Leave No Marx

I took an unplanned break from blogging but we're back again now.

I have to admit that I'm finding it hard to stick to a particular schedule when blogging so from now one the posts are going to be as and when rather than sticking to various places on various days.

I was reading in the newspaper today about plans to rename all the streets, avenues, squares etc. in the former East Germany which had been named after Karl Marx. This made me wonder how many cards I have of such places.

During my, still ongoing, search I found this.

I did mention in my introduction to the blog that name change places will feature in the blog, especially with post marks which no longer exist.

The card was sent almost exactly 40 years ago, again a coincidence, from Karl- Marx-Stadt in the DDR to Hannover in the BRD.

Karl-Marx-Stadt was the name given to Chemnitz  on 10th May 1953, the town centre had been heavily bombed in WWII and the rebuilding  and the new name were meant to symbolise urban development under socialism.

I'm not going to go into a history of the fall of Communism and the changes in Europe at the time, but suffice to say Germany was reunified on 3rd October 1990.

The change of name back to Chemnitz had actually taken place a few months before with 76% of the town inhabitants voting in favour of reverting back to Chemnitz in a referendum held in April that year.

I'm trying to find out which of the places feature on the card still exist. I know the petrified forest still does and Strasse der Nationen has kept its name.

I can't find any info on the fountains. They are very of their time so they may have been destroyed but they are quite innocuous looking so maybe they still stand.

The other building on the card is the Interhotel Moskau. From what I can gather the building still stands but has changed its name to Hotel an der Oper.

Interhotels had a reputation for being used by the Stasi to spy on Western Tourists. You can't help but wonder if the sender of this card was subject to such surveillance.

The Planes, The Planes

I thought I would show something quite modern, by my standards, for today .

This card was sent to me in 2002 by my brother and was issued to commemorate the Commonwealth Games which were held in Manchester that year.

Just to show how quickly things change, only one of the airlines depicted on the card, British Airways, exists under that name today.
The other three, Air 2000, Britannia and bmi have all merged into other airlines.

Air 2000 had the shortest run, operating between 1987 and 2004 before being merged with First Choice Holidays in 2008 and later with Thomsonfly to create Thomson Airways. The aeroplane on the card is an Airbus A321.

Britannia Airways was once the largest chartered airlines n the UK. It was founded in 1961 as Euravia and was renamed Britannia in 1964. It is probably best remembered in the UK as being the subject of a docusoap, ubiquitous in the 1990s, in 1998 called Airline. In 2005 it was rebranded as Thomsonfly which as we saw above eventually became Thomson Airways.

British Midland International (bmi) has the longest history of the airlines featured and operated under a number of names during its lifespan. Founded in 1938 as Air Schools Limited, as a school for training pilots, it changed its name to bmi in 1964.
The airline had two subsidiaries, bmibaby which is also defunct and BMI Regional which is still operating in the UK and Europe.
BMI itself was integrated into British Airways in 2012.

 

Paulinerkirche - Leipzig's Lost Church (1956)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have an interest in the GDR so you can expect to see quite a few East German cards on the blog.
I spent 5 months as student at Leipzig university in 1998 by which time University looked rather different from this 1956 postcard.
The Paulinerkirche is probably the most well know of the buildings on the card. It was built in 1231 and since the foundation of the university in 1409, the two have been closely related with the preachers appointed by the university.
During its proud history, which included inauguration by Martin Luther, many famous musicians have been associated with the church. Johann Sebastian Bach conducted holiday services there and Felix Mendelssohn's funeral was held there.  It also served as a military hospital during the Battle of Leipzig in 1813.
The church survived both word wars with little damage but a decision was made by the GDR government in 1968 to dynamite the church and the Augusteum next door as they were deemed ill-fitting for their concept of a socialist-orientated university.  Protestors were arrested.  A memorial, in the form of an A-frame sculpture in the size and location of the church was erected in 1993 and was still there in 1998 when I was a student in the city.
Today there is a new university church in its place and has the same shape as the Paulinerkirche. Church Services have been carried out there since 2009.

Edit - I've found  a picture which I took in 1998 as a student there, showing the A-frame.

Wednesday = Question Day

I'm sometimes asked if I have any cards I'm embarrassed about. I don't think I have any cards I'm ashamed of and there is certainly nothing I would hide away from people who wanted view my collection, but there are few cards that baffle me as to why I bought them.

Let's look at a couple.
This is a card depicting a holiday home on the Baltic Coast, I'm not sure why I bought it. It's true I have a liking for boring cards and I do have an academic interest in the GDR and every day life there but I do like good quality cards and this is not of good quality. The discolouration, for once, is not the fault of my scanner. I'm sure I could have found a better quality card to satisfy my interests.

Despite its ugliness I do still quite like it.

I'm going to do a rare thing and show the back (minus name and address) because it makes me laugh that the sender states they are visiting the beautiful Baltic. I've never been to that part of Germany but from pictures I've seen it is beautiful. You wouldn't know it from this card though.

The next card is also a mystery. I have been to Llandudno and it's lovely but the card below doesn't really give you this impression as its main focus seems to be a group of pensioners on a bench, with the scenery a sort of afterthought.

