Jansimon
01 Aug 2013 04:46:16am
Auctions - Approvals | re: Need help with WW1 Soldiers Cards
In the first card the writer, Joh. (Johann?) Durst, says thanks for the packet he received from the Hengstenberg family, and wishes them nice holidays. The card was written December 22nd 1915. The address was hard to read, but I think it says Waldmohr, which is a small village in the Palatinate. This seems plausible, as the writer is in the 23rd Bavarian Infantry Regiment, 9th company of the Royal Bavarian 3rd Infantry Division. The Palatinate, now Rheinland-Pfalz used to be (partly) Bavarian.
The second card is much harder to decipher, but it looks to be similar in content.
It starts:
Dear relatives,
Many thanks for the packet. the cake was excellent. I am now fully back in the "war-life", it seems like I have not been away at all.
The rest I cannot read completely.
... momentan nicht ... bei und fragt sich blos(?)... unter ... mit seiner letzten offen... ein... . Hoffe dass Ihr ... alle der besten ....
In any case, it was written the 12th of June 1917.
Jan-Simon
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Rhinelander
Support the Hobby -- Join the American Philatelic Society 12 Aug 2013 10:17:03pm | re: Need help with WW1 Soldiers Cards
I collect WWI postal history and this posting is right down my alley. I find these postal cards and letters quite difficult to read. Usually it is trivial stuff, not really worth the effort. Generally speaking, the soldier did not want to worry the folks back home and, thus, usually kept the communication at a somewhat superficial level. This is despite the fact that there was generally no censorship of soldier's letters in the German army as opposed to, for instance, the U.S. or British military.
The first postcard is postmarked with a single circle postmark Feld-Postexped. K.B. III. Infant.-Division 23 12. That's the field post office of the 3rd Royal Bavarian (koeniglich bayrisches) Infantry Division. There is no year date in this style of cancel. Christmas eve, December 24th, is the most important day in German Christmas tradition, and, thus, the card was written right before Christmas 1915. The package mentioned in the postcard likely was a Christmas present.
The card highlights a particularity of the German field post system during WWI in that there was no uniform field post system. At the time, three postal systems coexisted in Germany, the Reichspost as well as the royal Bavarian and Wurttemberg postal services. While the three postal systems cooperated, it created a mix of field post installations operated by one of the three entities. In this case, the postcard originated from a Bavarian field post office.
There is a lot more to say about this and the other card, but I have to leave it at that for now. Will continue later.
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