Oldenburg Horse - some historic photos Archive.org

 Salvete Omnes,

Graff Anton von Oldenburg and his horse graced these pages last year.

. so today just some images and a link to a fine book on the Oldenburger breed from Northern Federal Republic of Germany. 

.

.
enjoy

Valete

Cheiron - lecture on Medieval curb bits and hinged bits

 Salvete Omnes

MET German curb bit

Cheiron Journal has many podcasts on their Yt channel, and today I would like to point your horses to this presentation on the Medieval Curb and Hinged Bits..

The lecturer also uses my  own art from 2012 (eg used here  - a spade bit diagram with explanation. 

.some Medieval bits

John Clark's article on the archeology of Medieval bits in England.

Valete

Ottoman Turkish horsemen - Niklas Stor

 Salvete Omnes,

summer is in its dog days - 
I corralled some woodcuts from a German artist Niklas Stor (1503-1562)  depicting the Ottoman Turkish warriors. During this period  the Ottoman empire, Hungarian kingdom and German Reich entered into almost continued warfare. 

Master Niklas' work, in the tradition of master Albrecht Durer, provides plenty of information on the Ottoman riders and their equipment. 

.

.

.

. jasyr ( esir/asir - captives in captivity)

 

two camels(Bactrian & dromedary)  

& a giraffe 

enjoy

Valete

Horses of Warsaw 1939-1944

 Salvete Omnes,

today is the 82nd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising or Rising1944 - Hail to the heroes! 
Pacem aeternam!

return to Warsaw in the fall of 1939

Jewish ghetto in 1942 - note the bicycle rickshaw 

Nazi Germany  occupied Warsaw in the last week of September 1939. They organized a Jewish gheto within the capital and as you can see from the photos below there were horse-drawn vehicles a, trams an cars in the ghetto prior to 1943 etc.

Prior to the war the Warsaw horse transport had been giving  way to the electric streetcars and various cars and trucks, thus in 1938 there were 2,4 thousand registered taxis and 1,000 'dorozki' aka 'drozhki' (horse carriages used as taxis), and horse-drawn vehicles constituted 12% of all privately owned registered vehicles in the capital. I have not yet found information on how many hoses worked in Warsaw prior to the Uprising 1944. 

Wola district (within the Warsaw metropolitan area) was a traditional home of the many thousands of draft horses used for pulling the wagons and droshky (carriages) in the occupied left-bank Warsaw.

When the Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944 many hundreds or even thousands of horse carriages and their drivers were caught in the late afternoon fighting - from 1700 onward.

Apparently horses had fodder in the first week or two inside the city, since there were many gardens and green spaces within the capital, and people cultivated them for potatoes and fruits etc. As the Uprising persisted into the 2nd week the civilians and horses (and some locally kept cows) were subject to bombings by the German Air Force and artillery bombardments. 

Starting early into the Uprising  the Germans carried numerous massacres of civilian population of Warsaw, especially notable was the horrible massacre of the civilians in the very district of Wola (5th through 12th of August 1944), largest civilian massacre in World War II,

 When the slaughter and banishment of Wola inhabitants  was taking place the German Army troops and the Nazi  Police  forces killed and starved to death thousands of these working horses, and naturally they also  took some of them as the spoils of war or to carry the loot from the burning districts.

Horses in the districts still in the hands of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa)  were eventually killed by many bombardments and their flesh and bones boiled and eaten by the soldiers and civilians.  After August 15 many thousands of Polish civilians and AK soldiers were often semi-starving or outright starving. 

In 1945 yet again horses returned to Warsaw to work in the rebuilding of the capital.

Valete