Let's take a trip to Berlin!

Welcome to my new blog! This blog will be about something as strange as postcards from a place that no longer exists. You can still go there physically and you can still see many of the buildings and places, but it will still be another place. Those postcards all come from a place that was artificially created and that only lived for some 50 years. This blog will be about the divided Berlin, as it was shown on postcards sent from either side of that dreadful wall.

My name is Anders and I am a 38 year old guy from Sweden. A bad thing is that I just can't stop collecting stuff. I am also a seasoned computer nerd, happily married to the most wonderful wife and a very proud father of a 4 month old little guy - the cutest one in the world! Well, about collecting stuff.. I have a big collection and a small collection. The big one is of vintage computers and video games from the 70:s and the 80:s. It fills a room and it can really give my wife a look I really don't want her to have. The smaller collection takes up only two books and it is around that collection this blog will spin. Well, it will not really be about the collection, but the actual objects. The collection is of postcards from the divided Berlin, from the day when the wall was there, when GDR tried to showoff huge concrete buildings and happy couples in otherwise empty streets and the west germans took pictures from the other side, often showing the wall.

Everything started with a trip to Berlin about 10 years ago. I fell in love with the city on the second day and it has been a love affair ever since. I have been there about ten times now and it feels a bit good that I know the streets there better than those in Stockholm, the pretty boring capital of Sweden. Some years ago I searched a Swedish auction site for Berlin related stuff. By just a coincidence I found a bunch of old postcards, for the divided time, which I found interesting. It was strange and fascinating to see the city I like so much from that very different time and so very different from today. It was also very interesting to read more about the background, the places on the postcards and even what has been written on some of the cards. I got hooked and started to buy more. A good thing with this is that it is pretty cheap and my wife does not get that mean look she gets from the computer collection.

My idea with this blog is to simply show my postcards to you and write some about them. I hope there will be some form crystallizing further on. I hope to be able to help you find the places on the cards and tell some background. I will also try to translate the messages.

So, let's start with a really classic site, the Checkpoint Charlie!

Checkpoint Charlie. Click the picture for a larger version!

This is such a classic picture that it almost doesn't require any explanation. The Checkpoint Charlie was likely the most well known border passage between the east and the west. It became a symbol of the cold war and the separation of the east and west Berlin. It was here were tanks from both sides stood, facing each other, during a very dire moment during the Berlin crisis, 1961. The border passage has also been part of more thriller books and movies than we can possibly mention here.

The photo on this postcard was taken against the border, facing the East Berlin side. The western soldiers look happy when speaking to the man in the leather trench coat. Maybe he told then that he just had been smuggling coffee and some western currency to his eastern relatives. On the eastern side it looks more empty. Just as much as the warning sign warns you that you, by going through the checkpoint, are leaving the American sector, the GDR state symbol greets you into the communistic eastern part.

The location of the Checkpoint C (Charlie is the name for C in the phonetic alphabet) was and still is on Friedrichstraße 43, some kilometer south of the Friedrichstraße S-bahn station. As you saw above I wrote "still is". Even though the Berlin wall now is gone some parts of the Checkpoint Charlie, mainly the guard shed, has been kept intact. There is a Berlin Wall museum next to the shed which actually is more interesting nowadays.
 
Here you can navigate around the same place today:


Show larger map

And below is a map to see where it is located. The red line shows where the outer section (the one closest to West Berlin) of the wall was stretched. The purple box shows the location of the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing.

Show Berlin Wall on a larger map



And now, let's have a look at the back!

The postcard was posted 1964, but according to the card the photo was taken after the 13 august, 1961. Well, that date is pretty obvious as it was the starting date of the construction of the Berlin wall. The card was posted to "Driver Harry Johansson" in Skövde, Sweden. The text was a short but nice standard greeting. Translated it says something like:

Hearty greetings from a very interesting vacation trip. Have seen a lot of East Berlin and the wall. Send my greetings to Karin!

Ingegerd

That's it for now. Hope you liked this first post in my very new blog! I hope to be back with another postcard from Berlin in a day or two!