Help with translation?

[Nordpol54]

@ Larry,

yes, of course we both are looking at the same writing. I won't doubt the unit You are refering to is a match. Nonetheless that first word on the back of the photography is "der" (just compare other letters as "e" and "r" of this handwriting)...

Best Regards
Norbert

[chuckschmitz]

Take a look at the last two words that he wrote, den Tod. Looking there you can make an argument that the first word is Dno. I do thank everyone for their input.

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

The issue may be as to whether the note is written in Sütterlin or a basterdized version of it. See: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lH0wMTeCHCw/TflnGC7N_JI/AAAAAAAAC6c/vrBL78fKDQ4/s1600/Suetterlinschrift%2Balphabet%2Bfrom%2Bsuetterlinsc hrift.de.jpg.

If in Sütterlin, the first word could, indeed, be "Der". However, logic would say that translating to "The airfield" provides no information, whereas "Dno airfield" does.

Regards,
Richard

[ChristianK]

Even though both is possible when you look at the handwriting, I would also say it's "Der Flugplatz". True, this doesn't provide much information about the actual location, but this might have been listed on some other photos or elsewhere in a photo album.

Besides -: Normally a German would write "Flugplatz Dno", not "Dno Flugplatz". That's just not how we speak. It's the other way round in English, though.

[Larry deZeng]

Besides -: Normally a German would write "Flugplatz Dno", not "Dno Flugplatz". That's just not how we speak. It's the other way round in English, though.

That's true, Christian. But I have seen it written both ways many times in documents, letters and photo captions. Perhaps it is a matter of choice whether to put "Flugplatz" in the first position or the second position? Especially when it just a two-word label rather than a complete sentence with a noun, verb and object? Or maybe the rules for this were not quite as rigorous 70 years ago as they are today?

By the way, native English speakers can write it either way: Dno airfield, or Airfield Dno. Both are grammatically correct in English, although the former is more common, as you pointed out.

L.

[Horst Weber]

Originally Posted by ChristianK

Besides -: Normally a German would write "Flugplatz Dno", not "Dno Flugplatz". That's just not how we speak. It's the other way round in English, though.

Complete agreement. In German, it's not common to write "München Flugplatz" but "Flugplatz München". And the first threee letters come very close to "Der" in Sütterlin, wheras this is not even the proper Sütterlin anymore, since in the beginning of the 1940', Germany changed this script in the schools to the present one. I'm not very sure when it happened.

My mother went to school from 1936 and she learned the Sütterlin some years. But there was a change, once. My mother in law, started her school in 1942 and she knows for sure, that this skript was not tought to her and friends anymore, who started a year earlier.

It is very possible, that a majority of the "common aged" German soldiers then used a mixed-up "Sütterlin-script - present-script" for the notes on the back of their photos.

All the best !

Horst Weber

[JohnnyB]

It means Dno, definitely. Once I read this on an old picture of my father - he was stationed in Dno too. And it was written exactly in Sütterlin like on the picture above.
This translation is correct :

Dno Flugplatz

In einer dieser Maschinen fand Alfred den Tod

----


Dno airfield

In one of these machines Alfred was killed

Regards,
Rainer

@edit
About Dno airfield / airfield Dno
Both is correct - but it is needed to understand, that in older german talking esp. in war and its propaganda mostly the
city or location was named first. I don´t want say that it is a ww2 typical german pomposity...better to say :
strict order - even in word and sentence ;o)

[JohnnyB]

Let´s do a little Sütterlin-translation with dno Flugplatz

If you are interested there here´s a link to an online sütterlin translator :

http://www.altdeutsche-schrift.de/ad...hp#schriftfeld

[chuckschmitz]

I think I would have to agree

[Rasmussen]

.... but ""dieseo Maschine" (would be the same letter like in your "Dno" ... the letters in original are the same too)??