Monday, June 4, 2012

Juodkrantė 1940


This is a postally unused postcard of Schwarzort (now Juodkrantė, Lithuania) printed in Memel (now Klaipėda) in 1940.  The neo-Romanesque church in the center is the Šv. Pranciškaus Asyžiečio bažnyčia/church of St. Francis of Assisi, originally built in 1885 for the protestant church to replace the previous wooden structure. "Juodkrantė" means "black coast" in Lithuanian and the German name "Schwarzort" means "black place", but it is not know which one came first. According to the written document, German "Schwarzort" is mentioned earlier but it might derive from an older Curonian legend, orally transmitted as a fairy tale.

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