Sepia photo postcard of the University of Bonn — the magnificent baroque Electoral Palace that became one of Germany's great universities after 1818, its long classical facade stretching across a summer lawn, trees arching at the edges, the distinctive octagonal tower rising at the right. This card was posted during the French occupation of the Rhineland, when Allied forces held the left bank of the Rhine under the terms of the Versailles Treaty; the back carries a "Trésor et Postes" military postal stamp and the notation "Armée d'occupation. Sect. 3" identifying the French military unit. The sender — a French soldier or official stationed in occupied Bonn — wrote a long letter home to a violin professor named A. Ruft in Privas, Ardèche, the ordinary rhythms of correspondence continuing across the strangeness of occupation duty in a German university town.

• Caption: Bonn. Universität.
• Publisher: Kunstverlag Wilhelm Gröbler, Bonn (No. A004)
• Postmark: Trésor et Postes [French military post], c.1923
• Status: Posted