Deutsche Bundespost Postcard Marking President Carter's Visit to Berlin - 1978

DEUTSCHE BUNDESPOST on 15 July 1978 issued postal stationery with special franking to mark President Jimmy Carter's three-day visit to West Germany. The stamp on this postcard shows it was postmarked Berlin Kongresshalle when Carter visited and addressed citizens in West Berlin.

 

The postage stamp is Friedrich Ludwig Jahn  (1778 – 1852) who was a German gymnastics educator and nationalist. His writings credited him with the founding of the German gymnastics (Turner) movement as well as influencing the German Campaign of 1813, during which a coalition of German states effectively ended the occupation by Napoleon's First French Empire. His admirers know him as "Turnvater Jahn", roughly meaning "Father of Gymnastics Jahn". Deutsche Bundespost issued this stamp in 1978.

As for President Carter's visit in Berlin, he stood before an audience of 1,000 Berliners and fielded questions for nearly an hour on everything from the security of the divided city to the size of his daughter's weekly allowance. At the town meeting in the Congress Hall, Carter addressed the audience in German: “Was immer sei, Berlin bleibt frei,” or “Whatever may be, Berlin stays free.” He had said the same thing earlier at a ceremony at the Berlin Airlift Memorial.

President Carter and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt laid wreathes at the Memorial to the 78 Britons, Americans and West Germans who lost their lives during the Berlin Airlift in 1948-1949. Accompanied by Chancellor Schmidt throughout, he then drove to Potsdam Square, where he mounted a platform and looked over the wall into East Berlin.

The state-sponsored trip also included stops in Bonn and Frankfurt (town hall) and military base in Wiesbaden.

Source: New York Times