Feldpost envelope sent in 1942 by Ernst Keller to Martha Keller, Frankenthaler Straße 37a, Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Keller gives Feldpostnummer 44050, allocated during 1942 to Feldeisenbahn-Maschinen-Abteilung 2, a German military field-railway machinery unit concerned with the technical and mechanical support of the Wehrmacht's railway system. Particularly poignant is a romantic message written discreetly inside the envelope, quoting the popular song “Dunkelrote Rosen” from the 1932 reworking of Carl Millöcker's operetta Gasparone: “Dunkelrote Rosen bring ich, schöne Frau! Und was das bedeutet, wissen Sie genau!” — “Dark-red roses I bring you, beautiful woman! And what that means, you know exactly!” The succeeding words develop the same theme: the lover finds it difficult to express directly what is in his heart, so the dark-red roses are allowed to speak for him; flowers possess their own secret language and can communicate feelings that a lover may hesitate to put into words. The location of the quotation inside the Feldpost envelope therefore seems particularly appropriate, creating a private romantic message intended for Martha rather than merely an incidental quotation from a popular song. Later correspondence shows that Ernst continued writing to Martha into June 1944, by which time she was living at Gommersheimer Straße 20, Dudenhofen. Subsequent evidence establishes that Ernst and Martha became husband and wife and had a child in 1944, transforming the surviving Feldpost correspondence into a small personal record of a relationship maintained during wartime separation and the beginnings of the Keller family. Ref: 03.08.1942 - 37/9