My Poetry Album

Hi everyone,

since enthusiasm for poetry album quotes really took off toward the end of the other thread, I’d like to pick up on that here. Show us your poetry albums and feel free to tell us a little about them. How old are they? On what occasion did you receive them? Which entries are especially important to you? What was “in” back then? We all love this topic and enjoy reminiscing together.

Warm regards and thank you so much for participating.
Ina

P.S. I’m going to dig out my two later… and then I’ll share some pictures and quotes :-)

Oops, I meant to link to the other thread “Well, I'll be darned” for anyone interested. At the end of that thread, I could really feel your nostalgic enthusiasm for the poetry album topic. Well then, here’s the link… and now go ahead: dig out your poetry albums. We’re all curious :-)

Best, Ina

Dear Ina, what a lovely idea.

Here’s a look back at my past 



I received it for my First Communion.



Yes, this autograph book brings back so many wonderful memories of my childhood and teenage years—family, family friends, and my school friends. I had to smile as I was flipping through it just now. But it’s also a little sad when you realize how many dear people are no longer with us.

The first dated entry was in January 1972 



The last entry was in 2006.





 So, I’ll make a start :-)
I picked out close family members who wrote in my album: 2 of my brothers, my parents and my grandpa.

Best wishes, Inge

Oh, how lovely! Thanks for sharing your albums with us.

Back then, we had those pre-printed friendship books to fill out, with sections like “What I want to be” and “My favorite food” and so on. I had one from Diddl :)
Some people did have poetry albums at one point, but I don’t think they were as popular as they used to be. I don’t even remember if I had one…

My mom, though, has one from her school days (the ’70s) at home, and as a kid I loved flipping through it and reading the beautiful messages. Everything was written so beautifully back then, and people really went out of their way to make the pages look nice. 

It’s nice that you all still have your poetry treasures.
I had two. One got lost during all the moves, and the second one is nowhere to be found. It’s a shame, really.
It’s especially frustrating about the first album—it had great sayings and little drawings in it.
I’ll have to go through everything again. Maybe I’ll still be able to find it.

Wow, Petra, you kept yours for a long time! For me, it was a rather short phase—the first entry is from my father in 1966, and the last one is from 1972.
Most people pasted a glossy picture inside, but some also drew something.

Unfortunately, I never had a poetry album.  Back then, we had a teacher who thought it was silly and refused to write anything in the others’ albums. To please him, I decided not to get a poetry album. Today I regret that. It would have been a nice keepsake.
But instead, I have a very old poetry album from my mother—it’s over 90 years old and already a bit worn:
There are still some notes written in the margins:
Well, who can even read that anymore?
But some of them had already started using the Latin alphabet:

The side note should read “Sütterlin.” 

The saying in Sütterlin script reads:

*Work joyfully,
love your loved ones,
and keep God in your heart*
I actually learned to read and write Sütterlin in school :-)
With some of the text, I have to look at it 2–3 times to figure out what it’s supposed to mean, but I can still decipher most of it pretty well :-)

Best regards, Inge

You all have such lovely treasures there! Thanks for sharing. 😊

My album must still be lying around somewhere, too. I graduated from school exactly 50 years ago, so my poetry album is that old. There are even little pictures drawn and pasted inside. I also learned

“German script.” I often had to stay after school to practice “calligraphy.” (My handwriting never kept up with my thoughts…😁). However, I had to practice “German script,” even though we usually just wrote “normally.” I never understood that.

Best regards, Marlies

Not quite, Inge: It says, “Work joyfully, love your family, and love God, your Lord” 😉

My poetry album is from the ’60s. I started school in 1960. I’ll look for it and share some photos too. It’s such a lovely memory for me—one I love to revisit every now and then.

I also learned Old German script in school back then. My mom always wrote a mix of German and Latin. I even still have old letters from my grandpa, who wrote in Old German. It really takes some getting used to when you read it.

Oh, such lovely posts. I’ve read through all the quotes—and the stories about who wrote them and why. They’re all very special memories for each person.

I’ve realized that you only truly grasp the deeper meaning of some of these sayings once you’re (much) older. When you read your poetry album from today’s perspective, that’s when you finally understand what the writer wanted to impart to us.

And I think those sayings revealed a lot about the virtues people aspired to back then. Child-rearing was much stricter back then, and more emphasis was placed on order, cleanliness, diligence, obedience, ambition, and so on. Girls were expected to be demure, hardworking, and modest. That was also reflected in the sayings. So we all have little pieces of history tucked away in our drawers.

Tomorrow I’ll show you excerpts from my autograph book.

Best regards, Ina

***And I think those sayings revealed a lot about the virtues people aspired to back then.***

That’s definitely true! Each of us had this saying written somewhere on a page:

Be like the violet in the moss,
modest, demure, and pure,
and not like the proud rose that
always wants to be admired.

Nobody would write something like that in an album like this today.

Veronika, but that saying was already outdated back then, don’t you think?
At that age, didn’t we just copy a lot of “clever sayings” from somewhere without really understanding what they meant?

