1957 DDR sailing (Glider) mail Cinderella on postcard

I got this a week ago at our local GwinnettPex (metro Atlanta show).  On the postcard is an unperforated, monochrome glider-mail Cinderella from the German "Democratic" Republic.  Chemnitz is the traditional and current name for Karl-Marx-Stadt, which it was called from 1953 until 1990.

Around the time this was sent (1957) my mother had already fled the GDR (DDR) to West Germany, leaving her parents and four younger sisters behind in Weimar, all of who eventually left the communist state.  After the wall was erected in 1961 making land escape near-impossible, all scuba gear, most leisure-craft boats, para-sailing and gliders were severely regulated and eventually prohibited.  Except of course for the trusted Communist Party elites.  These typically sports-related items were often modified and used to escape the dictatorship.

The museum at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin has quite a few examples of escape-by-air vehicles including several gliding type apparatuses.

Jim Wentzell
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