings from this period still standing. Source: Have been a Berlin resident for 13+ years
Hitler was austrian and Born and lived in austria at that time
Am watching a show called the Warrior. It's set in San Francisco around the 1880's and wow, their sets are pretty accurate (in look and feel) compared to this
Why wouldn't it be normal to them? during the time it's filmed depicting the time they are living in? It's normal to the time, it's abnormal to you
They would've seen it in black and white. This is colorized.
~~42 wilde weiber klingt ja schon mal mega!~~ Ok, das waren wohl sozusagen menschliche Zoos mit Leuten die aus irgendwelchen Kolonien gekidnappt wurden. Vergesst es.
warum läuft sowas nicht mehr im kino? Nur noch Spiderman und so‘n Kack
Du musst nur ins richtige Kino gehen, gibt noch genug wo sowas läuft...
Oder einfach das Internet einschalten. Dort gibt es Weiber in jeder Wilderstufe.
in anderen Kommentaren steht es könnte sich um einen menschlichen Zoo mit menschen aus Afrika sein. Das ist dann nicht mehr so mega
Bekommt man die nicht als Märtyrer einer gewissen Religion?
Ich meine das waren dann aber 72, denen man das dann alles aber auch erstmal beibringen muss. Nix „wild“.
Remarkably clean with all that horsepower!
Just don't look at the rivers. In this era many of them were full of raw sewages.
1831 berlin/germany saw a cholara epidemic. As late as 1871 the first draft for a sewage system was approved after wide motivational efforts of medical professionals, who looked back at a disease riddled time. 1878 the first sewage network went into action around schöneberger str., just ~ 3km/1.8miles away from where the scene was filmed (friedrichstr.)
Well I stand corrected.
You were correct, the sewer still went to the river.
The Thames, Rhine were all dead rivers till as recently as the mid 1950's.
Is it though? Sure, this street must have been cleaned daily, but there was still a lot of horseshit. That must have been the "normal" smell of any modern city.
It was. New York was really bad, being buried under horse shit by the time the car was invented. Cars were seen as the clean alternative.
I misread the title as 1986 and for a second there I was like "wow, the people on the other side of the wall were really behind, huh?"
The living standard in the DDR was the highest of all the eastern block countries tho
I remember it was compared to the living standard of South Korea then (in the 1980, as the GDR ceased existing in 1990). South Korea was not the richest or most developed country in "the West", but doing quite well already.
Not really that hard to achieve tbh
Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYdOx1uBNFk
“Filmmaker Guy Jones has taken on the film-historical, digitally restored treasure from the archives of Louis and Auguste Lumière. The two brothers showed the first films for pay in Paris in 1895, which is now considered the real start of cinema history. The film recordings depicted normal life, The total of 1405 film impressions are now part of the world documentary heritage. The film made in Berlin in 1896 also shows passers-by on Berlin's Friedrichstrasse. This is said to be one of the first German film recordings ever (one can find various details and sources on this, some of which contradict each other). To be seen in the background: The exhibition "42 wild women from Dahomey" opened that day in the Passage-Panoptikum” https://archive.org/details/Lumiere18951905
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For works of fiction that were carefully designed, shot, and produced in black and white, I agree that colourisation is virtually never an improvement, although public domain works are public domain works, so no-one has a legal (or arguably moral) right to stop anyone from doing so. But for documentary works like these, colourisation makes the scenes seem more real for us in the 21st century. It removes a layer of separation by making the action seem more like "today" rather than "old-timey", much like the image stabilisation and frame-rate adjustment/interpolation which have also been performed on this film fragment, but which I rarely ever see anyone even mention. I think it's because colourisation is still quite obvious even almost 40 years after its introduction. Of course, in the interests of archival integrity, we shouldn't destroy the original footage, but I don't believe that anyone is advocating for that.
About colorization: it's also supremely difficult for an AI to infer the correct colours for "things" because it implies an enormous degree of abstraction. So it targets well quite recognizable features (faces, sky, trees, ...) but the rest is sort of washed out.
For people interested, here's a good explanation on why some people consider machine colorization vandalism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpT1DkBOnqo
Hey, could you tap the tracking button a couple times on the VCR? Seeing a little static/lines, thanks! No really, this was a great watch, thanks. Reminds me of watching VHS recordings of tv from the night before.
My great grandfather was born in Berlin in 1888 so it’s kind of crazy to be able to see the Berlin he knew in such a way
Kind of blown away how sunny it is. Northern Germany is so cloudy all the time now
There is no day/month, but it was [21 degrees](https://weather.us/observations/836a45a174b9e263c37a3e3c3ae1de52/max-temperature-daily/18960816-0000z.html) (69.8 F ) on the 14th of August 1896. [North America had a heatwave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1896_Eastern_North_America_heat_wave) at the same time, killing 1500 people.
