Stamp collectors? Feeding a hobby on ebay - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Jim B. · #1 07-09-2007, 12:26 AM

Still trying to figure out why this one was special and somehow couldn't bear to pass it up..

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=007&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&viewitem=&item=170126302425&rd=1,1

Well, I have kind of a narrow focus (you almost have to!) with this.

Since I am interested in WWII history,especially the East front from the German POV, I found this cover extremely interesting and decided to chase it.

Finally decided to get serious, as there were some German bidders after it also, and with 11 seconds left, swooped in and sniped it up today.

In 45 years I had never seen anything like this:

It's a cover with the stamps of 3 countries on it.

Occupied Ukraine, Germany and GG (General Gouvernment - occupied Poland.), cancelled May 1943. The cancellations tie all the stamps together, and the stamps were placed on the envelope in a way that suggests a "favor" cancellation (placed on it with an eye to future collectbility.)

I once won up a cover mailed from the Ostland (Kaunas, occupied Lithuania) to Warschau (Warshaw) and it was misfranked (Ostland and German stamps on it) but it was grubby and nothing like this one.

I don't speak German, but the return address looks to be from one of the people in the Organization Todt "OT" who was a Road Construction Inspector "Strassenbau inspektor" in Nikopol.

Nikopol is in the Southeastern corner of the Ukraine, near the Dniester river, and had rail junctions and a manganese industry.

Evidently it was part of the Nikopol Administration District "Bezirk Kommissariat". I have never heard of the town Rawa Ruska but evidently it must have been a town with a small post office there, because of the cancellation and registered Letter "R" stamp on it.

It was mailed via "Feldpost" (Military Mail) per the Feldpost Nr. on the envelope, which is VERY unusual because 99% of the war Feldpost mail went without postage, because the soldiers using the Feldpost got to send letters for free.

Maybe because the Absender of the letter worked for the OT he had to supply the stamps. Likely the absender and recipient of the letter were civilians, but Nazi party members and mid level managers/engineers but I don't know if they knew each other, or if one of them collected stamps and requested this cover, and how it came to bear the unusual collection of stamps from three countries on it.

There was not "Geoffnet" (opened by the censor) tape on the envelope either, which was interesting, as it suggests the correspondents were high enough in the hierarchy to avoid that, or it was viewed as a collectable envelope only with nothing worth inspecting. Can't figure it out.

The Organization Todt was formed by Maj. Gen. Fritz Todt (died in a plane crash in 1942) as a kind of hybrid civil/military engineering group, tasked with the construction of buildings, roads, bridges and airfields.

Some slave labour was employed, POWS from Poland Russia Norway France and elsewhere in addition to German workers who were rotated in and out.

The addressee was evidently a "Work Group Leader" (arbeitsgruppenleiter) attached to the Inspection arm of the OT, possibly in charge of the Constgruction at Rastenburg.

The address is of interest because Rastenburg/ostpr indicates the facility which existed then in Rastenburg, East Prussia, and was known as the "Wolfsschanze" (Wolf's Lair) which was constructed so that Adolf Hitler could go there and be close to the operations in the East Front. It was a fairly large complex, and the German workers of the OT were rotated out in waves of 20,000 at a time, so as to maintain secrecy of the location.

By 1943 Hitler was spending more and more time at the Wolf's Lair, as he did take it upon himself to micromanage the war, to the consternation of Guderian and the other Generals of the OKH and OKW.

It was also the site of the failed July 20, 1944 assination attempt on Hitler carried out unsuccessfully by Count Claus Graffen von Stauffenberg.

The cover seemed like a memorialization of an interesting time and place in history, and with the stamps of three countries linked together on it, seemed irresistable to a collector.

Having bought nothing for over a year, I finally succumbed to this. The seller and I already communicated by email this afternoon, and I will pay for it tomorrow.

I think I understand why it attracted some unusual interest from German collectors, but mostly it is speculation and mystery. I wish I knew the whole history. It's not really worththe trouble to authernticate though.

This makes up for the BuM (Bohemian and Morvavia) "Bohmen und Mahren" cover with the Protectorate Hitler stamps and the cancellation date of May 8, 1945 (the day AFTER the surrrender to the Allies) that I let get away.

A highly satisfying event for a collector. Just wanted to share, if anyone was interested.

rickg · #2 07-09-2007, 03:11 AM

I have one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=002&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=120057042071&rd=1&rd=1

I bought it some 25 years ago for $50. Been watching them on ebay, seeing what they're going for. This particular one has been listed for several weeks now. A couple others went for about half what I paid for mine. The philatelic world appears to pretty fickle.
I've a decent german stamp collection. Haven't done anything with it for years though. I had an uncle over in Germany when I was a kid(in the mid-1960's), and he sent me quite a few WWII, and earlier, stamps.

Jim B. · #3 07-09-2007, 05:32 AM

^^^that is an interesting block you have there. I have seen those both cancelled an uncancelled.

There is a lot of really interesting stuff that was issued in the years from 1935-1945 in the "Drittes Reich" with collectors in mind. The postal system was incredibly efficient, to the bitter end. One Berlin stamp dealer told me that he was aware of one letter from the tax collector's office that was delivered successfully during the Battle of Berlin withRussian soldiers in battle 200 yards away from the Post Office!

I managed to obtain a few couple of interesting covers from 1945, one of them a FDC 6 Jan '45 from Oldenburg, another (Mi.#908) cancelled in Munich in March, and the best yet, a small standard 12 pf cover mailed from Markneukirchen in Saxony on April 12, 1945, to Plauen (Pausa) in Vogtland, Saxony with a receipt dated cancellation of April 16th.

It has a beautiful clear cancellation with the "Musikinstrumentbau" script and saxophone picture on it, just the same as it was in the 1930s. Markneukirchen is a small village famous for fabrication of musical instruments. Bill Clinton's saxphone came from there.

This cover had to be one of the very last postal deliveries from that town under the Reich, because Gen. Patton and Mark Clark swept through Plauen and Markneukirchen right at this time and liberated them. I haven't found out the date it happened yet.

I'm still looking for a good BuM 1943 Heydrich cover. Some interesting stuff came out of the Protectorate, especially from Prague and surrounds.

This crazy hobby.

Larry Delor · #4 07-09-2007, 12:28 PM

Strassenbahn = Streetcar

Interesting stamps.