Old German Postcards

Thanks! No, clean back. Printed in Hamburg, and I believe the artist is Gunther Todt.

This German FELDPOST postcard I received in a collection bought at auction recently caught my eye because it had pre-printed likenesses of contemporary Chinese stamps. Not in color, but printed a monochrome black, as were (printed in blue like the outer frame of the postcard) also the boxed auxiliary markings.  Quite the find for a general postal history collector.  There is no payment required for German soldiers; "Feldpost" is only to be marked, often by hand by the sender or with a preprinted sticker.  Yet there appears a piece of selvage from German stamp sheets on the bottom, serving no obvious purpose.


The cancel "K(aiserliches=.D(Deutsche). FELDPOSTEXPEDITION/des/OSTASIATISCHEN/EXPEDITIONSCORPS" dated 24/10 synchronizes with the sender's handwritten date just before the greeting: 24-10-1902. The cancel is of black ink and appears genuine. The German concession around Tsingtao probably welcomed the East Asian Feldpost Expedition which was just a year or so before caught up in the "Boxer Rebellion."  Maybe these postcards were printed and supplied in quantities to the soldiers (note the preprinted blue boxed Regiment cachet lower left)

I'm just not sure why the current Chinese stamps were depicted, maybe to remind the soldiers they didn't need to frank their postcards/mail home?   





On the reverse is a request by the sender, to have the recipient, if I deciphered the German-language cursive writing correctly, procure 50 liters of some type of oil--maybe corn oil (Maisöl) to be incurred without a shipping charge!  On the front the addressee Carl Gily (sp?) is c/o the Maisöl Fabrikant (factory) in Lichterfelde, today a part of Berlin,  Maybe it's a combined greeting AND purchase order.  Here is the enlarged section (upside down on the reverse):



That's why I like postal history so much, it's so much more than just the stamp!!!

--Jim

Very nice souvenir scub even if it is not rare. I also have some old covers and postcards from my family.


Beryllium Guy jimwentzell , unfortunately I can not say anything about the postcard from China either, I have never seen such a postcard and also found nothing in the German forum. However, in my Michel letters catalog I found an almost identical postmark from that time (Boxer Rebellion), only the date had a different format.

A few German postcards from the 1920s with international rates. Note the address - “Lansing, Michigan, North America” . And check out the bus cancel.

another one showed up in the mail last week, with about 60 others. Still trying to sort. Some are in not so good shape, but this one was presentable! 

How about old German maxicards?

I couldn't find a Feldpost thread so I've posted this here. I think it fits since it's an old picture postcard used for feldpost. 

A postcard from today's trip to the mailbox.

The message on the postcard is dated June 12, 1915 and it received a feldpost cancel from a postal unit at the 1 Landwehr Division on June 25. It was also hand-stamped at the regiment / company level ... L. J. R. 122 9 Kompagnie. I had expected this would be L.I.R for Landwehrinfantrieregiment. I'm not sure what L.J.R means. Landwehrjagerregiment? - Light Infantry? If you can, feel free to educate me. 

The regimental number 122 which I understand was a Wuttemberg Regiment ... which, at the start of the war, was nominally attached to the XIII Corps ... which did not include 1 Divsion. So? War is confusing.

Anyway, as interesting as feldpost postmarks are ... what especially intrigues me about this particular postcard is the picture. 

The postcard with this picture exploded on the scene from Switzerand in 1915. Published by K. Esig in Basel, iit featured an illustration by R. Weiss titled Europa Trauvert [Europe Mourns]. It shows an allegorical Europe as an exhausted women with a sword and helmet who despairs as a figure representing war spits fire and carries a sword and torch over a battlefield with soldiers and civilans of all nations. Quite a call for peace and common sense. 

That the postcard exists is not surprising. It is also not surprisng that it was published in Switzerland. Nor is it surprising that people all over Europe bought and used this postcard in 1915.

What is surprising is that it was used by a solider to send a feldpost message home. I guess we know what he was trying to say. It's fascinating that his chain of command let him say it.