Tag: Germany stamp

A country needs a national air line. With Germany divided, there was a race as to who gets to use the famed Luft Hansa name. 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 plane on the stamp is the Soviet Ilyushin Il-14. The airplane bears a close resemblance to the American Convair CV-240 that was the first airplane operated by the West German Lufthansa. Both airlines used the same livery and the “Deutsche” on the East German does not stand out because Lufthansa is the German flag carrier. When you look past the picture the equality falls apart. The Il-14 airliner is smaller, shorter ranged and came later than the CV-240. It also lacked the pressurization of the Convair, so was less comfortable to fly in. The East German Lufthansa even started off with Soviet flight crews, while West German Lufthansa had a core of veterans of the prewar Luft Hansa. West Germany for the win.

Todays stamp is issue A80, a 10 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on February 1st, 1956. It was part of a four stamp issue in various denominations that celebrated the inauguration of passenger air service of the then East German flag carrier Deutsche Lufthansa. The first flight was from Berlin to Warsaw. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.

Both East and West Germany faced many challenges getting a new Lufthansa going. The pre war Luft Hansa had formed in 1926 upon a merger between an airline associated with the Lloyd shipping company and an airline associated with the Junkers aircraft manufacturer. The airline was dissolved at the end of World War II. In West Germany, a company was formed by Luft Hansa veterans bought the rights to the name and ordered a small number of new build Convair CV-240 short range airliners and Lockheed Constellation long range airliners. The lead time to build the airliners gave Lufthansa time to get permission to operate and membership in the International Air Transport Association, the first German carrier to join. Under the post war four power agreement, no German, East or West, airline was allowed to fly to Berlin.

The East Germans had even slower going getting an airline going, but they had one huge advantage. There was a 1930s built airport in the village of Schonefeld. It had been built to serve a Henschel aircraft factory there. Post war it had been used by the Soviet Air Force. The Soviets signed it over in 1955 allowing East Germany to start an airline, and base it just outside of Berlin. The government chose the name Deutsche Lufthansa and livery close to the prewar airline. This attracted court action from new West German Lufthansa and more importantly, denied the carrier membership in the International Air Transport Association. They were not going to allow two airlines with the same name. No membership meant the East German Lufthansa could not fly to the west.

East Germany attacked the problem by starting a second airline named Interflug. It also started with Ilyushin Il-14 airliners that were by now license made in Dresden by Elbe Flugzeugwerk. Deutsche Lufthansa was shut down in the early 60s with the fleet taken over by Interflug, which became the East German flag carrier until liquidated in 1991. The Schonefeld Airport became a home for low cost airlines. This fits into the legacy of Interflug, that raised foreign currency by offering low cost vacation charters to Westerners. A bus service from then West Berlin avoided the need to go through East German customs to get on the flights.

Soon after this article publishes, I will go on vacation in Berlin for the first time. My flights are on the low cost carrier Wow out of Iceland and through Schonefeld airport. It is now being expanded but I will be on the lookout for old Russian airliners parked in some out of the way corner. I will also hit the postal museam while there. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Once the achievement is in the bag, it is natural to celebrate. Victors celebrating can seem like taunting to the losers however. 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 Wall, shown at night with searchlights and killing fields is quite the dramatic picture. The building of the Wall was perhaps one of the riskiest times of the long cold war. Getting rid of it was a major achievement of West Germany. Closer to the time, there was a stamp with a hole in the Wall well expressing hope for a united future. This was a different. This was looking back and judging those responcible as bad. Not a lot of people standing up for the DDR, but perhaps not the way to move forward together.

Todays stamp is issue A862, an 100 Pfenning stamp issued by Germany on November 9th, 1995. It was a single stamp issue put forth as honoring the victims of the Berlin Wall. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 60 cents used.

The Berlin Wall came down dramatically at the end of 1989. West Germany started negotiations to bring East Germany in under the West German government. This had been provided for as part of the 1949 West German Basic Law. Doing so required much negotiating, The four major Allied Powers had to renounce their claims to Germany. The East German government had to agree to be dissolved. Soviet/Russian military units had to be withdrawn back to Russia. West Germany also had to formally renounce claims to former German territory east of the Oder-Neisse Line that was the current border between Germany and Poland that left much German territory in the hands of the Poles and the Russians. Getting this territory back had always been at least an agenda item for German Chancellor Kohl’s CDU political party.

