Unknown memorial in Romania????

Hi

i bought many negative in this lot i found this memorial...Is this in Romania area is 1915-1918. This is from a German soldier the Photo..

Actually it looks more like an Independence War memorial.

Do you know is this in Romania???You can see behind a sign with romanian or italian language..

The text on the banner is in Rumanian.

Gen. Dénes

Isn't that banner looking strange? Like a later addition to the photo?

The text says "Tipografia Libraria Nationala Vasile(?) C. ?imovici"

Which means "National Typography (&) Bookstore [person name]"

And what's with the vandalized monument? The statue is down and the commemorative plaques are gone...

This post has been edited by bansaraba on September 17, 2008 01:19 am

Impossible to tell. Maybe Turkish troops had just passed through the village or maybe it was undegtoing repairs at the time the war started.

It is a Negative from the WW1 and i think too this statue was down from the socket..

i can post more scans what i mean romanians and turkeys...

I think that is a stamp not a banner.

Please do that
many thanks

I don't think so (as it has a shadown on the bottom).

Gen. Dénes

You are right ; now that you mentioned it , I saw the shadow on the bottom.

Yes, the rectangle has a "shadow" under it, but it is clearly a drawing. At that angle, the shadow of a real object isn't symmetrical (watch the windows and doors below). Besides, the entire rectangle has a strange position on the roof of that building, it lacks the perspective. I don't think it was there when the picture was taken.

This post has been edited by bansaraba on September 18, 2008 01:48 pm

This is an original negative, not a retouched photo print!

Gen. Dénes

original from a negative it is not good scaned...

i think Romanian with white flags..

This statue is quite unknown… It represents a Dorobantz (territorial infantryman) of the Independence War (1877-78), and it is very well made. It should be raised in a capital town of one of the southern Romanian counties, in Wallachia, occupied by Central Powers troops in 1916. This kind of statues were located in the main square of the towns. I think the town was the garrison of an ex-Dorobantzes regiment that fought in the war of 1877-78. As the statue doesn't appear in the famous album presenting all the units of the Romanian army, published in 1902, then it was raised since that year.

It's easy to see that the statue was damaged. It lost the right arm and the plates on the pedestal disappeared. The statue was carefully brought down, not overturned, from the socle, possibly with a view to a future transport.

Maybe the monument was a victim of the Central Powers penury of bronze, as a strategic raw material. There is a lot of information about bells of the romanian churches confiscated by germans during the occupation of Wallachia, for their most valuable material.