Tag: Germany stamp

Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. 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. We have an interesting story to tell of a great airplane whose stamp is tainted by defeat.

The stamp today has a fairly normal picture for an early years airmail stamp from anywhere. It shows a big 4 propeller airliner flying over an airport. When put into context, it is possible to see what a desperate and defeated image it really is. The plane is a German Condor airliner that captured the worlds imagination with the first direct flight from Berlin to New York and regular service to Argentina and Japan, both of which required several stops. It was the most advanced airliner in the world when it was introduced in 1938. By late 1944 when this stamp was issued, the war for Germany was soon lost.

One can see the desperation on the stamp. Germany instead of being referred to Deutches Reich, German Empire, as was common into the war years, it was now GrossDeutches Reich, greater German Empire. By then the area controlled by Germany was shrinking fast. The denomination on the stamp is increased by 66% as a mandatory contribution to the war effort. It is easy to spot the symbolism  of a famous, long range airliner taking off toward a break in the storm clouds to lift you away to some far off place, untouched by war.

The stamp today was issued in 1944 by the German Nazi government. It is an airmail stamp that commemorates the 25th anniversary of the German postal Air mail service, which started in 1919. The Scott catalog lacks listings for many of Germany’s later war years stamps. Most of the copies that are still around are mint. A good number were liberated at wars end and found there way into stamp collections having never been mailed.

The plane on the stamp is a Focke-Wulf FW200A Condor airliner. It flew at a speed of 220 mph and had a range of 2200 miles. It was designed by famed aircraft designer Kurt Tank. It was built from 1938-1944 and prewar a few entered service with Lufthansa in Germany and with Denmark and Brazil. The Japanese suggested a maritime patrol bomber version and also ordered airliners but these were kept in Germany at the outbreak of WWII. The armed version was used to good effect early in the Battle of the Atlantic until it was realized they were too valuable to risk having them shot down. After that they were regulated to transport duty including as Hitler’s personal transport and the airlift to Stalingrad. The last Condor flight to Portugal from Berlin happened in April 1945 just days before Berlin fell to the Russians.

Post war. no new Condors were produced although a few stayed in service in Spain, Brazil, and the Soviet Union. There is only one example of the Condor still in existence. The Lufthansa museum in Germany has an example pieced together from two examples that had crashed in Norway during the war. Norway had been reluctant to allow pieces of one of the planes to go back to Germany as they were using the wreckage as a war memorial. It was finally agreed to allow a minimum of parts to be taken to get one complete example of this historic airplane.

Well, my drink is empty so it is time to open up the conversation in the below comment section. 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, take the first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story of a German author whose reputation shot up to the stars when Germany found itself with superfluous towers.

Today stamp is recognizable as a West German stamp from the 1980s. Germany did the opposite of many western countries in doing stamps with current political leaders but very few of past leaders. This was true even before the second world war. What Germany always did was issue many stamps of leaders in various fields from previous periods. This would often be done on the anniversary of a birth. I am very fond of this practice as it allows the stamp collector to learn about those to whom there was no previous exposure.

The stamp today is issue A493, a 50 pfennig stamp issued by West Germany on August 13, 1981 to honor the 150th anniversary of the birth of the writer Wilhelm Raabe. The Scott catalog list the value as 50 cents cancelled. Interestingly, the Scott catalog mistakenly lists Mr. Raabe as a poet. He was instead a writer and secondarily a painter.

Mr. Raabe started writing at a fairly young age while he was employed as an apprentice in a bookshop. He quickly tired of the shopkeeper’s life and with the success of his early works he was able to devote himself full time to writing and advanced academics. His early works were funny insights into the life of the German bourgeois.

There were three distinct periods in Mr. Raabe’s writing. There was the early period described above. There was then a middle period where the work seemed to come under the influence of philosophical pessimism. This was being advanced at the time by the German philosopher Shopenhaurer. Philosophical pessimism puts forth that there really is no prospect of advancement in the human condition and that any striving was just the human will being dominant in the pursuit of humans baser needs. The last period in Mr. Raabe’s writing saw a more mature form of his humor return.

I identified a lot with the idea of three periods to a persons work. An early creative phase where a lot of ones best work is done. The optimism of youth can be such a formidable force. Then after time passes and perhaps the world has handed you a few hard knocks, a pessimism creeps in that will change the product being produced. Then at last a final phase where a lite touch returns and a more worldly but less serious tone emerges.

There is another interesting thing about Mr. Raabe. A 70 foot tower was named for him near Blankenburg, Germany in 1952, 42 years after his death. That may not be surprising as it was the area that Mr. Raabe lived. What makes it more interesting is that the tower was originally built in 1896 and was one of a series of towers built to honor various German Kaisers. They were built as a response to towers previously built to honor Otto von Bismarck. There was a perception that Bismarck was becoming something of a cult like figure to some. It would have been natural for the Kaiser to have thought that the people’s hearts belonged with him. To those people the sudden great number of competing towers must have been very strange.

Thus the renaming of the tower in 1952 for Mr. Raabe was understandable. By then few of the towers survived. This one still does.

Well, my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the conversation in the below comment section. Have any of our readers read Mr. Raabe’s books or even climbed his tower? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.