"On the Firing Line with the Germans" Film Annotations (2017)

ecause of this confinement in Berlin, Durborough had the time to compile a wonderful record of the
city in this second summer of the war, an effort that may have been aided by Schuette.
One of the earliest references that we found in official German documents to Durborough and Ries was
in a report by the Foreign Office dated 5 May 1915. It describes a trip arranged for neutral foreign
correspondents to a number of industrial cities in the Ruhr area. On this occasion Durborough and Ries
were also accompanied by Albert K. Dawson, a fellow photo-journalist who worked for the American
Correspondent Film Company. On 26 April 1915, they were near Hannover at a training ground where
they witnessed a massive military exercise at the Vahrenwalder Heide, which was covered with their
cameras. The report noted: "The General Command of the 10th Army Corps for this visit had assembled
a large military force from the city of Hannover and surroundings and had done this in a way that wasn’t
noticed. The combined field exercises of the infantry, cavalry, artillery and a large number of airplanes
made for a picturesque military sight. A series of photographic and cinematographic recordings of this
event was made." 3
Figure 3. Photograph by Durborough of German troops charging across an open field. The scene was probably taken at a
training ground, perhaps near the Vahrenwalder Heide around Hannover in April 1915. Copied from the New York Times, 4
July 1915
In May, Durborough and Ries filmed the notable Chicagoan Jane Addams along with Aletta Jacobs and
Alice Hamilton, who were in Berlin as part of the Women’s Peace Movement. The three women had
been traveling to all the belligerents in Europe, trying in vain to persuade the responsible leaders in the
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