I thought I would share my 1930 postcard written and mailed by Gunther Prien to his sister Liselotte while he was on the ship San Francisco. Really is a nice personal item from Prien's documented time on this ship as he thanks his sister for the gift of a pillow. Thanks for any comments.
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I know this postcard. It was part of the Prien estate sold a couple of years ago in auction in Germany. There was some excellent material, all from the family of Prien.
This postcard is an excellent example of a genuine personal handwritten Gunther Prien. The ship is the San Francisco out of Hamburg upon which Prien served as Fourth Officer in the German Merchant Navy. He had no sooner assumed his responsibilities when the ship collided with another vessel, the Karlsruhe, in a dense fog in the ship channel near the Hoheweg lighthouse. Prien, who had gone forward at the time to supervise preparations to drop anchor as a precaution, was the first to see the oncoming Karlsruhe's light as she loomed out of the fog. Some weeks later, he was summoned to an inquiry into the accident by the Marine Court in Bremerhaven, causing him to fear that he might somehow be blamed for the collision and lose his freshly-minted license, thereby ending his budding career as a Merchant Marine officer when it was barely begun, but the Court ruled that the weather was solely to blame for the accident.
A lovely genuine historical piece. My congratulations.
Max. -
Very nice postcard. My grandfather met Prien in 1940, at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, and they corresponded for a short time thereafter.Comment
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Saw that one a month ago on the e-stand by the same poster.........
Nice card it is, and indeed a good Prien one among that mine field loaded with fake Prien signatures.
yours friendly
Eric-JanComment
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Thank you very much for the kind remarks. It is indeed this fine Prien signature that you saw on the estand. I'm try to gain collecting focus as I realize I cant collect everything! (Unfortunatley).
http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=528644Comment
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This is a genuine historical piece and is quite unusual for a Prien, much better than the usual signed portrait cards, most of which are fakes.Originally posted by Glowlight View Post
Max.Comment
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That is a nice postcard. I personally tend to like to find things like this, rather than the usual militaria (not that the militaria is not interesting, but there is always more to the person than *just* their military service).
I would like to make a correction with regards to the aforementioned collision. That never happened. I did a lot of research, as much as I could do with my limited means, with regards to Prien, and this collision never happened. The book, "U Boat Commander" which is the English version of the ghostwritten book "Mein Weg Nach Scapa Flow" (the ghostwriter being Paul Weymar) mentions this collision.
I had contacted Hapag-Lloyd (as HAPAG/Hamburg Amerika Linie merged with Norddeutscher Lloyd in the 1970s sometime) about this incident. The company replied that they have no record of such an incident in their archives.
I know that this digressing a bit, but during my research in 2007, I had tried to even correct the WIKI page on Prien, but my correction regarding this was not allowed due to it being "personal research" and that I had no documentation on the matter...so unfortunately, the falsehood remains alive and perpetuated.
Sadly...Comment
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