THE PUZZLING POSTCARD

The PUZZLING POSTCARD

"She gets by with a LOT of help from her friends!"

This postcard was found among the "mystery artifacts" in the attic of the POHL Ancestral Home in Wellesley, MA.

The reverse of the card gives the following information:

Only part of the German postmark remains - place of the postmark was BERLIN, date was 14 May 1904

The Boston postmark is dated 25 May 1904

The card was sent to Mr. Robert POHL, 182 E. St., South Boston, Mass, United States of America; Rob was then 24 years old, and single, living at home with his father, Anton POHL, his mother, Anna WOLKE, his two brothers, Richard and Otto, and his sister, Anna Margaret.


There was a good chance that this postcard could yield some clues for my POHL research, and who better to ferret out those clues than Miss Marge Marple, Internationally Acclaimed Genealogical Detective!

I invited The Brilliant Miss M over for coffee and bagels and showed her the postcard.

"Refresh my mind about this family", she said as she reached for her third bagel, "and pass the cream cheese and salmon spread."

Background - In 1903, Rob POHL, my grandfather, his mother, Anna WOLKE and his brother, went back to Germany on a visit. They returned with a young girl, Clara Krieger, whose relationship to the family is not known (but, needless to say, "guesses" have been made, and theories offered, for decades!)

This postcard arrived in Boston a few days before Anna WOLKE died.

Now, Miss Marge considers herself a bit of a "linguist", though, in reality, her "repertoire" consists of a few prepositions and conjunctions in the major European languages (not to mention a few deletable invectives!). She quickly admitted that translating the card MIGHT prove a bit tedious, if not impossible!

The services of a thoughtful translator were certainly called for!

IIGS Internet Relay Chat would provide the answer!

Following Miss Marge's suggestion, I scanned the postcard, created a HTML document containing the card's image and uploaded the document to my "public directory" here at RootsWeb. I then connected to the IIGS server, and logged in to the regularly scheduled German genealogy channel, DEUgen.

Luck was with me! Jan, the co-moderator of the DEUgen channel was present that morning! I gave him the URL of the "postcard page", and he was able to translate the text for me!


Lieber Robert Dear Robert

Dein Bildt und Karte erhaltenHave received your picture and card
wor�ber wir unseren besten Dank aussprechenfor which we give you are great thanks
Lieber Robert deine Eltern Dear Robert, your parents
lassen ja gar nichts von sich h�rendon't let us hear anything about them
Bei uns ist alles beim alten With us everything is the same
wir sind vergn�gt und munter we are happy and in good spirits
und w�nschen von euch das gleicheand wish the same applies to you (plural)
weiter nichts neuesfor the rest there is nothing new
mein Bruder Hans ist jetzt auch my brother Hans is now also
in (?) St. Franzisko in San Francisco
viele Gr�sse von uns allen an euch allemany greetings from all of us to all of you
Besten Gru� von Ida und Anton ....Best greetings from Ida and Anton ...


In the on-line conversation that followed, Jan analyzed the message; in his opinion, the writer was "older" than Rob POHL, possibly a relative. He pointed out the use of the "familiar" form of the pronouns "you" and "your" and other more subtle clues in the language used.

We then discussed what appears to be an address at the very bottom of the card's message - it certainly LOOKED like "Prinzenst 63" (63 Prince Street?). Jan gave me the URL to a "Berlin street finder" page, and I learned that there were THREE possible "matches" in present-day Berlin!

Next step, of course, is to locate a "reverse street directory" to see if, by some chance, the people who now live at Prinzenst 63 can provide information about "Ida and Anton", and perhaps my POHL or WOLKE ancestors.

Then there's the bit of information about "my brother, Hans" who apparently went to San Francisco sometime between the time of Rob's visit to Germany in 1903 and the writing of the card in 1904. Who is this "auswanderer"? Was he a POHL? Was he a WOLKE?

"Fat chance", muttered Miss Marge. "The odds of your tracing THAT dude are about as good as the odds of Those Mariners making it to the World Series this year!"


So, Gentle Reader, we leave Miss Marge Marple, munching contentedly on her FIFTH bagel while planning the NEXT step in solving the "Riddle of the Puzzling Postcard" - as always, if YOU can suggest any strategies, DO send me email, and I'll pass your ideas on to Herself!


Read more about my POHL ancestors in the Miss Marge Marple's Minute Mysteries called The UNKNOWN DESTINATION, and The MYSTERIOUS ORPHAN

"Vielen Dank!" to Jan of IIGS for doing an AWESOME job of translating! You can meet him and the other IIGS chat coordinators and participants by joining the IIGS scheduled chat channels. For information, visit the IIGS-IRC Help Page.


BACK to MINUTE MYSTERIES INDEX

VISIT my GERMAN HERITAGE PAGE for more information about these folks.

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Marge Reid--[email protected]

This page was created 1 February 1999.

copyright © 1999 - Margaret V Reid