Pulling this all together was a major victory for German diplomacy. Doing so was massively expensive. A 2011 study put the cost at over 2 trillion Euros. The expense I think is what lead to the anger that comes across pretty boldly in todays stamp.

There were many manifestations of this anger. Promises made during reunification about not pursuing crimes from DDR times were reniged upon. Egon Krenz, the last East German leader was sentenced to jail for election irregularities and behavior of East German border guards. Eric Honnecker, the long term East German leader, elderly and stricken with cancer was hounded out of Germany and left at the Chilean Embassy in Moscow asking for asylum. His daughter was married to a Chilean and East Germany had taken many Chilean leftists when Allende fell from power. He was refused and stood trial in Germany after being forced back against his will. The trial was bogged down and eventually he was released and now with a passport he was allowed to join his wife and daughter in Chile to die.

Even the fairly new Palace of the Rebublic was torn town in former East Berlin. In the way of the modern, it took longer to tear down in the 2000s than it had taken for the East Germans to build it in the 70s. The structural steel from it was exported to the UAE and used in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

Well my drink is empty so I will open the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Germany after World War I was a place of much suffering and soul searching. On how to move forward, people had different ideas, and indeed different stamp offerings. 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.

Todays stamp in a 1920 printing of a stamp that first appeared in 1902. The statement at the bottom of the stamp translates into always united. The symbols of the stamp relate to symbols of German unification in 1870 under the Prussian King. Germany had just lost a little over 2 million soldiers plus over 800 thousand civilians to the Allied blockade and the Spanish flu. The economy was devastated and the last Kaiser Wilhelm II had abdicated both his German and his Prussian title and was in exile in Holland. A new constitution had been ratified making a much smaller, not united German Republic.

So how could this stamp still be in use in 1920. Without even a Spanish style overprint to track the flip flopping. There were other stamps out at the time that reflect more the situation. There was a much less grandly printed stamp showing a live tree stump with a little new growth. It was to show Germany surviving the difficulties. Reich does not appear on it. It might have been too much for everyone to just suddenly fall into line. While acknowledging the defeat not all were ready to abandon the ideal of all German people united under one government. For a while at least people could display their future hopes on their letters. An austere but freer and less aggressive Germany or a return to the vision of a strong united Germany.

One should also contrast the visuals of the stamp with the later issues of the Nazis.Those stamp offerings came from a very different tradition that was more in tune with populism. This 1920 stamp is just not that. It appeals more to the old aristocracy, trying to inspire a new Bismarck to put the old system back together.

Todays stamp is issue A21, a 2.5 Mark stamp issued by Germany in 1920. The obvious difference between it and the 1902 version is the higher denomination. This reflects to inflation gripping Germany as money was printed to meet obligations both foreign and domestic. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 50 cents mint. The prewar version of the stamp with a lower denomination and a different color is worth $120 mint. Collectors seem to side with the early believers rather than the somewhat pathetic holdouts of 1920. Remember one thing the Weimar Republic was great about was keeping the printing presses humming.

There still are a few holdouts. Huis Doom, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s home in exile in Holland still hosts 25,000 Germans annually on his birthday celebrating German Royalty. Kaiser Wilhelm is buried at this home as he refused Hitler’s offer to be buried in Germany until the House of Hohenzollern is back on the throne, at least of Prussia.

Well my drink is empty and this stamp has me wondering which stamp my maternal German ancestors would have used. I expect the Reich stamp but my German cousins today would prefer the live tree stump stamp, or more likely just a Euroland stamp offering. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

In the aftermath of a war that concluded with a devastating firebombing, this stamp displayed what a new government did to renew the city. 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.

I must say that I like this stamp. East Germany farmed out it’s stamp issues. As a result there are some oversized, overdone issues that were printed in too much quantity. Not this issue. This issue celebrated the 20th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic by showing clean modern architecture in 12 cities. Many of the cities were heavily bombed in the war and so the new construction was sort of a rebirth. This is how the GDR must have seemed to it’s leaders.