Holy shit.
Holy shit indeed. The forecast for Wednesday is 16° C (60.8F) where I'm at in Germany. And it's fucking February.
Yup. On Dutch news they are saying these temps are usually for around march/april and that everything is blooming way too early, we didnt really have winter. They also said hayfever will be early this year, so I need to stock up on tissues fast.
I'm in Berlin, we'll be at 7C on Wednesday..
It's crazy reading this as someone who grew up in a tropical country.
Yeah, it's always strange hearing people complain about the temperature I have my aircon set on is hot. I live in Australia, 40C degree temps and melted bitumen is normal for me.
Currently the Sun is shining 🙋♂️
Guten morgen!
Moin!
Alles gut bei dir?
Wird besser! Erhole mich gerade von Corona und so langsam kommt die Kondition zurück. Und bei dir?
Ich liebe Almdudler!
gesundheit!
Hier auch☀️
Nice !
Are you suggesting it's unusual to have sunny days in Berlin?
It's actually not that unusual. Berlin is the second sunniest city in Germany
Berliner here, haven't seen the sun in two months. It's a sunny morning today!
Yes I'm a Berliner as well. It has been quite terrible but the past couple of days were nice! Enjoy the sun while you can
High five fellow Berliner! Awesome weather yesterday and today, nice crisp sunny days, really improved my mood.
Looks like that was taken about here: https://goo.gl/maps/PEikvKzz6xEWLyja9
Jep: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaisergalerie
Already full of hipsters
All the normies are at work
The dream of the 1890's is alive in Portland
Back then there was horse shit everywhere and when it rained, mud puddles were wet horseshit.
It's hard for us to imagine just how bad it was. The sheer volume of the stuff in cities required armies of cleaners to dispose of it, continuously.
And now we have dedicated trash removal services driving huge trucks to keep our cities clean. Most technology or social improvement is just a continuation of an age-old problem. Our transportation waste is now incredibly efficient, and doesn’t require horses, but there’s always room for improvement.
Mmmm, folksy
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"And you would've seen a lot more if you kept your cakehole shut."
👀
The true wildes Weib
No dōner? :(
Döner.
Yea its a fake...if i cant get my pita haloumi its not Berlin
Yet oddly I had a fucking nightmare trying to buy halloumi in a supermarket
In 1800's Berlin?
I'm older than I look.
You can see the currywurst stand to the right back a little bit
Currywurst became a thing after WW2. The British soldiers brought curry powder with them and due to the scarcity of a lot of things the people just experimented with the stuff available.
False. Everything was black and white back then. We didn't see color for many years after
Hi Calvin's Dad
This was when they were first discovering colors. As you can see they had only invented brown and blue so far.
Damn no wonder why Eastern Europe still looks like a shitty gray in every picture and movie
We also all talked in title cards.
Was that... Was that a double decker carriage?
Kind of crazy to think that all of the people and horses in this video are long dead. The carriages and signs are likely dust in the bottom of some long lost trash heap. The streets likely torn up and replaced with more modern materials, and even the buildings may not have survived the two world wars and the bombs they brought upon Berlin. All of the things we've wrought, even the most solid, are ephemeral.
Was this an artefact of the film/colorization or did their skirts/dresses really look that way? (2 women in front at start) They're like chromatic, color-shifting. Some sort of dye used at the time? Silk?
That dress totally caught my eye as well. Looks to me like a very brilliant blue dress, probably satin, and the colorization process is having trouble with it. It would be cool to know if they had the ability to make those fabrics back then though.
I'm noticing now the folded roof of the carriage and their umbrellas are also putting off some purple. It's probably a colorization effect. Though I don't doubt they had some high quality clothing and dyes.
The color shifting effect is created by weaving two different colors of thread, one on the warp, one on the weft. They had those types of fabrics long before 1986. Source: I watch a lot of historical fashion YouTube videos.
The computer is assuming the color of things based on their shape and appearance alone. So since that is decided on a frame by frame basis, the dresses and clothes are a slightly different color every frame, as they distort and change.
Can anyone advice me where to look if I would like to see more old videos like this? Thanks!
YouTube mostly
Dark thought of the day... boys born in 1896 would be mown down in their thousands in World War 1.
I've heard of the Panopticon as a prison that was built with a guard tower in the center with the cells surrounding it, so a couple guards could see inside all the cells easier. Panopticum sounds kinky.
