Mr. Charles Ritchie lived in Watertown, a city between two lakes in northeast South Dakota.
Watertown was founded in 1879 when the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad established a branch line to the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watertown,_South_Dakota
In August of 1908, Charles received a postcard from C. W. Tobey.
The postcard was mailed from Cleveland, the center of industry and transportation in northeast Ohio.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland
Like most American cities of the late 19th century, the growth of industry in Cleveland was fueled by European immigration.
Immigrant communities displayed solidarity and rootedness by erecting monuments to the heroes of their native land.
In other postcard stories, we have seen a statue of Rembrandt erected by Dutch communities of Michigan and statues of Columbus by Italian-American communities in several places.
In Cleveland, the large German community erected statues to the great Romantic poets of the German language – Johann von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller.
The gilded figures stood in Wade Park, a large green space and lagoon in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland.
The park, the gift of Jeptha Wade, was first created in 1872 and deeded to the city of Cleveland in 1882.
Wade envisioned an art museum and other cultural buildings for the site, and this was realized with the opening of the magnificent Cleveland Museum of Art in 1916.
(I have visited the Cleveland Museum of Art, but did not know the history of the beautiful setting.)
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the Cleveland Botanical Garden are now included within the park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_Park,_Cleveland
The statues are re-castings of the original statues by Ernst Rietschel which stand in Weimar, Germany.
German-American communities erected the re-cast copies in Cleveland, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and Syracuse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe%E2%80%93Schiller_Monument
The statues now stand northwest of Wade Park in a string of cultural gardens that celebrate more than 30 ethnic communities in Cleveland.
In addition to Goethe and Schiller, the German Cultural Garden now includes monuments to Bach, Beethoven, Heine, Humboldt, and others.
On the reverse, C. W. Tobey writes the cryptic message, “Hope this will save your life”.
One hopes that Charles was delighted to receive the postcard from Cleveland and that he found inspiration in the treasures of the German literature.
