Many of the early Danzig stamps are air mail when sending letters that way was expensive. Perhaps subconsciously they were showing the airplanes as a way to maintain a connection to the Fatherland. 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.
The font and the style of these stamps could be nothing but German. In certain ways an earlier prewar Germany. The interwar time in Germany was a time of some longing for the past and others going headlong into a modern harsh future. The separation lead to Danzig coming down in the former camp.
Todays stamp is issue AP3, a 25 Mark stamp issued by the League of Nations administered Danzig Free State in 1923. This was the time of great inflation in Germany and the stamps reflect that with ever higher face values. It was part of an 18 stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog. the stamp is worth 40 cents used.
Germany was heavily shrunk at the end of World War 1. In the east, Prussia lost a great deal of territory to make way for a reestablishment of Poland. This was done both to satisfy the long held desires of the Polish people but also to create a barrier between Germany and the Soviet Union. To prevent Poland from being landlocked, a further chunk of coastline was carved out separating still German East Prussia from the rest of Germany. For the further benefit of Poland the harbor German city of Danzig was made a free state with Poland having access to the port and the city entered a customs union and later switched to the Polish currency. At the time the city was less than 10 percent Polish and mostly Lutheran as opposed to Catholic Poland. Interestingly for stamp collectors. in addition to the line of German stamps that today’s stamp is one, there was a separate Polish post office in Danzig that issued overprinted Polish issues. In a sign of the future, they were overstamped Gdansk, the now standard Polish name of the city.
The city was something short of a Free State. The local Senate Leader had to answer to a high commissioner appointed by the League of Nations and the foreign policy was in the hands of Poland. The local leaders elected tended to be fairly right wing but with cold but businesslike relations with Poland. Relations worsened when the Nazis took over in 1933 both in German elections as well as in local elections in Danzig. Interestingly the First Nazi leader Hermann Rauchning broke with them and moved pre war to the USA. There he related his interactions with Hitler and put forth a desire for the return of the Prussian monarchy and Poland to become a vassal state of Germany. Since most German emigres of the time were of the political left. He was quite a contrast, as fitting someone from Danzig.
The end of World War II saw Danzig change forever. The approaching Red Army in early 1945 saw many ethnic Germans flee west and the trend was further enforced by the new Polish communist regime. The ethnic cleansing left Gdansk much smaller but now a real Polish city. My German born(1929)mother always thought the revolts against the communist regime in Gdansk around 1980 were really related to the city still being German. I disagree, when you think of Poland, you think of Lech Walesa. It is hard to imagine him a closet German.
The airplane on the stamp is a Sablatnig P.III which was one of the first German designed airliners. It had 2 crew in a open cockpit and carried 6 passengers in an enclosed cabin. The plane was wooden and had folding wings and a carried a tent that could form a makeshift hanger. Sablatnig had built seaplanes for the German Navy in World War I and post war was in partnership with the aviation arm of Norddeutscher Lloyd, the large German shipping concern. In 1926 the Lloyd airline merged with a rival airline Junkers to form German Luft Hansa, the German flag carrier. No further aircraft orders went to Sablatnig and the P.III was retired in the early 1930s. Hansa in Lufthansa refers to the Hanseatic League of trading and shipping to which many northern German and Dutch cities belonged, including Danzig when it was still German. Danzig had requested and been denied having Hanseatic in their Free State title.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another and toast the pilots of the P.III on the stamp. Flying was quite dangerous then but moving mail allowed frayed connections to continue. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.