Skiers Posing with a Polar Bear

A photo for the Vintage Photos Theme Park monthly topic of winter activities—shoveling snow, sledding, throwing snowballs, skiing, making snow angels, ice skating, etc. (submit a photo on this topic each week in addition to—or instead of—a photo for the weekly topic).

This is the first photo in a small album of German skiing photos that I purchased recently. The album may have been compiled by Ursel Schmidt (b. 1932), whose pass from the German Ski Association (Deutscher Skiverband) is attached to one of the pages. There's no date, but I'd imagine that the photos—most of which are typical images of skiers and snow-covered landscapes—were taken in the 1940s or 1950s.

After some searching, I was surprised to discover that there are many similar souvenir photos featuring faux polar bears not only on ski slopes but also on beaches, in the streets, and in many other locations in Germany. For some background on this practice, which apparently dates to the 1920s, see The German Tradition of Posing with a Man in a Polar Bear Costume, an article by Caitlin Schneider that appeared on the Mental Floss site, April 6, 2016. For more photos, see Eisbär-Kostüme 1920-1960 [Polar Bear Costumes 1920-1960], a Flickr gallery by Kai Heinrich.

There are also two published collections of these German polar bear photos. See Jean-Marie Donat, Teddybär [Teddy Bear] (Paris: Innocences, 2015) and Jochen Raiss, Eisbären and Polar Bears (German- and English-language editions, Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2019).