Original Austro-Hungarian WWI Exemplary Photo Album with Alpine Photographs and Extensive Handwritten Notes/Annotations and Service History – 209 Photos Total Original Items

Original Item. One-of-a-Kind. This is the most tremendous Austro-Hungarian account of the First World War we have ever offered. This extensive and extravagant photo album has 209 photographs ranging from 1915 when the soldier joined the fight up until the end of the war in November 1918. What really sets this album apart is the 20+ handwritten notes taped onto certain pages dating from the 1950s which add much more context to the images. Still being written in the soldier’s native language, they offer a firsthand account of much of the war. Some of these notes are written on U.S. envelopes, so the soldier definitely moved to the United States at some point after the war when he decided to provide more context to his service. Wow!

The photographs in the album range from Army training in 1915 to his time in the Alpine region, with tons of snowy photos with destroyed Italian houses, several large scale photographs of mountaintops with locations and altitudes noted (2800m etc), large artillery pieces with men wearing gas masks and defunct ski lifts, there is so much unbelievable photography in this album. It is the most extensive account of WWI from the Austro-Hungarian perspective that we have ever seen, providing viewpoints from one of the harshest battlefields of the war, the Alpine Front. 

This is a wonderful 12¼ x 9” photo album which is still in great condition with many of the spider-web style page-spacers still intact. With enough work the handwritten notes could be easily translated to provide much more context to the photographs. This is one of the best photo albums we have handled, hands down. Comes ready for further research and display!