Meaning of "Standort Vermittlung"

Question

I have found a WWII photo of a palace in central Poland, in a city occupied by Nazis. There is a board on the wall with the following text:

STANDORT
VERMITTLUNG
<CITY NAME>

Here's the photo:

I have tried to find the meaning of "die Standortvermittlung" with no success. I couldn't figure out the meaning of the whole phrase from the meanings of "das Standort" and "der Vermittlung" either. I don't know, what the palace was used for by Germans but there are Wehrmacht soldiers on the photo I have, so I guess, it could have been military-related building.

Do you know, what does "die Standortvermittlung" mean?

Update: I have added the photo and changed the title.

Answer 1

It's "Standortvermittlung", meaning a Telephone exchange serving a certain garrison. The term can be found in older telephone books as well as in the "Zentrale Dienstvorschrift für die Bundeswehr" ZVD 64-10 dating from 1979 (the abbreviation is "StOvr:ni" - please don't ask what the "ni" means...). There's even one Wikipedia page concerning barracks in Regensburg, mentioning a "Standort-Vermittlung und Standort-Fernschreibstelle" (telephone exchange / teleprinter exchange).

Answer 2

These are, as has been suspected, really two words: It's the garrison (Standort) Minsk MAZ., and I suggest "Operator" for Vermittlung. Someone with more historical or military knowledge may have a better interpretation of "Vermittlung".

The concatenated term "Standortvermittlung" in modern day German would suggest a brokerage ("Vermittlung") for sites ("Standorte"), e.g. for real estate, construction work, with services like permits and administrative clearances, licenses, etc. But I suppose that term wasn't used in that context back in the day.

Presuming a military context, I can't categorically exclude a specific military connotation of the term "Standortvermittlung" that may have to do with what today is called human resource management. But I am not confident enough with military stuff to give a qualified answer to that part, and there is no entry for "Standortvermittlung" in www.dwds.de.

That, I believe, leaves us with the first interpretation, an administrative entity for operations in the garrison of Minsk Maz., which, as we know now, lies in the heart of Poland.

Answer 3

There are two indications that STANDORT (der Standort) and VERMITTLUNG (die Vermittlung) are two separate words:

• There is no hyphen that would combine them.
• The different letter sizes keep them separate.

Based on the context you gave, we can assume that Vermittlung is most likely a (telephone) operator station and that MINSK MAZ. refers to the Polish city Mińsk Mazowiecki, which was occupied by the Germans in World War II. Thus, the board

_STANDORT
VERMITTLUNG
^{MINSK MAZ.}

would read something like this in English:

_LOCATION
OPERATOR STATION
^{MINSK MAZ.}