Tag: Germany stamp

When Germany did not recover quickly after World War I, it was natural to turn to an old national hero to get back on track. The key word is old though and his time had past. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sir back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp is very much in the style of a royalty stamp and indeed the 1920s era German presidency had duties that closely reflected a modern royal. The exception to that is that he stood for election and in that was lowered to that level with runoffs and coalitions to obtain power. Hindenburg himself claimed to personally favor a return of the Kaiser from his exile and he be allowed to return to his retirement.

Todays stamp is issue A64, a fifty pfennig stamp issued by Germany in 1933. The issue was originally to celebrate President von Hindenburg’s 85th birthday in 1932. The stamp was issued for many years and there was a black outlined version upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2,40 used.

Paul von Hindenburg was born in 1847 in what is now Poznan, Poland. He was of noble birth and could also trace his family tree to Martin Luther. Like his father, he was a Prussian officer who fought the wars with Austria and France and eventually became a Coronel General, (equivalent to an American 2 star general), before retiring in 1911. He came out of retirement the first time in 1914 to replace a General who had lost his nerve when facing the large Russian Army early in the First World War. Hindenburg used his theories of maneuver warfare to surround and defeat the much larger Russian force at the Battle of Tannenberg. This was the site of a long ago defeat of Prussia by Slavs so was especially inspiring. Statues of Hindenburg rose throughout Germany made of wood that you could pay to put a nail in in support of war widows. Hindenburg was promoted to Field Marshall and sent to the Western Front where is theories on movement were not as applicable to the trench warfare.

The defeat in 1918 saw Germany shrunk, the Kaiser deposed, and German left wing element agreeing to very punitive punishments for Germany. Conservative elements in the country such as Hindenburg, again in retirement, saw this as a stab in the back to the noble German war effort. The “stab in the back” harkened back to the wonderfully titled 1876 Wagner opera Gotterdammerung. The left of course saw a disastrous war that severely bled the country of it’s men and treasure and discredited the old leadership. The early twenties saw the left in power and hyper inflation and continuing hardship among the people. The hard times lead to more radical right and left forces of Nazis and Communists that both agitated for ever more radical change. Into this, Hindenburg first in 1922 and again in 1925 offered himself as a presidential candidate that could unite the old and new right and bring back German greatness. He won in 1925 in a runoff but was not able to unite the country as the divisions were too deep. He was also unable to unite the right wing, Hitler thought him an old fool, and Hindenburg thought Hitler an uppity corporal with a funny accent. The situation became more unstable with the prospect of Hitler becoming Chancellor. In 1932, many on the left voted for Hindenburg hoping that he would prevent Hitler becoming chancellor. In the end he disappointed them by allowing Hitler to form a government. This might have been prevented as the Nazis were one of many parties and did not have a clear majority. It must be remembered that Hindenburg was quite old by then and his son Oscar had a lot of sway and was more amenable to Hitler. Hindenburg died in 1934 and the role of Chancellor and President were combined as the Nazis consolidated power.

One can see the pitfalls of even great military leaders venturing in to politics. As a head of state above politics, Hindenburg might have thrived. In an office that did not have much authority and had to consult rather than just order, Hindenburg was out of his element and forever tarnished his reputation. Both in allowing Hitler come to power and in not solving the national issues that were leading to such desperation.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast those paid to pound those nails to support war widows. They were the ones who the system failed, over and over. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

As the Red Army swarmed westward, they had a cadre of exiled Communists ready to take over. 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 aesthetics of todays stamp are not the best, A generic old man. President Pieck had been in exile for more than a dozen years when he returned to Germany with the Red Army. That was not his first period in exile. One must wonder than even to communists in East Germany, if he was a stranger.

Todays stamp is issue A10, a 2 Deutsche Mark (East) put out by the German Democratic Republic in 1951. It was part of a 5 stamp issue in various denominations honoring East German President Wilhelm Pieck. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $4.75 used.

