A coded postcard from 1914

In 1914, an unknown person sent an encrypted message from Bavaria to Switzerland. Who can solve the encryption?

Deutsche Version

It’s time again for a coded postcard. Since Tobias Schrödel provided me with scans from his collection, I didn’t have to search long for an interesting specimen. A card sent from Bavaria to Switzerland in 1914 seemed particularly exciting to me.

The motif

First of all, the motif is interesting:

Quelle/Source: Schrödel

According to the inscription, Prince Luitpold of Bavaria should be represented here. At Wikipedia I found two persons of this name: Luitpold of Bavaria (1821-1912) and Luitpold Prince of Bavaria (* 1951). However, neither of them matches this photo, which was probably taken around 1910. Does the inscription perhaps not refer to the motif at all? Perhaps a reader knows more.

The cryptogram

The text page is cryptographically interesting:

Quelle/Source: Schrödel

The recipient is once again an unmarried lady (Mademoiselle). I read her name as Vera Dosch. She lived in Soyhières in the French part of Switzerland. The sender of the card may have been her lover. The postmark shows the year 1914, if I recognize it correctly.

To read the text better, I have rotated it 90 degrees:

Quelle/Source: Schrödel

Presumably, the sender used a simple substitution procedure. The language could be French. The easiest way to solve such a cryptogram is usually to look for words with conspicuous letter patterns. Unfortunately, this is not so easy here, because the word spaces are often not recognizable.

The word 6*55:5 in the last line could be a good candidate. The CrypTool2 software returns the following French words for this pattern (123343):

bannen
bannon
barrer
basses
battit
bosses
breeze
cannon
casses
cassés
cassis
cheese
cosses
dessus
fannin
fasses
fennan
fosses
fossés
freeze
gannon
gosses
greene
harrer
lennon
lisses
marrer
masses
mirror
passes
passés
pisses
rassis
russes
steele
tannen
tasses
tissus
treece

Do any of them fit? Or is the plain text perhaps not written in French at all? I’m sure my readers will find out more. I will gladly accept hints.

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Further reading: Zwei verschlüsselte Postkarten warten auf ihre Dechiffrierung – aber nicht mehr lange

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