Six unwritten postcards from my great-aunt Gerda's collection. I think they are probably from her years in France during WW1, when she sometimes travelled with her employer (still Unknown to me) in the south-east of France and stayed for a while at various mountain resorts there. How far up in the alps she ever walked herself, I'll probably never know!
The Vanoise massif is a mountain range in the Western Alps and the third-highest massif in France. Nowadays Vanoise is a national park.
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1422. - Le Lac Rond et le Col de la Vanoise
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2366. Sommet du Jovet (2563 m.)
- La Mer de Nuages et les Glaciers de la Vanoise
2366. Sommet du Jovet (2563 m.)
- La Mer de Nuages et les Glaciers de la Vanoise
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1426. Col et Massif de la Vanoise - Refuge des Lacs
1426. Col et Massif de la Vanoise - Refuge des Lacs
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Massif de la Vanoise - Cascade de la Fraiche (a waterfall)
Massif de la Vanoise - Cascade de la Fraiche (a waterfall)
1976. Le Mont Blanc (4820 m.), vu du Bréven
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Mont Blanc, the "white mountain", located on the French-Italian border, is the highest mountain in the Alps and Western Europe.
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3063 - Zermatt - Vieux Mazots
3063 - Zermatt - Vieux Mazots
Zermatt is in the Swiss Alps. Gerda did cross lake Geneva over to Lausanne in Switzerland during the war years (I think more than once); but how close she ever got to Zermatt or Mont Blanc (either back then or later), I don't know. She might just have bought postcards of those two places. As there are more cards from Vanoise, my guess is that she saw some of that area, though.
Those are such amazing mountains. It is neat to think of your Great Aunt having purchased those cards and then saved them - for her memories, whatever they might have been.
ReplyDeleteBarb has it right, the cards are Gerda's memories of visiting a fantastic part of the world, even if she never walked up to the mountains. Considering the anxiety and worry brought on by the war, the landscape of the Alps must have seemed very peaceful. Since the images are in black and white a viewer has to use their imagination to fill in the colors, so the cards were probably more vivid
ReplyDeleteto Gerda than they seem to our modern eyes now.
Amazing postcards and mountains. It's easy to see why Gerda would want photos of those breathtaking landscapes. My Swiss ancestors were from Graubünden at the foot of the Alps. In the U.S., the lived in New York's Adirondack foothills, which were likely a poor substitute for the soaring Alps that captivated Gerda.
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