Wilhelm Pieck was born in what is now Poland in modest circumstances. He first worked as a logger and became active in the trade union and later joined the socialist SPD party in Germany. He was self taught. Him being a Red was difficult because his bride to be’s family was opposed. Since she was with child they consented but demanded a church wedding. Pieck showed up late and handed out communist leaflets as he walked down the aisle to the ceremony. He was part of the militant wing of the SPD that opposed the German World War I involvement. This saw Pieck exiled to Amsterdam during the War. After the war he returned but was one of the leaders of the SPD arrested by the Freikorps. Two other leaders were killed in custody but Pieck escaped into exile in Paris and became a member of the Communist International. It is understandable that with so many personal exiles, Pieck became concerned with the plight of fellow lefty exiles from nations that they had yet to take power. He was a founding partner of the International Red Aid. A red cross for political prisoners involved in class struggle.

Hitler coming to power saw Pieck and his family again going into exile for 12 years in Moscow. During the later part of these years he helped organize a group of German exiles ready to govern a new communist Germany. He was instrumental in merging two older left parties into the Unity Socialist Party of East Germany. He was named the first and only President of East Germany. By then he was quite old, even older than Adenauer, the West German leader.

Pieck served into his death in 1960 at age 84. By then he had outlived his wife by 50 years and suffered from two strokes and cirrhosis of the liver. In his last years he maintained a summer home on the grounds of Carinhall, Hermann Goering’s infamous hunting lodge. Both a world away and back home for the one time logger.

Well my drink is empty and Pieck has probably emptied the bottle. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

Collections build off each other. A collection of armor and weapons grew to include thousands of clocks and sundials. Luckily when a royal house is the collector, it is not just hoarding but the makings of a national treasure. 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 Philatelists.

You may wonder why the East Germans were showing off some of the old treasures of the Dresden Mathematics and Physics Salon. They had earned the right to. In February 1945, the Zwinger palace complex was mostly destroyed in the Allied fire bombing of the city. The collection mostly survived as it previously been moved for safe keeping mostly into rural castles. The city fell to the Soviet Army soon after and one might have expected that to be the end of it, as lets face it, putting back together palace complexes and Royal collections is not their wheel house. Sometimes people outperform and the complex reopened in 1953. One thing that did go away was the observatory that had offered an exact official time for Saxony for the previous 150+ years.

Todays stamp is issue A710, a 20 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on June 7th, 1983, the 30th anniversary of the Salon’s reopening. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. This stamp shows a horizotal sundial created by Christopher Trechsler in 1611 on the commission for the Salon. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The first known sundials have been found in Egypt and date from 1500 BC. Depending on how good the model is for the suns movement in relation to the season and the location, a sundial can give a very accurate time.

In 1570, Italian Astronomer Giovanni Padovani, who operated out of Verona published a widely read work explaining sundials including details of how to make them. He included tables for the different latitudes.

In the 15th Century Albert the Bold was Duke of Saxony and established a chamber in his Dresden residence to house his collection of armor and weapons. It became one of the largest collections in the world. Later Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland expanded the chamber and the collection expanded to include time pieces. Augustus was building in Dresden an elaborate complex called the Zwinger. The added space allowed the collection to be broken up and thus came about the Salon of Physics and mathematics.

There was a further reconstruction of the Zwinger that reopened in 2013. The current collection contains over 3000 clocks and scientific instruments and still includes Christopher Trechsler’s sundial from 1613.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting and don’t forget to vote.

“We call all young people together, who carry the future in us, we want to wrest freedom of our actions and our lives from the older comfortably established forces”. This was from the manifesto of the young German expressionist art group that this stamp remembers 100 years later. The group called itself the bridge, but was that really the only bridge to take? Might there have been another that uplifts the viewer of the art not just the artist. 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.

Look at the darkness of this woodblock image on the stamp. An underage girl, not trying to make a record of her innocent beauty, but rather how she appeared in the twice her age artist’s den of “free love”. Was the artist made better from the experience. Was the young girl. Was the viewer of the art. Or are we all just a little dirtier.