What is really weird is that I have two copies of this card, neither has been posted so I must have bought them myself. Now Llandudno is a tourist town so I'm sure there must have been prettier and more interesting cards available. I can only conclude that I must have bought them as some sort of long forgotten in-joke.

I do have some cards sent to me via Postcrossing which be hard to explain to people, semi naked men in sauna, Indonesian men with hooks in their back, but they will have to wait until another time.

St Peters Pro-Cathedral, Liverpool (1910)

I took a little break from blogging but everything should be business as usual this week.

A lot of my British cards will be from the north west of England as that is where I grew up and no matter how much I think I know about an area I always manage to discover places I never knew existed.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the big gothic Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, but how many of you were aware of its predecessor the modest looking St Peters which used to be in Church Street?

I wasn't either. Nor did I know that when the church was destroyed, Harrods planned on building their first store outside of London on the space once occupied by the building.


Firstly, let me apologise about the quality of the picture. I'm having problems with my scanner at present and I'm having to improvise.

The building, generally called ugly by most commentators, but I think that is rather unfair was situated on Church Street opposite what is now Marks and Spencer's. It was built in 1704 as a parish church became a cathedral in 1880 and closed in 1910, the years after this postcard was sent. Demolition was started in 1919 and completed in 1923. During its lifespan nearly 85 000 marriages took place and over 350 000 people were baptised. I do wonder when I see old buildings such as this if anyone is still in the city who remembers the place. Or how many people passing through the busy shopping street today know about the history of the place.

The spot the church stood on was later occupied by Woolworths, but that is also long and today Top Shop stands there, I wonder for how much longer. Apparently a Maltese Cross in the paving marks where the church once stood but I can't say I have noticed. I will make a point to look next time I am there though.

For more information on the St Peter's see here.

http://www.yoliverpool.com/st-peters-church-street-liverpool/

For information on other demolished buildings and streets of Liverpool visit here

    

SS Andrea Doria

Sorry I am rather late with my most recent blog post. As mentioned on Wednesday, today's blog post is in very questionable taste and I've been putting off writing about it.
The below is probably the most controversial card I own, not just because of the subject matter but because I bought the card knowing the history of the subject matter. I have other cards in my collection featuring controversial subjects but which were purchased in a job lot and I didn't realise the significance of the cards.

It's not the New York skyline which is the  problem here, this card is from the 1950s, long before the World Trade Centre was built and I would not feature that on the blog anyway.
The ship featured on the card is the Andrea Doria, which sank almost 60 years ago today on 25th/26th July 1956 (again the  date is a coincidence) with the loss of 46 lives.
The ship, built in 1951, was famed for it luxury and beauty and boasted three outdoor swimming pools and expensive artwork and décor throughout the ship.
It was also considered one of the safest ships ever built, with early warning radar and plenty of lifeboats no-one expected another Titanic. However there were flaws and its tendency to list when hit by heavy force was a contributing factor to its sinking. It also made it impossible to reach half of the lifeboats.
On 25th July, 9 days into a routine crossing, The Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm after misinterpreting each others courses. I don't want to dwell too much on the accident itself, there are plenty of places you can read about that. I will say that 51 people lost their lives, including 5 from the SS Stockholm, but considering there were over 1700 people on board the Andrea Doria and a further 742 on the Stockholm, the loss of life could have been much greater. Survivors of the crash included Hollywood actresses Ruth Roman and Betsy Drake. Sadly, many of those killed were young families.
The fate of the two ships involved was very different, The Stockholm was repaired and is still in service as the MV Astoria, the Andrea Doria remained afloat for 11 hours after the collision before sinking into the North Atlantic Ocean. The wreck remains there to this day and 16 divers have lost their lives diving wreck giving it the nickname the Mount Everest of Scuba Diving.

Wednesday - Question Day

I'm not going to answer a question today. I'm just going to muse.

I mentioned the blog at work today and that Friday's post will be rather controversial as it features a well known tragedy and I was asked if I meant  the Summerland Disaster.
I replied that I did not and  that I have no plans to feature any postcards  of Summerland on the blog as it is too close to home for most of my readers and is still an emotional subject in the Isle of Man even after 43 years.The anniversary of the disaster in which over 50 people died is coming up at the start of next month and a one minute's silence is planned to commemorate the victims. I intend to take part.
It does make me ponder why I'm willing to feature certain controversial subjects and not others and which other subject matter I would shy away from posting about.
I would certainly not post any cards featuring cultural heritage destroyed in large scale recent disasters, for example the Earthquake in Haiti in 2010 or the one in Nepal last year. The loss of life was too large and the countries involved are still recovering so it wouldn't be appropriate for me to discuss. I know other news sites have run stories on the loss of cultural heritage and UNSCO are also assessing the damage done, but for now at least you won't see any cards of such places on this blog.
Is it hypocritical of me to include a card of Varosha when the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus destroyed many more lives than the Summerland Disaster and took place only a year later?
Yes it probably is, but Varosha has been covered by so many other blogs and newspapers without too much controversy that I didn't feel I would be opening up new wounds should I choose to feature it here. I'm not sure the same could be said for Summerland.