Advent, Advent .... People of the world, don't abandon this city!

Advent, Advent ... on December 5, 1948, Ernst Reuter was elected mayor of West-Berlin, the legendary Social Democrat who asked the "people of the world," to not abandon Berlin. Reuter, born in 1899 in what is today Denmark, was a former Communist. In 1933, the Nazis put him in a concentration camp; he spent World War II in Turkish exile. Reuter made his speech due to the blockade of West Berlin, when the GDR, together with the Soviets, closed the streets and the railways to West Germany. The blockade led to the Berlin Airlift and it got Reuter on the cover of Time Magazine. This was also the end of the immediate post-War period and the beginning of the Cold War.

Today you will get two pics; one from Berlin 1945, by Michael Brettin, and one from Berlin in the Cold War, by Thomas Flemming, from Berlin's past that is still visible today.

Your publisher, Eva C. Schweitzer

Advent, Advent .... December 4, 1943.

Advent, Advent! December 4 is an important date for Leipzig, the city that was home to Bach, Luther, and Goethe, and whose former mayor Carl Goerdeler had been executed by the Nazis for being in the resistance. On that day in 1943, the city was bombarded by the American and British air force, a strike that destroyed or damaged many buildings, including the church of St. John, the church of St. Matthew and the church of St. Thomas, where Bach played the organ, and killed 2000 people. Here is more from our book: Leipzig. One Thousand Years of German History, by Sebastian Ringel.

On December 3, 1943, at 3:58 a. m., a cascade of light and so-called Christmas trees—lights hung on parachutes to mark bomb targets—lit up the city. A spectacle ceremoniously announcing the beginning of the destruction. In the next moment, the first flight squadrons crossed a sky that was lit up as bright as day, from north to south, dropping bombs to break up the roofs. The entire city center shook with the resulting concussions. The force of countless detonation store windows and doors off their hinges and crumbled the mortar in basement walls, where men, women, and children clung to each other in the dark, seized by mortal fear. When the hellish noise waned twenty minutes later, silence descended. There was no all-clear signal since the sirens had been destroyed. Despite the explosive power, only a few buildings collapsed. The actual destruction was yet to come. In a corridor three miles long and almost a mile wide, from Uferstrasse in the north down to Connewitz, about five thousand fires were blazing.....

Your publisher, Eva C. Schweitzer