Todays stamp is issue A1174, a 55 Euro cents stamp issued by Germany on May12th, 2005. It was a single stamp issue. According to Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 75 cents used.

Around 1900, there was much innovation going on in the Paris art world. Where does that leave the artists of other places. To a group of German artists toiling away at their upper middle class University this was an opportunity. They were not interested in creating traditional art. Rather they wanted to to do a more German version of what was going on in Paris with the Fauvists. Typical not as smart as they think they are out of the box thinking that is really pressing up on the box. There were of course paintings, but they went back to pre Christian Germany and sought to recreate the old woodblock art of that time. To banish their minds of their upper class comforts, Die Brucke rented a former butcher shop in the seedier side of Dresden. The studio justified their mostly underage subjects by saying the bodies are less damaged by the corsets of period mature women. Also more fun to have in a free love den where nudity was encouraged.

Most of the artists of the group faded away into jobs in academia. Their art, though remembered, was not commercially successful in the period. As the young rebels matured they faced a different Germany that was as denouncing of them as they were to their parents. The style of art was branded un German, anarchist, and Jewish, some of the artists were some weren’t. The Nazis were or course wrong about so much, but I am not sure they were wrong about Die Brucke.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast those that push back against the drive away from civilization. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The idea of putting dignified people in absurd situations and watching them getting flustered is often comic gold. Perhaps less so now as we gradually run out of the dignified. 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.

Talking of this stamp issue is dangerous. The issue appeared shortly before cartoonist Loriot died in 2011. In 2012, his daughter sued those on the internet displaying images of the German stamps. She won, and got a large settlement from the German language Wikipedia. I think I am okay with my wife having taken a picture of a stamp in my personal collection. If not Ms. von Bulow, let me know and I will pull the article down. If the estate didn’t want there to be a series of stamps honoring your late father however, surely the time to act was before they came out.

Todays stamp is issue SP475, a 45 Euro cents +20 cent semi postal stamp issued by Germany on January 3rd, 2011. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations. Those dignified readers out there will be happy to know that I don’t have the one with the cartoon depiction of two naked men in a bathtub. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $1.90 whether used or unused.

Vicco von Bulow was born into an aristocratic Prussian family in 1923. After wartime service and university training in graphic design, no not yodeling but really not that far off, he began work as a cartoonist in 1950. His work was released under the name Loriot. This is based on the French word for the oriole bird as it appears on von Bulow’s family crest.

His greatest success came in the 1970s when he created the character of Wum, a talking dog who becomes the mascot of a German protest organization. Wum was voiced by Loriot himself when he got a radio show. Wum/Loriot had a German pop hit in 1972 with the dog singing “I wish I had a little kitty cat” in a half sung/half spoken style called Spechgesang. In 1976 the characters got a German television show that went back and forth between skits acted by Loriot and cartoons drawn by him. among the more famous skits were the protest organization demanding equal treatment of man and women. even if means suckling babies temporarily lose weight. Cue the Cartoon a a baby trying to suckle a man. Another features a bored housewife goes back to an iffly credentialled college to get a diploma in yodeling, convinced that such a waste of time credential will change her lot in life.

You can probably gather this type of thing is not my cup of tea. To each his own. These people who pretend to mock the comfortable when they are really on the inside just protecting them from the notion that it is their charge is to maintain standards in order to prevent the sinking into depravity.

Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait until tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.

You can tell that a country is running out of gas when they just want to talk of old achievements that are not current. This is especially true when the stamp doesn’t tell you that what your looking at isn’t current. 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.

This has happened to me  before where what is happening on the stamp was no longer current. A Guatemala stamp where a dictator built his actress mistress an opera house. Sounds fun see https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/06/guatemala-columbus-theatre-still-impressive-on-the-stamp-but-really-in-ruins/   . but the opera house had since been leveled by an earthquake and not rebuilt, all before the stamp. Here we have a stamp issue of an important class of East German cargo ships, that had served and been scrapped when they got old and expensive to operate. Was there anything new coming out of the Rostock shipyard in 1982?

