ViewMate - Image Archive, Image 41805 - Translation - German - Germany - Maybe Berlin - Banner/Bonner/Knisbacher

Information

Picture

Question

Category: Translation - German
Approval Date: 8/23/2015 4:01 PM
Family Surname: Banner/Bonner/Knisbacher
Country: Germany
Town: Maybe Berlin
Date of Image: March, 1917

Click the picture to enlarge

This is the same card as before but rotated to allow easy reading of the text at the top. At the very top left I see something like Ziet... Can anyone tell me what this really is? Also, is this photo studio known to anyone? Does anyone else have a card like this?

On the text message I can read, I think, "in besten.." but I can't read the middle text until I get to the end which seems to say "von dein Bruder Isak Knisbacher". Is at least that correct?

Apparently, from the cancellations, this card was sent out(from Berlin?) on 14 March,1917, and received at some "lager" in Austria (from the previous horizontal image) on 21 March, 1917. Does the lack of a postage stamp definitely mean my grandfather Isak Knisbacher was serving, or had served, in the German army--about which I had never heard anything before. Of course he died in 1918, supposedly of the swine flu, so my father, who was just 5 years old at the time, never knew him. Could he have succumbed to the flu because of the war?

Response

8/24/2015 3:17 AM

z. Andenken = for memory;
Die besten Gruesse = best regards;
uebersendet Dir Dein = is sending you your;
Bruder Isak = brother Isak;
Knisbacher;
Berlin, den 13. ... [the rest is covered by the Linz stamp.]

Also the signature shows that the card was sent from Berlin, probably on the day before the date on the Berlin stamp.

8/24/2015 9:15 AM

Absender Inft. Baner
Lazaret Berlin
21./4
Hern
Inft. H. Banner
Linz a/Donau
Postlagernd
Oestreich

z. Andenken
Die besten Grüße
übersendet Dir Dein
Bruder Isak
Knisbacher
Berlin, de 13/[III] 17

Note:
The sender was most probably at the military hospital in Berlin. As a serving soldier he had not to pay postage.
It was addressed as “Postlagernd”, also known in English as “general delivery” or in French as “poste restante”, it means that the recipient had to go to the post office with identification to pick up the mail. This was (and still is) a convenient way to reach somebody on the go who does not know where (s)he will be (well, not very useful today when cell phones are common).
The date 21./4 might be the date when the card was picked up by Hermann (apparently, he did not go to the post office very often).
Inft stand for Infanterist (member of the Infantry).

Berlin-N was the postal district of the northern part of the centre of Berlin around the Stettiner Bahnhof.

8/24/2015 9:19 AM

A "Kopier-Anstalt", according to the wording, supposedly only makes prints of submitted negatives and does not take photographs.

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ViewMate Posting VM 41805

Submitted by Jeffrey Mark Knisbacher