When I looked at my poetry album today (back then I thought the motif was so cool; later on I wanted to walk through the world just as elegantly with a boyfriend too; but back then I was only 11. Here you can also see the fashion of the 70s: he was wearing a casual long coat, a turtleneck sweater, and bell-bottoms, with longer hair. She had a beret on her long hair, wore a miniskirt, and the jacket had a large collar. Plus a leather shoulder bag. That was chic and modern back then.



First, a saying from me went on the very first page. I apparently didn’t know how to use commas yet—and I couldn’t draw either.



The first two pages were for my parents. Each of them wrote a saying in it for me. Both of my parents have already passed away, so seeing their handwriting touches me all the more.

Then came my 3 siblings. The saying my sister, who is 4 years older than me, chose really suits her. She is an optimistic person and probably wanted to pass that message on to me. And on the left in the picture she drew bleeding hearts. They are still her favorite flowers to this day.



After the family came my friends ... When you look at the sayings in light of their life stories, it makes you think. Did the writers already know the deeper meaning of their words?

Here, for example, is my friend Simone; she chose this saying with “love must wait ...” She was the first in the class to get pregnant. That was in 9th or 10th grade. She had 5 children and was a single mother after a divorce. The advice in that saying was probably meant more for herself.



My friend Marion was always feisty and fought stubbornly when she felt she was in the right. You could see her humor in the saying on the right-hand page. On the left was the wish that I would stay healthy. Written very large and bold and red, because even back then she probably knew how important that was. Sadly, she developed cancer and died at a young age, just like her mother and her two sisters. Her forced cheerfulness may have been her way of living life quickly and energetically before it was over.



A striking number of the people writing back then, who were of course children or teenagers, wrote sayings that had to do with the fleeting nature of youth. They all probably sensed that you are not young forever, and that later on you can only remember it. You have to live and enjoy life today. That applies to all of life, of course, but back then the writers felt it subconsciously and pointed it out to me in my poetry album.



At some point the teachers appeared too. They always wrote in wise quotes from authors. They usually had to do with learning and striving. Here is the entry from my favorite teacher. Back then I surely found it boring and meaningless. But only today can I judge whether it is true or not.



Some also wrote long poems in it. That wasn’t really to my taste back then either. From today’s perspective, it is definitely worth reading again and thinking about.



To decorate the entries, many people had drawn something or pasted in poetry pictures, and I can even show several chewing-gum pictures. Everyone designed it the way they thought was beautiful.



The topic of parents and the family home also came up often. The value of childhood, the value of a family and of a home. That, too, seemed self-evident to us back then. Today we know that it is not.

***************

It’s a shame that this tradition of poetry albums is no longer in fashion. Today’s preprinted books, where you only fill in information, don’t have the same potential to become special keepsakes later on.

Best wishes, Ina

Ina, you’re so right—a poetry album like that is a look back at a time when we hadn’t yet grasped the seriousness of life, though it was sometimes reflected in the sayings; we just didn’t really know what to make of them back then. When I was flipping through my album the other day, I also found the two classmates who passed away—one this winter and the other this spring—and that really touches your heart all over again.

Love, Inge

I don’t remember a thing about the people who wrote in my album back then—we’ve really been scattered to the four winds. All I know about my closest school friends is that they ended up in Berlin, Munich, and Wolfsburg. But I, too, have been drawn from city to city—then marriage, divorce, and marriage again—I don’t think anyone can find me anymore either.
The oldest connections I still have are from my vocational school days.
It’s completely different for my husband—almost his entire school class has remained a close circle of friends to this day, and hardly anyone has moved away.

It’s certainly easier these days to stay in touch. Most people keep their email addresses even when they move—that wasn’t the case back then.

Now I can show you my friendship album, too. It starts in 1963, three years after I started school. These are very precious memories for me. Some of the pages even have drawings in them. And I absolutely loved these little pictures. We used to trade them.

It started with my own introductory saying:



And then came my parents. I can still read this handwriting:





One of my teachers:



A nice saying:



And this page was also beautifully decorated and drawn on:



This is my absolute favorite saying, one I’ve never forgotten:



And here’s another one with drawings:



Now you have a glimpse into the ’60s. My son also had a friendship album like this in the ’80s, though it was called a “Friends Book.”

Later on, my aunts, cousins, and the pastor also wrote in my album. It still accompanied me after I moved to Bremen.

Dear Monika,

Thank you so much for taking the time to give us a peek into your poetry album. Your sayings tell us that you come from a devout area where people put their trust in God. The pictures in your autograph book are enchanting. From today’s perspective, of course, they’re totally cheesy, but back then we liked that. I always liked the ones with flowers that still had glitter on them.

Warm regards, Ina

Yes, dear Ina, there are also lots of little pictures with glitter in them. I grew up in Fulda, a so-called “bishop’s city.” Today I see many things differently, but I still have faith in God. For me, God doesn’t live in any church.

Warm regards, Monika