Todays stamp is issue A685, a 5 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on June 22nd, 1982. It was a 6 stamp issue of the Type 4 cargo ships built in Rostock shipyard in the late 1950s, in this case the class leader M S Frieden(peace). According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

The Type 4 Frieden class of large cargo ships were 9000 ton (empty). They were diesel powered and capable of long journeys. They were the first large ships to come out of the Rostock shipyard after the war. The Frieden was built in 1957-58 so that was quite a gap. The shipyard was founded in 1850 and still exists employing 500 people.  They mainly now make river cruise ships. The ships were operated by the East German VEB line, which went through a few reorganizations before fizzling out in 1992.

When the ships were current, they went far and wide. The most famous journey was to North Vietnam in 1972 when MS Frieden and a sister ship were caught in the American bombing of Haiphong harbor. Neither were sunk. The MS Frieden was retired in 1978 and sold to China for scrapping. A club for former sailors of the ship still meets every other year.

The Type 4 ship can still be experienced in Rostock. In 1970 sister ship M S Dresden had engine trouble that was deemed too expensive to repair. As the hull was still in good shape the shipyard decided to maintain it as a museum ship. For a while the ship even hosted a youth hostel. There is talk of moving the ship from the shipyard to a mooring in the old town waterfront where it might attract more visitors. The museum is one of the best collections of the maritime history of the East German era.

Well my drink is empty and I may have another while longing for the time when we can visit museums again. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Here we have a German stamp celebrating new technology. Except now the technology was a multi country effort with origins in Great Britain. The resulting plane was no faster than what it proposed to replace. Not too promising you might say, but the designers were reading the zeitgeist correctly and the A320 family has the most orders of any jet airliner in history. 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.

There are two interesting things about the presentation of the A320 on this stamp. One is the date of issue, coming only 3 months after the plane received it’s certificate of airworthiness. Europe was littered with single country unsuccessful airplane designs at the time and they couldn’t have known yet how successful the A320 would become. It shows how dramatically important Europe viewed the program. The continent was spending a fortune importing Boeing airliners. Import substitution from a domestic could fix that. The second thing is including the flags of the Airbus consortium partners as equals. If things are presented that way enough times, people might believe.

Todays stamp is issue A635, a 60 Pfennig stamp issued by West Germany on May 5th, 1988. It was a two stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.

The 150 seat airliner market in the 1970s was dominated by the Boeing 737 and the Douglas DC9 that dated from the 1960s. I did a stamp on the DC9 here, https://the-philatelist.com/2020/01/02/turkey-1967-showing-off-the-new-douglas-dc-9/   . The French Caravelle, the British Trident and the British BAC 111 had been unsuccessful in the market. Airbus’s first airliner the A300 was larger though they had a short version the A310 they were not having much luck with, as it was too much plane for the job. British Aerospace, Fokker in Holland, Dornier in Germany, and Aerospatiale in France formed a consortium outside of Airbus to work on a design under British design chief, Derek Brown. Brown had worked previously on a proposed Hawker update of the old Trident airliner. The airliner they proposed was no faster that what it hoped to replace and the big advancements were in the areas of fuel efficiency and pilot workload. This later area was important to Europe as their air forces were smaller and so they were not throwing off as many veterans to serve as pilots. Civilian trained pilots had many fewer flight hours and so fly by wire technology was incorporated into the “Joint European Transport or JET”. Reducing what was expected of pilots was copied by Boeing, the American air force was later shrinking as well. The airliner layout was similar to the 737 but the interior managed to be 6 inches wider.

