3375 GERMANY (Bremen) - Postcrossing Meetup, Bremerhaven, 30 June 2018

This postcard, issued special for the first Postcrossing meeting which held in Bremerhaven, depicts Havenwelten (Harbour worlds), a maritime-styled quarter in Bremerhaven (about the city I wrote here). It includes the Atlantic Hotel Sail City , the Climate House Bremerhaven 8° East, the shopping mall Mediterraneo, the Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum (German Shipping Museum), the Bremerhaven Zoo (Zoo am Meer) and other maritime-themed places.

3165 GERMANY (Bremen) - Schnoor quarter

Many of the sights in Bremen are found in the Altstadt (Old Town), an oval area surrounded by the River Weser, on the southwest, and the Wallgraben, the former moats of the medieval city walls, on the northeast. The oldest part of the Altstadt is the southeast half, starting with the Marktplatz and ending at the Schnoor quarter. Actually, Schnoor is the only part of the city that has preserved a medieval character. The neighbourhood owes its name to old handicrafts associated with shipping (schnoor means string in german).

3094 GERMANY (Bremen) - An eye-bird view of the city of Bremen

 

 

The city of Bremen lies on both sides of the river, about 60km upstream of its estuary on the North Sea and its transition to the Outer Weser by Bremerhaven. Opposite Bremen's Altstadt (Old Town) is the point where the Middle Weser becomes the Lower Weser and, from the area of Bremen's port, the river has been made navigable to ocean-going vessels. The region on the left bank of the Lower Weser, through which the Ochtum flows, is the Weser Marshes, the landscape on its right bank is part of the Elbe-Weser Triangle.

2200 FRANCE - The Network No Pasaran

This postcard was issued probably in 2009 by the French Network No Pasaran, and  is a (bad) reproduction of a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), a French photographer considered the master of  candid photography (Bremen - Lunchtime rest in the shipyards / 1962). He spent more than three decades on assignment for Life and other journals, traveling and documenting some of the great upheavals of the 20th century: the Spanish Civil War, the liberation of Paris in 1944, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, and the deserts of Egypt.

2115 GERMANY (Bremen) - Bremen-Vegesack

Vegesack is a northern district of the city of Bremen, located about 20 km north from the centre of the city, at the mouth of the river  Lesum, beside the Weser. It was established long before the 14th century, when the site was a preferred and protected berth for sailing ships in the winter time or in the stormy seasons. After the first mention of a ferry across the Weser in the 14th century, the name Vegesack was first used in 1453.

2052 GERMANY (Bremen) - Bremen Hauptbahnhof

Situated to the Northeast of the city centre, Bremen Hauptbahnhof (German for Bremen main station) sees 100 long-distance and 410 regional trains per day. About 100,000 passengers per day use the station, which features nine platform tracks. The sculptures on the façade, among other railway-related symbolisms, depict the coats of arms of the cities of Bremen and Hamburg, the original destinations of the line. In front of the rail station is a sculpture by Jörg Immendorff, Affentor I (Ape Gate).

0915 GERMANY (Bremen) - The statue of the Town Musicians

The bronze statue on the western side of the Town Hall, near its entrance, is undoubtedly the most famous and most photographed representation of Die Stadtmusikanten (The Town Musicians), which portrays the donkey, dog, cat and rooster of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale. The donkey's front legs are shinier than the rest of the statue, as rubbing them is thought to bring good luck. The statue was commissioned by the Verkehrsverein der Freien Hansestadt Bremen e.V. and created by Gerhard Marcks (1889-1981), being installed in 1953, initially on loan from Marcks' workshop. Dr Hanns Meyer, head of the tourism organisation, appealed to Bremen's community spirit and collected donations to make the animals' home permanent. Aided by a loan from the city, the pyramid of animals standing one on top of the other was purchased for 20,000 deutschmarks.

0357 GERMANY (Bremen) - Town Hall and Roland on the Marketplace of Bremen (UNESCO WHS)

Seat of a bishop early as 787, so before that Charlemagne successfully conclude the bloody campaign of Christianization of Saxons, Bremen obtained in 888 the right to hold its own markets, to mint its own coins and make its own customs laws. Since then, the city on the River Weser permanently fought to maintain its independence or at least autonomy,  i.e. the right not to share with surrounding neighbors the consistent amounts accrued through trade privileges (don’t shoot me, Bärbel). It's one of the three reasons that UNESCO included in 2005 on its list of World Heritage Sites the Town Hall of Bremen (in the picture – the building from the left), "an exceptional testimony to the civic autonomy and sovereignty, as these developed in the Holy Roman Empire."

0267 GERMANY (Bremen) - Here piggy, piggy!

The Sögestrasse (Pigstreet) is a main shopping street in the city of Bremen, a pedestrian one which leads in south-north direction, from the upper road towards ramparts and Herdentorsteinweg Station to the street Am Wall. At the northern end is located a life-sized bronze statue by the sculptor Peter Lehmann, which depict a pigs flock with their swineherd and a watch-dog.

0125 GERMANY (Bremen) - Bremerhaven

Who controls the mouth of the River Weser on the North Sea controls the access to the Hanseatic port Bremen, located at 60 km south on the river, so this area was intensely disputed in the Middle Ages. Eventually in 1827 the city of Bremen bought those territories from the Kingdom of Hanover to retain its share of Germany's overseas trade. So was born Bremerhaven (i.e. Bremian Harbour), which become the second harbour for Bremen. Due to the trade with and emigration to North America, the port and the town grew quickly.