Kalka Army Store 1999

There isn't a US soldier who doesn't know and didn't know it: the Kalka Army Store opposite the “Pfersee Gate” of the Sheridan Barracks. It was a meeting place and communication center for GIs, a souvenir and gift shop, photo service, laundry and dry cleaning, shop for military equipment and, above all, manufacturer and dealer of fabric patches and metal crests, as well as embroidered name tapes, for which the owner Reinhold Kalka purchased his own embroidery machine in 1956.

“Kalka” became synonymous with the US military presence in Augsburg for US soldiers and their families. The store, densely stocked with everything the American mentality desired, was something of a souvenir temple for US troops. With the withdrawal of US troops, the basis for the business largely disappeared, and the store on Bürgermeister-Bohl-Straße, renamed in 1971, lost all momentum. 

Today, only the older residents of Augsburg remember that the taxi stand still installed in front of the building was once an extremely busy place in the German-American history of Augsburg. All the exploratory trips of the soldiers who arrived each year, conscripts until around 1975 and then professional soldiers, began at this spot. Many farewells to “German Frollein” ended with a drop-off at the taxi stand.