Faces Of The Balkans, 100 Years Ago (9 photos)

[rpannier]

https://www.rferl.org/a/large-format-portraits-from-the-balkans-made-after-world-war-1/30661345.html




American photographer Lewis Hine (left) with other members of a U.S. Red Cross expedition in November 1918 before they set off on a years long assignment to make “a survey of actual needs existing in the various countries where the American Red Cross is engaged.”





Serbian Boy Scout



Albanians In Their Own Land



A Little Blonde-Haired Montenegrin Waif Picked Up On The Road: The little girl lost her parents during the war and had been begging by day and living with 31 other waifs in a cave near Podgorica.



Balkan Travel



Princess Ileana Of Romania



A Typical Gypsy Girl In The Balkans



War Veteran At The Age Of 12: This boy was [five years old] when he lost his arm in the Balkan War of 1912. That year he appeared in the town of Tirana with one arm a stump; a refugee from a fighting area in the hills some miles away. The Balkan villagers took pity on him when they found him fighting with the street dogs for scraps of food. When the Junior Red Cross came to Tirana they found a home for the youngster, who is now 12 years of age and a veteran of two wars.

[sprinkleeninow]

1. The 2nd one--Baba and Dzedo (Grandmother and Grandfather)

My heritage is Slavic--maternal and paternal grandparents from the Carpathian Mountain region of [Czecho]Slovakia.

[mitch96]

5. Same here, My Mom was born there and came over here at 6 mos old..

First it was the Austro-Hungarian empire, then Czech and finally Ukraine.. Her nationality changed three times in her life.. Life was hard in them mountains and many left. Whole communities in western PA were from the same area of eastern Europe...
m

[sprinkleeninow]

6. A good number of my maternal grandparents' relatives went on to PA.

York, Wilkes-Barre. Mb other areas.

It was Austria-Hungary at the time the grandparents left.

I think in the early 2000s, I searched for them on ships' manifests and found their names. I thank God they had the presence of mind to make the journey.

[burrowowl]

2. Kick

[Hekate]

3. What distinctive faces, and what a hard life for most

Thank you

[Kaleva]

4. Princess Ileana Of Romania moved to and died in the U.S.

"After Michael I of Romania abdicated, Ileana and her family were exiled from the newly Communist Romania. They escaped by train to the Russian sector of Vienna, at that time divided into three sectors. After that they settled in Switzerland, then moved to Argentina and in 1950, she and the children moved to the United States, where she bought a house in Newton, Massachusetts.

The years from 1950 to 1961 were spent lecturing against communism, working with the Romanian Orthodox Church in the United States, writing two books: I Live Again, a memoir of her last years in Romania,[7] and Hospital of the Queen's Heart, describing the establishment and running of the hospital.

Ileana and Anton officially divorced on 29 May 1954. Then on 19 June 1954 in Newton, Mass., she married to Dr. Stefan Nikolas Issarescu. Her second marriage ended in divorce (without issue) in 1965.

In 1961, Ileana entered the Orthodox Monastery of Our Lady of All Protection/ Notre Dame de Toute Protection, in Bussy-en-Othe, France. On her tonsuring as a monastic, in 1967, Sister Ileana was given the name Mother Alexandra. She moved back to the United States and founded the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, the first English language Orthodox monastery in North America. [8] She was the third female descendant of Queen Victoria to become a Mother Superior in a convent of her own foundation along with Princess Alice of Battenberg and Princess Elizabeth of Hesse. She served as abbess until her retirement in 1981, remaining at the monastery until her death."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Ileana_of_Romania#After_exile

Lewis Hines, the person who took the photographs:

"The last years of his life were filled with professional struggles by loss of government and corporate patronage. Hine hoped to join the Farm Security Administration photography project, but despite writing repeatedly to Roy Stryker, Stryker always refused.[9] Few people were interested in his work, past or present, and Hine lost his house and applied for welfare. He died on November 3, 1940 at Dobbs Ferry Hospital in Dobbs Ferry, New York, after an operation. He was 66 years old.[10]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Hine