Preila 1939

Kurische Haff / Kuršių marios / Curonian lagoon

Unfortunately the edge had been cut out for some reason but I didn't hesitate to buy this postcard because of the rare postmark. It is a postcard send in 1939 by the German Landpost from Preil (now Preila, Lithuania) to... I think Berlin O. (Ost) but I'm not sure. It could be Lublin as well, at the time part of the German occupied Poland. Landpost is a German postal service provided for an area without a post office. It usually has a violet rectangular cancel without date and a regular round cancel of the affiliating post office sometime with the inscription "Land". Most of those rectangular cancels carry an extra information like "Kreis ???" as you see in this case or "über ??? (nearby town's name)" because the area served by the Landpost is in most of the case a remote area of some kind or almost without inhabitant. There was no post office in Preila during the Memelgebiet period as well as the WWII reannexation period. As far as I know, there is no comprehensive list of the former Memelland Landpost postmarks ever published so if you do know something, please let me know, I would greatly appreciate it!