Airbus saw the program as a threat, but saw the hole in their product line so brought the program in house still under Mr. Brown. Germany sought and got a bigger share of the work including assembly in Hamburg. Britain got more of their people in all facets of the program so as a way to preserve a separate British ability to make airliners. I mentioned that the A320 program is one of the most successful in history but notice that none of the original consortium players still exist as separate entities. The design relied heavily on subsidies from the Airbus partner countries to be brought to market. I bet the tax payers did not realize that even as successful and long lasting as the A320 would not be enough to save any of the companies. To better position for worldwide demand for the A320, assembly can now be specified by the customer in Alabama in the USA or in Tianjin in China. Sometimes multinationals forget where they come from and even what their purpose was.

Both the 737 and the Airbus 320 continue to be developed. For Airbus that means more efficient engines called A320 neo, for new engine option. The old version was re-branded A320 ceo for current engine option. The equivalent 737 are the NG and the troubled MAX. Both manufacturers are limited by the basics of a very old now air frame design, but there is a lot of expertise that wouldn’t translate easily to a really new design. Plus who would pay?

Last year Airbus announced with some fanfare that the A320 family of airliners had passed the 737 in total orders. As of 2020, Boeing still leads in number built at 10,575 versus 9,313. We will see if the future order advantage translates into actual planes.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Derek Brown. I am sure he was proud of the A320 design but I wonder if he would have preferred it could have still been a Hawker and could have sustained a British aerospace industry. Hawker in the 1970s looked pretty viable also having the Harrier jump jet and the evergreen Hawk jet trainer. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

This must be an embarrassing stamp to the modern political left. A giant oil refinery, the biggest in all of Germany, smokestacks spewing, being celebrated as a great achievement of the communist East German government on the occasion of the government’s 35th anniversary. The crazy part is it was a great achievement, all these years later united Germany still relies on the refinery to process the oil coming into Germany from Russia by way of the connected Druzhba pipeline. Something President Trump always has fun pointing out when hectored by Europe over the USA’s environmental policies. 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.

This really is quite a large complex built in an otherwise small town on the Oder river near the Polish border. Being where the Russian pipeline crossed into East Germany it was the obvious, scientific place to put the refinery. At the left on the stamp you can spot the prefab Plattenbau apartment blocks put up to house the workers. This stamp represented industry in East Germany, others honored construction, agriculture and the military. The fellows with the protractor emblem were really making things happen and had been for 35 years. By the 40th anniversary and near the end of the DDR, a similar issue had education substitute for the military and industry was represented by a computer operator. You must move with the times. East German stamps were demonetized at the end of 1991

Todays stamp is issue A743, a 35 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on October 4th, 1984. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations that was also available as a souvenir sheet. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents used. Interestingly the souvenir sheet was not much or a prize, the four stamps are worth more apart.

Schwedt is a small town on the Oder river. In 1958, Comecon decided to sponsor a long pipeline that would take heavily subsidized Soviet crude oil from Tartaristan to the Comecon nations of Eastern Europe. I did a Hungary stamp on their part here, https://the-philatelist.com/2018/09/25/hungary-builds-on-soviet-friendship-to-power-itself/   . Different nations were responsible for aspects of the pipeline. East Germany was responsible for the oil pumps. A new refinery complex was quickly put together in Schwedt just over the Polish border to process the oil coming in. It had to be put together quickly. The very long pipeline was already in operation by 1963 with construction only starting in 1960. Try doing something that fast anywhere now. Well maybe China.

To house the workers in the otherwise small town, prefabricated blocks of worker flats called plattenbau were constructed. In modern days such flats are sneered at, but still lived in. In those days, they were more respected as they were larger units than old buildings and offered private bathrooms, kitchen facilities, and more effective heating. Schwedt had also been heavily damaged in land battles with the Red Army in the last days of the war, so the was plenty of opportunity for urban renewal.

I mentioned that the oil refinery and the pipeline are still in use by modern Germany. That does not mean that levels of employment have stayed high in Schwedt. During the East German period Schwedt went from 11,000 residents up to 55,000. Since reunification, the population of Schwedt has dropped back below 30,000. The refinery is still the largest private employer in the area, but is down to 1300 workers.

