Sixty thousand love letters and counting: volunteers help sift through vast German trove of devotion

Team is working to digitise archive of correspondence donated by public, charting relationships, social history and evolution of language After four decades together, Tatiana and Steffen Missbach still write each other love letters. “A good love letter is specific – not only declaring your feelings but also, you know, ‘good luck at music practice, I’ll be thinking of you’,” said Tatiana, 66, a retired personnel manager. “If he’s leaving early on a work trip, I like waking up and finding one a...

By Deborah Cole in Koblenz; photographs by Bernd Hartung