Freiburg (dpa / lsw) – 1946 In a hundred years from now, letters are to be distributed from Freiburg to specific addressees. In the year 2120 the city celebrates its 1000th birthday and for a special postal project on this occasion the municipality installed an “anniversary mailbox” in front of the old town hall. The idea: citizens should write letters in the future that won’t be opened for a hundred years. Now the project manager for the city anniversary, Holger Thiemann, has taken stock.
Most of the letters are addressed to future relatives (“To my great-grandchildren / great-granddaughter …”), he said. Many also went to municipal or state institutions (“To the head of the office …”) or to future residents of the house in which the author is currently living. As a rule, young people addressed their letters to their peers (“To a pupil in class 6 of the XY-Gymnasium …”).
The letters did not only come from Freiburg residents. “We have received letters from a number of twin cities,” said Thiemann. He cited Guildford in England and Suwon in South Korea as examples. The deadline for submission had been extended to the end of July.
At the start, the city had proposed to write about what the pandemic year 2020 looked like, for example. What will people need to know 100 years from now? What could you be interested in? “Then people’s thoughts fall into a hundred-year slumber.”
According to Thiemann, the letters received are kept in the city archive. As far as possible, the letters should be read by the people to whom they are addressed. Thiemann said it would be a major challenge for the city archive – or the subsequent facility – in 100 years. “Of course we hope that our colleagues will take this project seriously and try to find the addressees.”
What happens to letters that cannot be forwarded – for example because the house in which the addressee is supposed to live no longer exists – is of course still unclear today. “There are certainly several options here,” says the project manager. “We cannot fix that, we have to leave it to the people in 100 years.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210905-99-98673 / 2
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