“Dear Führer Hitler”

Now here is an interesting news titbit.  I always understood that Germans are generally pretty efficient people.  The Telegraph has reported on a story that really takes it a step or two further:

Post office goes by rules and delivers Hitler card

By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 11/02/2005)

The
German post office has displayed its adherence to the rulebook by
delivering a card addressed "Adolf Hitler, Reichstag" to the current
seat of government in Berlin.

The
postcard – sent from Britain and addressed to "Führer Adolf Hitler,
Reichstag, German Parliament, Berlin" – was forwarded to the Bundestag
this week.

The post office had efficiently stamped it with the remark: "mail corrected due to wrong address, please alert the sender".

It had printed the "correct address", Deutscher Bundestag, 11011 Berlin, on the base of the card.

The
mail sorting office of the Bundestag, which is housed in the revamped
Reichstag building, once the seat of Hitler’s government, thought that
it was on the receiving end of a poor post office joke.

But
a spokesman for the Deutsche Post said he thought post office staff had
acted correctly. "We are under obligation to deliver every piece of
mail if possible, but we are not moral arbiters concerning who a letter
is from or addressed to," said a spokesman, Dirk Klasen.

 

It does get better …

"Of course, if the addressee is Adolf Hitler, you
might well ask to whom it should be sent, but the fact is the Reichstag
still exists, so we had to send it, according to our usual routine."

The handwritten postcard began "Dear Führer Hitler" and was signed by a "Herr T".

Dated
Jan 26, but with an indecipherable postmark, it read: "I love and like
you so much. I am your very best good friend and your SS personnel.

"Thank you so much for coming to see me in your splendid image last night… you have my life… and all my money."

The postcard concluded with a copy of an encyclopaedia entry on the "Legend of the Welsh Lovespoon".

Ok, the Welsh Lovespoon bit is curious.  This Herr T must have been quite a fan.