The last cowherd

Fritz Kortebusch was the last cowherd in Bochum town in the Westfalia, Germany.  Every day from 1850 to 1877 he drove the cattle or other animals belonging to the townspeople to the common land.  At that time almost every family would have owned a goat and/or a cow.

The first memorial to Fritz Kortebusch was put up in 1908 but it was melted down during WWII.  It was replaced in 1962 and now stands where the former town hall, market place and pillory used to be.  the old common land is now the Bochum Stadtpark, after Essen, the oldest communal park in the area which opened in 1878.

Dwarves in Wrocław

To understand the presence of these dwarves in Wrocław,  we need to go back to the 1980s when the Orange alternative movement was active in Poland.  Their purpose was to use nonsensical ways of protesting, to poke fun instead of other more confrontational means.  They were a branch of Solidarity, Solidarność.

They started off by painting dwarves over the efforts by the police to cover over anti-government slogans.  Although they stopped being active in 1989, in 2001 they reactivated, and dwarves started to reappear on the streets of Wrocław, though this time they were small statues rather than graffiti.

Since their first appearance, their numbers have been growing steadily.  Although new ones appear each year, sadly some are disappearing.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Kaliningrad

That's a statue of Peter the Great on the right but the lighthouse and houses of the Fishing Village really don't look much like the Russia of my imagination.  It is though.  This is Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad is geographically completely separate from Russia, and not just by a little bit - hundreds of miles.  It is separated from Russia by Lithuania and Poland.  It was once called Königsberg and part of Prussia, then Germany.  It was almost destroyed during WWII and occupied by the Red Army.  It was renamed in 1946 after Mikhail Kalinin.

It was once one of the Hanseatic League cities.  The Hanseatic League was set up during the 12th century between merchants from northern Europe, mainly German and Scandinavian.  It became so powerful it lasted for approximately three centuries.  The word "hansa" can still be found today, most notably in Lufthansa, the German airline.

In 1980 a new Hanseatic League was formed, open to all former members, to promote tourism and trade.  Kings Lynn in Norfolk is the only English member.  It was once the third most important port in England.  It still has two warehouses dating from those times.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won

The quote in the title of this post is one from Winston Churchill.  My difficulties this week started with the fact the only card that remotely links with the Sepia Saturday theme this week is one I found with a statue of Winston Churchill on The Green at Westerham in Kent.  My opportunities lay in finding out why he was there, because I don't know the area at all.

I very quickly discovered that the Churchill statue is in recognition of the fact that he lived at nearby Chartwell, from 1922 until his death in 1965.  When I realised that, I was able to pull out two more cards of Chartwell itself, now owned by the National Trust and open to visitors.

This card dates from the 1960s by which time Churchill no longer owned the house.  He had bought it in 1922 but in 1946 he and his wife Clementine were finding it too expensive to run.  At that time a consortium of businessmen bought the property and rented it to the Churchills at a nominal rent.  On their deaths it was to be passed on to the National Trust but in fact Clementine decided to present it to the Trust immediately after Churchill died.

This more recent postcard from Gordon Fraser Gallery published for the National Trust gives a better idea of the red-brick building.

The statue on The Green was unveiled by Sir Robert Menzies in 1969 as recorded by Pathé News.

CHURCHILL STATUE

But Churchill wasn't alone on The Green.  I found earlier cards showing a statue of General James Wolfe, before the arrival of Churchill's statue. 

Wolfe was born in Westerham [updated after Bob's comment].  His statue was unveiled in 1911 on the 250th anniversary of his death.  According to the Dartford Times, on that day there were lunchtime lectures featuring Great British Heroes - and they were held in Chartwell, 11 years before another Great British Hero took up residence.

You might like to visit Sepia Saturday and see how other people have interpreted (or not) the theme this week.

Young worker

Why would anyone want to send me a picture of a young man, I thought at first glance, but this is a sculpture in polyester resin and fibreglass, by Duane Hanson.  He, I have to call the sculpture a "he", is dressed in real clothes and is a well known example of the sculptor's super-realism.  The piece is at the Norton Museum of Art, Florida.

Oscar Wilde and Eduard Vilde

Appearances can be deceptive.  In spite of having a sculpture showing them in conversation, the two writers, Oscar Wilde from Ireland and Eduard Vilde from Estonia, never met.  It would have been quite possible, they were of roughly the same age.

In 1999 the sculpture was placed outside the Wilde Irish Pub in Tartu themed around literature in general and these two writers in particular.  The pub occupies part of a building, a former printing house, along with a book shop.  From what I can understand though, the pub has changed hands and in the process lost its Irish flavour.

In 2004, as a gesture of friendship in the new Europe, Estonia presented Galway with a life size replica of this statue.  Whether it figures in postcards, I don't know.  It would be lovely to have both, if so!

This is a post for Postcard Friday, which is hosted by Beth Niquette at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Keeper of the Plains

This dramatic scene is one that came into being to mark the bicentennial of the United States of America in 1976, although the statue was erected in 1974.

Keeper of the Plains stands at the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers in Wichita, KS.  The 44-ft Cor-Ten steel sculpture by nationally renowned artist Blackbear Bosin was a gift from the artist to the City of Wichita.  The work was dedicated in May 1974.

Cor-Ten, I have found out, is a type of steel designed not to need painting.  It develops a rust-like appearance in time.  The sculpture shows a Native American warrior offering a blessing to the sky.  It was raised on to a 30-ft rock pedestal in 2006 so that ipeople could see it from further away.

this card was sent to me in April 2009.  I can't read the postmark but the sender said she doesn't live in Wichita, so it could be anywhere.

Tartu's kissing students

This was one of the several cards which arrived for me over the Christmas period.  It has beautiful stamps too.  You can clearly see the postmark of Paldiski and the date.

The Kissing Students statue in Tartu was erected in 1998 but has rapidly become famous and is now considered symbolic of Tartu which is primarily a university town.