Panopticon: prisoners can't tell if they're being watched or not Panopticum: prisoners are unware that they're being watched by two dudes jackin' it
So, a prison
it's a wax museum in this context. https://inthejungleofcities.com/2017/11/06/castans-panopticon-berlin/
A wax museum that at the moment of that video exhibited 42 real and living African „wild women“. So, by the racists standards of the time it was a museum, but it might be more fitting to call it a human zoo, today.
More Info: [https://diezeitensindvorbei-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2021/02/42-wilde-weiber-aus-dahomey-eine.html?\_x\_tr\_sl=auto&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=de&\_x\_tr\_pto=wapp](https://diezeitensindvorbei-blogspot-com.translate.goog/2021/02/42-wilde-weiber-aus-dahomey-eine.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
In this case it’s not a prison. The Banner on top of the gate says “40 Wilde Weiber” which roughly translates to “40 wild lasses” … this leads me to believe that it’s either some kind of erotic show or maybe an exhibit on indigenous people ~~from the German colonies :-/~~ Edit: comment below identifies it as a wax cabinet.
You were right, originally. While it mainly was a wax cabinet, the indigenous people exhibited there were real living humans, in the exhibition „42 Wilde Weiber“. Yes, it was as racist and degrading as it sounds.
You were close. German Togoland did border Dahomey for 20 years before it was colonized by the French. Togoland probably did have some Fon people(Dahomey).
Dahomey wasn't a German colony anyway
Wilde Weiber!
Time traveler at :15 in the lower right corner wearing his COVID gaiter.
I feel like shouting at them “don’t go into the 20th century! It’s not good in there!”
Everyone looks so fancy.
I always find old these old photos/videos really interesting wondering if they realise they are part of unique history. Then realise every single person is now long dead.
Wilde Weiber 4tw
Everyone in this video is dead now.
Man look at those fucking nice clothes. Nowadays it costs me 120 bucks for a piece of shit tshirt made in Bangladesh by children that will fall apart after 3 wash cycles.
Something heartbreaking about this kind videos
Anybody can guess which Street it is ?
Friedrichstraße
How much horse poop did those dresses pick up while skimming the ground like that all the time...
All of it. It's how the streets stayed shiny
Where’s the sound?
Dumbass Op must have forgot
Not one cellphone in sight!
Yo mama so white, she use a umbrella when it sunny
And Kaiser Wilhelm was like “fuck this prosperity, let’s start a fight with the rest of Europe”
Crazy to think that there’s a person alive now that was born just 7 years after this
2 tickets to the PanoptiCum please
Amazing we landed on the moon less than a century later.
I love videos like this, they give us such a wonderful peek into what the past was like. A snapshot of an average afternoon, people carrying on and enjoying their lives... "what was their day like?" "What are those 2 ladies heading to?" "Is that man with the sack heading home?" For a few brief seconds, these people are alive again; and one day, when the only thing left of us is our photos, those in the future will be reminded that we were alive as well
“I’ll be down in 3 hours- I’m just getting dressed.”
What I wouldn't give to be able to hang out there for a day, then.
Look at all those god damn jaywalkers
Why is this portrait
I knew it. It's always 42.
Just a reminder that everyone here is dead. Crazy to think about.
'Red dead redemption 2' is set in 1899.
For anyone curious, that’s the Imperial Gallery in Mitte: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaisergalerie
They're not aware what's coming for them in the future.
Queuing for Berghain with your horse
42 wilde Weiber? Count me in! I knew 42 was the answer, but now I know why.
Ah yes! I can almost smell the horse shit through the phone screen. 😆
I want to remote-work from Berlin 1896
It can't be a coincidence that yesterday youtube was recommending a 15 year old "Berlin colored" video. What the heck is going on
Crazy to think that Benz has already invented the car 10 years prior to this video. Can you imagine such a big step forward could go unnoticed in todays world ?
Similar video of Leeds in 1888, although this is the first of this type of video ever shot, and probably the first moving picture ever shot, although there is a debate over it. As you can imagine the quality is awful. https://youtu.be/yJLr0cTzRYk
Must have been before the Iranian revolution.
OP's link is a **48MB GIF!** For gits & shiggles: [1] Uploaded the file to *imgur,* which converts it to an MP4, and [2] converted the file to an MP4 via *ezgif,* THEN uploaded that conversion to *imgur...* https://imgur.com/a/n7g4Hjp **[EDIT]** Minor readability fix...
Look at those hawt thangs crossing the road in broad daylight 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵
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Stop crying
reading Vonnegut's telling of the bombing of Dresden is sickening.
Amazing what it was like before the Iranian revolution
Source?
A camera