My Trip through Germany – Touches of German Life

Summary

Amateur footage from Germany, filmed in 1920: Undernourished children in a convalescent home (presumably in Berlin-Buch), medical care of children with rickets, street scenes – some of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin – with carriages, cars, trams, policemen and passers-by, houses and backyards, a tennis court, a school for police dogs. „My Trip Through Germany – Touches of German Life“ is one of three documentary films made by the American doctor and amateur filmmaker William Held during a stay in Berlin from 1919 to 1922. His films are especially interesting from the standpoint of the state of health in Germany, particularly maladies of deficiency such as rickets and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. In intertitles Held explains their spread as originating in the British naval blockade from 1914 to 1919, which caused considerable shortages in food supply in Germany. In his denunciation of the blockade, the amateur filmmaker displays a pro-German attitude, which may be linked to his origins: Held was born in 1871 in either Vienna or Moravia and emigrated to Chicago in 1891. He may have shown his films at private screenings and distributed them himself, in order to mobilise support for Germany in the USA.