Well my drink is empty and looking deeper made me understand why East Germany wanted to feature Schwedt as an example of it’s success. Convincing The Philatelist however may be easier than modern fellow traveler Greta Thurnberg. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The center right in Germany really had it in for the politician with the alias Willi Brandt. After all there was the exile, the fighting for Norway against Germans, the abandonment of all the lost land, the loose living, the strange payments coming from both the CIA and the Stasi. How could you choose him to be the leader of West Germany? Well he had JFK and the 68ers on his side. They reveled in his differences, after all they were themselves different, and they were the future. 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 year before this stamp, as part of the same series of stamps on deceased German statesman, Germany did a stamp honoring political rival Konrad Adenauer, Brandt was portrayed as a younger man with intelligent eyes. Adenauer is cast as old, dark, and bitter. This gets into the generational shift. Brandt was himself too old to be a 68er but like JFK had a youthfulness they could identify with. When the 1960s political rivals are then remembered in the 1990s, Adenauer naturally gets the short end, His people and manner are just gone.

Todays stamp is issue A803, a 1 DM stamp issued by Germany on November 10th 1993. It was a single stamp for Brandt, but there were many similar stamps for dead German statesman. No not East Germans, but they had many stamps in their time and place. Interestingly most of their guys resembled Adenauer more than Brandt. The uprisings of the late 60s arose from the left. However the decrepit old left leadership in the East were not the type to harness it. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 90 cents used.

Herbert Frahm was born in Lubeck to a single mother, a store cashier in 1913. He was raised by  his step grandparents. That does sound modern. From a young age he was an SPD party activist while working for a ships broker. With the Nazis coming into power, SPD activists were no longer welcome and Frahm invented the name Willi Brandt and went into exile in Norway. He worked as a journalist in Norway and kept contact with fellow SPD activists in Germany by posing as a Norwegian student under another alias and visiting. The Nazis in 1938 purged the roles of German citizens who left due to them including Frahm. Frahm then applied and received Norwegian citizenship under the Willy Brandt alias. He volunteered for service in the Norwegian army when Germany invaded and was captured and briefly a POW. Upon release he moved to neutral Sweden, At wars end he quickly went to Berlin employed as a Norwegian diplomat. Back in Germany, he rejoined the reformed SPD under the Willy Brandt name under which he reapplied and received German citizenship. He wrote for an SPD newspaper and quickly rose in politics. The occupying powers approved of him since he lacked Nazi connections. In 1950, the CIA paid him secretly 170,000DM which is now about 400,000 Euros.

He rose to be mayor of West Berlin and the head of the SPD party. When JFK became American President in 1961 he openly supported Brandt over aging long time Chancellor Adenauer. Brandt lost the election in 1961 but got a great deal of positive world publicity during the construction of the Berlin wall by the East in the early 1960s. As the administration of West Berlin was separate from West Germany, he changed his affiliation to a safe SPD seat in Rhineland to get into the Bundestag.

The SPD and Brandt finally had their day in 1969 with the first SPD government since 1930. Social spending increased while military draft terms shrank as one would expect of a left government. What was new was Ostpolitik, that sought closer relations with the East. A peace treaty was signed with Poland and the East German government was better recognized, To achieve this, Brandt gave up German claims to land that had been taken at the end of the war. This especially angered Germans who had been forced to move west from the end of war ethnic cleansing. In 1972, several members of his coalition thought he had gone too far on this and called a vote of no confidence. Most thought Brandt would lose but he won by three votes. It turned out the East German Stasi had paid a few Christian Democrats to vote for Brandt.

Speaking of Stasi there was a close aid of Brandt that turned out to be one. Gunter Guilliaume had crossed from East Germany in 1956 but was a Stasi plant. When this was discovered, Brandt resigned under pressure from more conservative factions of his own party. The Stasi came to realize what a blunder it was as Brandt was their friend. He remained in the Bundestag, and was a thorn in the side of the next SPD German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Well my drink is empty so I will await the 10th, Monday, when it will be my birthday and of course there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.