Lemberg / Lwów / Lviv Greetings

I'm unsure life was 'better' back then, but it certainly was…different from today

Today I’ll take you to Lemberg or Lwów (in Polish), a place in present-day Ukraine known as Lviv. See here for the Wikipedia entry.

There are few other places, with perhaps Czernowitz or Cernăuți (in Romania), another place in present-day Ukraine known as Chernivtsi, that is more ‘Old Habsburg’ than Lemberg.

I’ve scanned these postcards upon the request of another big fan, and hence I think you should enjoy them, too. This is part one of a multi-part trip to one of the more unfortunate, and blood-soaked, parts of Eastern Europe.

Shown is the University of Lviv, which predates Habsburg rule, whose premises were built to house the diet of Galicia and Lodomeria before the restoration of Polish statehood after World War One. Today, it is home to the Ivan Franko University.

A picture postcard showing the Dominican Church of Lemberg, one of the city’s main (Catholic) sites of worship. That postcard, as its reverse (below) shows, was printed in 1915 and mailed during World War One; that red stamp indicates it was o.k.-ed by the Austro-Hungarian military censorship office in Lemberg.

The above site is right across the Shevchenko Monument, and in 2015, it looked like this:

In summer 1944, Lemberg was conquered by the Red Army, which resulted in the expulsion of both the small German and the much larger Polish population.

I also found a postcard from March 1944 (below), whose reverse I’ll also reproduce for it includes references to an “uncertain” future.

What is shown is the Bernhardine Church and Monastery, originally designed by the Italian Paolo Dominici (says Wikipedia), with its interior refurbished in the Baroque style of the 18th century, and since 1991 the complex is under the care of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Basilian Order and has undergone thorough renovation.

Here’s the reverse, for those who wish to read it:

Enjoy, if you will, this trip to a once again troubled corner of Europe.