[An Important Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album Documenting the Life of Gerardo Coyula y Moeller and His German-Cuban Family, Including Their Ties to Nazi Germany and Documenting a Friend Lost at Dachau]

[Various locations in Cuba, Europe, and the United States, 1962. Very good.. [113] leaves of scrapbook cardstock, illustrated with 388 photographs, chiefly silver gelatin photographs, several colored or in color, in mounting corners. Most captioned in Spanish. Square folio. Contemporary brown cloth, spring-loaded spine, front cover stamped, "CUBA." Joints split but holding well, moderate rubbing and dust-soiling. Light foxing, handful of images lacking, some images slightly browned or with mild edge wear. An extensively-annotated vernacular family photograph album centering on the German-Cuban Coyula-Moeller family, picturing their lives, family members, travels, and more in Cuba, the United States, Germany, and other locations in Europe, mainly during the 1920s and '30s. The album was likely compiled by Gerardo Coyula y Moeller, who was born in the early-1920s and attended Aloisiuskolleg in Bad Godesberg in the late-1930s. The album includes numerous pictures of Coyula y Moeller as a toddler, young man, and teenager traveling with his mother and various family members, attending school, and more, with numerous photographs featuring the family and their environs in Cuba and Germany. The caption to a family photograph indicates that the Coyula family were shareholders in the German Club ("Club Aleman") in Havana from 1939 to 1960. Other family members identified through the profuse captions include Aunt Merci, Aunt Hortensia, Uncle Gustavo, Estela, grandfather Enrique Moeller, grandmother Rosa Gelpi, and others.

The album also contains several photographs relating to the Nazi Party in Germany before the war, as well as two photographs with captions poignantly noting one young man who would die in a concentration camp in Germany. One of the latter examples pictures a young man named Gerd Wolf, with the Spanish caption translated as "Rabbi Fidellis eating bananas - He was with the Resistance and died in the Dachau concentration camp." The Coyula y Moeller family were apparently shareholders in a German casino in Cuba. Notably, an antecedent of the family was apparently friends with a German individual who is documented as later helping usher Hitler into power, and the album records two additional Nazi individuals who "visited grandfather's house" and "fled to Brazil" to escape the consequences of their war crimes. Yet another family photograph shows a group of adults posed in a garden with the caption reading: "Nuestro amigo: Resulto ser Himmler" ["Our friend: turned out to be Himmler"]. Indeed the image shows the man third from right is clearly Heinrich Himmler.

In addition to pictures of the family at home in Cuba, the album captures them in various locations in Germany, mainly Bonn, Hamburg, and the aforementioned Bad Godesberg. The family also traveled to New York in the United States and Southampton, England, among other places, with several photographs documenting their travels in each location. The album is also replete with identified photographs of a legion of family friends and acquaintances, providing ample opportunity for deeper research into the connections within the family, but also to the family's larger community. According to a previous owner, the album came out of the noted Weber family in Cuba. An exceptional and well-preserved collection presenting the lives of this noted German-Cuban family.