untitled

gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard

signed (pencil) on mount recto

The popular motif of birch trees in the interwar period is realized here by Baur in two variations (see also S-272). The photographs were taken in the Swabian Donaumoos near Günzburg, the birthplace of Baur's mother.
The Swabian Donaumoos is the largest contiguous wetland in southern Germany, a hydrogeological peculiarity because the huge volumes of karst water from the south-eastern Swabian Alb flowing into the Danube valley have created a very large Danube gravel groundwater reservoir, resulting in a wetland, partly a fen.
The undemanding nature of the birch in terms of nutrient supply and its rapid growth make it a pioneer plant that quickly colonizes suitable light-favored areas such as clearcuts, forest clearings and burnt areas. It has a competitive advantage particularly in bogs, where other woody plants do not find suitable growing conditions due to the high acidity of the bog soil, and can form species-poor scrub. A special birch species can be found in the Swabian Danube Moss in the form of the shrub birch (Betula humilis). It is a so-called ice age relict. After the retreat of the glaciation at the end of the Ice Age, isolated island-like distribution areas remained outside the main area in the Alps. The shrub birch is one of the pioneer shrubs on base-rich peat soils and is strictly protected. There are only two known locations of this tree species in the Leipheimer Moos, which only grows to about knee height.¹
(Christoph Fuchs)

Notes

1
Strauch-Birke, Arbeitsgemeinschaft Schwäbisches Donaumoos e.V., https://www.arge-donaumoos.de/naturraum/pflanzen-und-tiere/pflanzen-im-moor/