[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Help Reading Old German Script on Back of Photo

[Günther Böhm]

Sig Matt schrieb:
> Now to the missing word, the name of the town. 
> "Fluechtlingsheim ...... .....?
> I take my clue from the "Koenigsberger Str." that points to Eastprussia (Ostpreussen).
> Then looking sharply at the fuzzy word I see a capitol  C- r- a- n- z,  (Cranz) 
> The second word is  Ostpr. Again a commonly used abbreviation, in that time period, of the word Ostpreussen,.
>  
> Cranz was a resort town in it's time, (today "Selenogradsk", Kaliningradskaja Oblast, Russia.
> It lies roughly 25 km due north of Koenigsberg on the Baltic Sea. It had miles of beautiful shallow white beach.
> Our family would make an annual pilgrimage to it's shores to swim and get a real sunburn.
> I last saw it in the summer of 1944 with friends and siblings, a memmorable encounter.
Hello John,
Sig is right! The words "Cranz Ostpr" are correcly spelled:

   1. What I thought to be diphthong dots above the "a" is rather a spot
      (flyspeck).
   2. Because of the missing dot I didn't recognize the abbrevation "Ostpr."
   3. The whole address is of a second handwriting. >> The spelling of
      the surname "Klehmann" seems to be wrong since it was differently
      spelled on top.
   4. Cranz was a beach resort at the Baltic Sea. There were enough
      buildings to be used as refugee homes.
   5. Cranz had a "Königsberger Straße". Its actual (Russian) name is
      "Kurort Prospekt". www.cranz.de.vu says that it got an asphalt
      surface and gas light in 1937. So apparingly the Königsberger
      Straße was the esplanade along the beach.
   6. Though the photograph was taken in a studio, its background
      wallpaper shows the beach and the studio floor is covered by sand
      (the photographer used to take vacation pictures).

The German Cranz homepage www.cranz.de.vu is owned by

    Klaus A. LUNAU
    Bahnhofstr. 14
    D-30853 Langenhagen
    Phone +49 511 773407
    Fax +49 511 7684843
    E-mail KALUN at ostseebad-cranz.de

I think he has much more information for you.

Günther