Friday, February 20, 2015

Klaipėda 1943



Faßt Kohlenklau! (Catch the coal thief!)
That's how the IIIrd Reich coal thief looks like

Sender stays at the Hotel Viktoria in Memel

This is a postal stationery sent in 1943 from Memel (now Klaipėda, Lithuania) to Straßburg (now Strasbourg, France) which was re-annexed by the Third Reich at the time just like Memel was. It has a comical looking anti-coal thief "Faßt Kohlenklau!" campaign logo on the left bottom corner. I guess there were many thieves targeting coal supply during WWII in Germany, otherwise they wouldn't have such campaign, would they?
The sender stayed at the Viktoria Hotel which was a wonderful Jugendstil architecture now unfortunately destroyed. It was named "Victoria Viešbutis/Hotel" during the Lithuanian time but after the Nazi re-annexation, they've changed the spelling to "Viktoria". This hotel at the address Polangenstraße Nr. 5 was originally called "Lipper's Hotel" when it opened back in 1858.

Victoria Hotel during the Lithuanian period (picture from wiki-de.genealogy.net, not mine)

Hotel card of the pre-Lithuanian period (also from wiki-de.genealogy.net)

3 comments:

  1. Do you have this postcard?
    contact me under pikas9x@gmail.com
    Im interested in Lithuanian postcards.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Do you have this postcard?
    contact me under pikas9x@gmail.com
    Im interested in Lithuanian postcards.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If it is the postcard you are talking about, yes I do! The 2 pictures on the bottom are not mine like it is mentioned.

    ReplyDelete