long shot - where is this?

[Curt Steinbach]

Hello All:

This is a long shot but there certainly is a great pool of knowledge here.

Does anyone know where this is? The card is postmarked 1917 as far as I can tell. I have found several other cards from the publisher online - Verlag fuer allgemeines Wissen, Berlin W9. However, there is no guarantee it is in Germany since the cards I found online depicted France as well as Brest-Litovsk.

At first I thought it was a museum or palace until I saw what looks like a cross on the roof. Doesn't look like any church I have ever seen and certainly not one with a clock over the entrance.

Any help with this little mystery is greatly appreciated and I will also post in the Imperial section since it's WW1 era.

Thanks
Curt

[Curt Steinbach]

closeup of postmark and publisher name

[mjfur]

Does this help?

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/gall...azetteer/2589/

[Br. James]

BINGO! Mjfur has hit it right on the head! Your post card appears to show this Russian Orthodox church prior to the 1919 restoration as it looks like there are massive shell marks in the exterior masonry. To the western eye, such Byzantine eastern religious buildings can appear odd, given our experience with high Gothic arches over against the Byzantine use of curved arches. But what is most odd is that the post card does not include a caption stating where the photo was taken, on either side!

Br. James

[mjfur]

.

[Curt Steinbach]

Amazing! Thanks so much mjfur and BR James. yes, it was rather weird that there were no captions. Others that I found from this publisher had captions.

Curt