Germany

With all my effort to get pictorial postmarks and datestamps from Germany I almost forgot that I needed an ordinary country envelope from Germany in my collection. On 10 May I was in Essen so I bought a recent 90 cent stamp (international tariff), put it on the envelope and left it with the post office.

Three days later it arrived home. The envelope went through the central sorting centre in Essen and got a machine cancellation. The image shows a map of the postal district of Essen. All postal codes there start with 45.

Before the unification of Germany in 1871 some German states issued their own stamps. From 1871 the Reichspost took over the postal services until 1945. After the war the allied powers took care of the mail and issued stamps for that. In 1949 Germany was split into two countries that issued their own stamps. In West Germany the Deutsche Bundespost was established from 1949 to 1995. In East Germany (the German Democratic Republic it was the Deutsche Post (DDR) from 1949 to 1990. There were also separate stamps from the Bundespost for West Berlin (1949-1990). A few years after the reunification the Deutsche Post AG was formed.

Website of the philatelic service of the Deutsche Post (in German): shop.deutschepost.de.

Web page of Deutsche Post with the postmark bulletins (in German, every two weeks, also archive from 2017): shop.deutschepost.de/stempel-und-informationen.

Date sent: 10 May 2017

Date postmark: 11 May 2017

Date received: 13 May 2017

Number of days: 3

Envelope in collection: 40