Landauer family photograph

The Landauer family photograph is one of the few objects Hana says survived from the prewar years. When she gives it to Zdenka, the image makes the former home’s history physically present: its terrace, bench, and sandpit remain recognizable, while the family gathered there belongs to a vanished life. Against newer photographs of the house, the old picture carries the weight of time and Hana’s remembered happiness.

The photograph and its setting

After Zdenka performs, Hana watches in rapture and remains silent when the music ends. Zdenka kneels beside her and takes her hands; they stay motionless together before Hana turns to the briefcase on the floor. She brings out the photographs she had promised Zdenka, along with one of her own, explaining that it is almost the only thing left from before the war and might interest her.

The family preserved in the image

The photograph shows a thoughtful man, a smiling woman holding a baby, and a little girl between them. Zdenka recognizes the setting at once: the terrace on the upper floor of the building above them, with the curved bench beside the family and the sandpit behind. The adults’ clothes mark another era—the man in a formal suit, the woman in an old-fashioned dress with a narrow skirt and padded shoulders. Its indistinct quality resembles an incomplete memory, though the sunlight seems to reach from the present into the small scene of the past.

Hana identifies the people as Viktor and Liesel with Martin and Ottilie. Ottilie had been Hana’s goddaughter, a choice Viktor did not approve of; Hana recalls that she herself thought he had a point, wondering at the time why anyone would choose someone like her. The image thus records not only a family at home but Hana’s place within its intimate circle, including an affection and responsibility that persisted beyond the household’s prewar life.

Looking, memory, and loss

The photograph’s gaze gives the remembered moment a particular intimacy. Viktor appears to look somewhere left of the camera, but Liesel seems to be watching the photographer directly. Hana says that the family had been very happy, a statement made in the present tense of recollection, where happiness is inseparable from what has since been lost.

The old image contrasts with the recent photographs Zdenka and Hana examine afterward. Those are bright, glossy, and professionally composed views of the building and its interior, including the gym with exercise mats arranged before the onyx wall. A group photograph in the Glass Room places Hana and Zdenka on one side and Tomáš and Eve on the other; Tomáš and Eve are holding hands. The contemporary pictures document the house as it is now, but Hana’s older photograph holds a different charge: the familiar terrace becomes evidence of an earlier family life, seen through the surviving object and the memories it releases.