Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Obeliai 1916



This is German military field post (Feldpost) card of Abeli (now Obeliai, Lithuania) sent in 1916 to Scholderup, Schleswig (now Taarstedt, Schleswig-Holstein), Germany. Abeli is very often mistaken to be part of Latvia. This town was mentioned as part of Kurland (Courland) in most of the documents prior to WWI, because the term "Kurland" was purely geographic to most the Germans at that time. Today the simple formula: Kurland = Kurzeme therefore Kurland = "part of Latvia" is followed by most of the non-Latvian people. In addition to this, there is a town called Ambeļi near Daugavpils not far from the Lithuanian border, which for some unknown reason, sometime mistakenly spelled "Abeļi". If you are in doubt to identify a picture, the church you see on this postcard can be your best bet, it remains exactly in the same shape in today's Obeliai.

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