The stamp today is issue A357, a 10 pfennig stamp issued by the German Democratic Republic on September 23rd, 1969. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. Central Europe was full of stamp collectors and if there are still collectors of communist era memorabilia, this issue of stamps may yet be discovered.

Dresden was firebombed by British Lancaster bombers in February 1945. German resistance in the west was fading and the eastern city was crowded with refugees from the advancing Russians from the East. 75 percent of the city center was destroyed and 25,000 people perished. Post war, some consider this a war crime but  British Air Marshal Harris interviewed many years later stated that the bombing was justified and reduced the German ability to keep fighting.

Dresden had been a cultural and royal center of the Prussian Empire with a long history. As such there were many historically significant sites damaged in the bombing. The East German decided to concentrate on German Cultural sites such as the opera house for reconstruction. The Prussian and church heritage was judged of less importance. The East Germans were out to construct a new modern scientific Germany, and with that came new modern architecture. It should be noted that there were more of the old buildings repaired in East Germany than in West Germany.

Interestingly at the time both East and West Germany considered themselves the legitimate government of all of Germany. Each viewed the other government as the lackey government of an occupied country. Since both East and West Germany were inundated with over a million foreign soldiers, there was some point to this critique, on both sides.

We all know the reunification that occurred in 1990 was a victory for the West and a defeat for the East. The west had delivered more economic opportunity and freedom to it’s people. It should be remembered though what a bold undertaking the East German government attempted. There was war devastation, no Marshall Plan of USA aid as in the west, and crippling war reparations that had to be paid to the Soviets. Through these challenges, East Germany built the most dynamic economy in the communist world. A fair appraisal of East German leadership should include consideration of this. It was not considered in the immediate aftermath as East German leaders had charges filed and long time leader Erich Honecker had to run to Russia and later Chile to avoid prosecution while Egon Krenz, his short term successor, spent time in German jail.

Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to honor the citizens of Dresden and their recovery efforts after the war. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, arrange your wares and lets make some sales. We are having a trade fair, like we used to.

During the cold war period both Capitalist West Germany and Communist East Germany issued postage stamps. In general, the Western stamps were better than the Eastern. Today though is the exception. This East German stamp is bold, well printed and combines history with a view forward that few stamp issues anywhere pull off successfully.

The stamp today is issue SP252, a 12 Pfennig stamp issued by East Germany on September 2, 1947. The stamp features a view of the Leipzig Trade Fair circa 1497. It is part of a four stamp issue, two of which are semi postal. The issue is a celebration of the post war resumption of the trade fair. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents in its much more common mint condition.

As this issue of stamps celebrate, there have been trade fairs in the German city of Leipzig as far back as 1160 AD. The fairs over time became more often and German/Saxon leaders decreed that the fairs must be in Leipzig. Being one of the bigger cities in the east, the fairs became a gateway where traders from the east and west of Europe met. A good portion of this was Jewish merchants and a Moorish style Synagogue was build adjacent in heavily Lutheran Leipzig.

Naturally there were no trade fairs during World War II. Despite being originally captured by the American Army, Leipzig ended up in the Eastern section. The decision was taken to restart the trade fairs in 1946. In order to  counter act the lure of the Marshall Plan in Western Europe. The Marshall plan handed out aid  to Western European countries, both friend and former foe alike. Soviet leader Stalin started the Comecon organization to get Warsaw Pact nations to work more closely together economically. This included the former foe of East Germany. The trade shows in Leipzig became a big part of that as the Eastern nations could demonstrate their products to one another. It is a credit to their confidence in their products that Westerners were invited to participate.

Comecon outlasted Stalin and the Marshall Plan but it did not survive the fall of Communism in the early 1990s. The Leipzig trade shows however did survive and continue up to the present day.

Well my drink is empty so I will place my orders and perhaps find a hospitality suite to cement the relationships being built. It must have been a relief after so much war and radical governments to get back to the relative normalcy of the trade fairs. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.