On a sun-drenched summer street in the Baltic seaside resort of Laboe, near Kiel, two young women in white dresses pause on the Reventloustrasse while a child in a hat watches from beside a picket fence — a candid slice of Wilhelmine German leisure life captured on this sent postcard, postmarked Kiel on 18 September 1919, barely a year after the Kaiser's abdication ended the war that had convulsed Europe. The Hotel Kaiserhof — its very name a relic of the imperial era — anchors the right side of the frame, its Historicist brick turret and ornate gable still proudly standing as the new Weimar Republic took its uncertain first steps. The 10-pfennig Deutsches Reich "Germania" stamp is intact and postmarked, addressed to a recipient named Gertrud in Granden, Lübtheen, and the message, written in period German script, fills the left portion of the back. Laboe would later become famous for the 1936 Naval Memorial, but in 1919 it was simply a popular day-trip destination from the great naval port of Kiel.