Thursday, April 11, 2013

Rusnė 1921




This is a registered cover sent in 1921 from Ruß/Russ (now Rusnė, Lithuania) to Gelsenkirchen, Germany. It is interesting that there is a German military censorship even  after the war, we see the hand stamped violet inscription "M.P.k." (Militärische Postkontrolle in Königsberg / Military post control).
As usual, I have looked the destination address: Oststr. 40, Gelsenkirchen and had no problem pin-pointing it on Google map in 5 seconds. But the fact that it was even too easy to find out, made me suspicious... What if the present Oststraße in Gelsenkirchen wasn't Oststraße back in 1921? And I was right this time. According the map of Gelsenkirchen made in 1928, Oststraße runs through the present Magdeburger straße! Germany, like Japan, went through a massive place name changes after WW2, anything relating to a ruler that contributed to a territorial gain or a military victory in the past was heavily omitted depending on the places. You can see on the 1928 map of Gelsenkirchen bellow the changes that has been made, for example Königgrätzer straße is gone, probably due to the battle of Königgrätz (now Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, decisive battle of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 which ended with a overwhelming Prussian victory).

2013 Gelsenkirchen Google map and 1928 Gelsenkirchen map

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