It was to me an interesting transition in Germany after World War I. Not that there were not lefties during the Empire period, in fact some right wingers blame them for defeat. All of the sudden after the war, the left was in power and basic styles changed completely. This was true in Russia as well but held on there. Not so much in Germany, and only a brief window in then conservative Wurttemberg. 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.
Wurttemberg gave up it’s separate postal authority in 1902 as part of the gradual integration with Germany going on since 1870. That does not mean this stamp is fake. The Wurttemberg Empire and then the Free Peoples State kept issuing official stamps for their own government’s use until 1923. Most are just overprints of bulk postage stamps. Around 1920 however there are a few more real commemorative issues. They are much more common unused than used implying that their function was raising revenue. However in the early days of the Republic things were somewhat up in the air so perhaps there was a possibility of going it alone being readied.
Todays stamp is issue O9, a 20 Pfennig official stamp issued by the Free People’s State of Wurttemberg on March 25th, 1920. It was part of a 10 stamp issue in various denominations featuring views of Wurttemberg cities. In this case Tubingen. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents unused. A used version would be worth double.
Wurttemberg joined the German Empire in 1871 after siding with Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War. The state was allowed to keep it’s King and it’s separate postal service but began the process of better integrating with Germany, Only a serious stamp collector like your author would put as equal keeping a Royal House with keeping a post office. The area was rapidly industrializing and Stuttgart was becoming an ever more important city. King Wilhelm avoided controversy by keeping to the ceremonial and spending a great deal of his time in his landlocked realm yachting on Lake Constance. He lacked a male heir and so when his first wife died in childbirth he remarried but new Queen Consort Charlotte was barren.
At the end of World War I in 1918 there was a coup that put the left wing in power and forced King Wilhelm to abdicate. Unlike other German state royals, Wilhelm and Charlotte were not forced into exile but allowed to stay on in their former hunting lodge Schloss Bebenhausen. Charlotte lived an increasingly reclusive life there. When she died virtually unnoticed in 1946 she was the last German Queen.
The “Free People’s State” sure sounds like a euphemism for communists and that was the intention of the coup plotters at the end of the war. However the state lived up to it’s name by allowing elections that had the government go politically more to the right in gradual increments. In 1933 with the Nazi takeover of the central government, the Free State was no more. Wurttemberg and the state of Hohenzollern were merged into what the Nazis called a Gou. Ceremony was by then all that was left of the separateness. After World War II, it was decided to merge the Nazi state that was in the French occupation sector with the American sector area of Baden.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the lefties in Wurttemberg for living up to their self proclaimed title of Free People’s State. Neither Stalin nor the Internationale would have been pleased. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.