Prussia was the German state most in charge of bringing together Germany. You see the overprint regarding decimalization of the currency for the upcoming North German Confederation. What you might not know is how Prussia was later coopted by Germany later using that old tradition of the political putsch. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Prussia was not grandiose on their stamps like say Bavaria. Instead a generic German eagle. The North German Confederation replaced the Prussian stamps and dispensed with the eagle. They had several currencies on the same stamp and so their design tried to highlight which currency the stamp was in. Well at least they modernized with perforations The mechanics of coming together are often inelegant, as the EU would itself discover.
Todays stamp is issue A7, a 3 Silbergroshen stamp issued by Prussia in 1861. It was a 6 stamp issue in varios denominations and currencies. This is the early currency overprinted for use with the decimilized currency introduced in 1867. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $8.75 unused. The catalog is silent on what the overprint adds to the value, but I am going out on a limb and say not enough.
Prussia managed Germany coming together pretty fast in the 1860s. There was a war with Austria that victory allowed the coming together of the North German Confederation. The Confederation was 80% Prussian but allowed outsized representation of the smaller states in the Bundesrat in exchange for recognition of the Prussian Monarch as head of state. Southern Germany joined after success in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the prospect of all the French reparations due afterwards. Key to the early success was Chancellor Bismarck, who managed to be seen as a conservative figure who still did so much to improve the lot of the average German.
Prussia did not in fact do so well under the German state. Much land was lost to allow for the recreation of Poland after World War I. The military loss discredited the Prussian military/aristocratic system that was such a foundation of Prussian strength. The Kaiser was in exile in Holland. Prussia was now run by leftist Otto Braun. He had worked a strong coalition of center parties that kept communists and nazis marginalized. What he was not able to do was bring the Prussian part of Germany out of the economic hole it was in. Without that, how do you restore a sense of pride or purpose.
So the system was rigged to keep Braun in but without success. The end came for Prussia came much faster than Germany coming together 70 years before. Their was a bloody Sunday in Altona in Prussia were Communists and Nazis thugs fought in the street. Prussian police shot and killed 18 of them on both sides. German Chancellor Franz von Papen then used emergency powers to have Braun removed from office and von Papen himself given the extra title of head of Prussia. This then went to court which decided that von Papen had to leave Braun’s cabinet in place but was correct to throw out Braun. Braun went off to exile in Switzerland and barely a year later von Papen was essentially exiled by the Nazis when they made him Ambassador to first Austria and then Turkey. Hermann Goring was named head or Prussia, now completely ceremonial.
Braun offered himself up to the Russians post war to restart a Prussian German state, the small sliver of old Prussia still in Germany. Braun was denied, there was to be no more Prussian state.
Well my drink is empty and I am left wondering what would have became of Prussia had it not put Germany over all. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.