Indicia
Indicia are of a franking machine (also franking machine or postage meter called) generated stamp imprints with indicia character, to franking of mail items are used. A distinction is generally made between postage indicia and sender indicia based on the location of the postage stamp used . In terms of design, indicia imprints are very variable, but usually consist of the actual value stamp with the details of the postage paid and a place or date stamp (day stamp ). The respective country designation or the name of the post office which is to transport the item franked with the stamp is usually integrated into the value stamp . The sender franking mark also has an area that is available for sender information and advertising. According to the regulations of the Universal Postal Union , the stamp color red was prescribed for the franking - at least in international traffic - but since the beginning of the 21st century the color blue has also been used, which is characterized by better legibility and is therefore more useful for machine mail processing. Postage stamps are often rejected by stamp collectors because they play a major role in the fact that stamps disappear from daily mail traffic. On the other hand, there are many philatelists who collect indicia as evidence of the advancing automation of the postal service and who document their various possible uses. Freestamps are also gaining increasing recognition from home and motif collectors.
history
The form of franking postal items using postage stamps, which was first used in Great Britain in 1840 and soon worldwide, had led to an enormous acceleration of the postal service workflow for senders and post offices. However, this rationalization effect was already lost in the second half of the 19th century. The steadily growing mail volume in companies and institutions due to strong industrial development made franking with postage stamps (including recording the postage spent) a time-consuming affair. For Swiss Post, stamping the mail items delivered in a way that invalidates the brand was an ever greater challenge.
Initially, the post made use of franking stamps, in which the note for the cash franking ("Franko" or "Franco") was combined with the local postmark. Gluing stamps was no longer necessary. Such stamps were used by the Prussian Post from 1864 and the Württemberg Post Office from 1887. The Post of the North German Confederation and the Deutsche Reichspost used such stamps for a short time in about 150 post offices with high mail volumes. The postage stamps were generally cut off in red, partly in purple. In 1879 the time of the local franking stamp ended.
The mass mailings that became increasingly popular at the end of the 19th century required further rationalization. Corresponding considerations led to the development of franking machines at this time, for example in the USA in 1897 and in Hungary in 1906. Numerous designs of franking machines were also submitted to the Deutsche Reichspost at the turn of the century. Overall, however, the postal administrations behaved rather cautiously - especially with regard to the use of franking machines at customers' sites. "An experimental use of postage meters at the beginning of the 20th century is only known from New Zealand and Norway ."
Postage stamp
In 1910, the Bavarian Post Office used indicia machines from the Sylbe company in eight post offices , with which a stamp was printed over the entire letter or card side, with the day stamp and a single-circle stamp with the inscription "(Wert) Pf / FRANCO / BEZAHLT", respectively connected by four horizontal lines, alternating. According to their appearance, these stamps are also known as "band stamps". Initially green and later black or red stamping inks were used. "It was not until the end of 1920 that the Deutsche Reichspost introduced similar stamping machines, and the post offices in Berlin 2 and Berlin 11 began using them at the end of 1919." The 1920s through the VII Universal Postal Congress in Madrid with effect from On January 1, 1922, franking was approved in international mail.
From 1920 to 1922, postage stamps were used at the Deutsche Reichspost, in which a special drawing (ornamental pattern) was used for each value grade. Two groups can be distinguished. The first group includes the stamps for domestic traffic. The imprint was initially black and later red. The second group - here the respective decorative pattern contained the inscription German Empire in addition to the value indication - could also be used for international mail. The stamps of the second group were not used until after January 1, 1922, according to the regulations of Madrid, and were printed in red. In both groups, the respective day stamp was located to the left of the value stamp in the form of an ornamental pattern.
In the context of increasing inflation it became more and more difficult to supply the post offices with the required new stamp models in good time. From mid-December 1922, the use of stamps with various decorative patterns was completely stopped.
A sample that had been in use since October 1922, with a value in an elongated octagon and an indication of the post office, remained in use. The postage level, which can be found both with and without the currency, could be used as required. Postage stamps in a comparable form can still be found in the immediate post-war years and later at the Deutsche Post of the GDR and the Deutsche Bundespost .
With the introduction of centralized letter processing in letter centers in 1993, however, this traditional form of postage stamps lost its importance. In the period that followed, stamps with the inscription "Briefregion" or "Briefzentrum" in the day stamp and a value stamp similar to that of the sender franking mark were used, with a remarkable variety of stamps developing by the end of the decade. This arbitrariness will be put to an end from January 1, 1999 (the original start date of the pilot test was October 1, 1998, early use is possible) by the "Frankier Service" of Deutsche Post AG . Associated with this is a new stamp imprint in the color black, which shows the day stamp of the respective mail center on the right and a rectangular "value stamp" with a stylized post horn , the name Deutsche Post and two-line inscription FRANKIER / SERVICE. The reverse arrangement with a value stamp on the right can also be found, as well as stamp imprints with additional Post's own advertising on the left (“With the / franking / service / you gain / time and money”) or the company details of major Post customers. There is no specific indication of the value, which means that the stamp clichés could still be used without any problems after the euro changeover in 2002. A stamp with the additional text “Fee paid” in the lower area of the postmark rectangle was used for the franking of Infopost .
Sender franking mark
The use of postage indicia at the Deutsche Reichspost was followed in 1921 by the approval of sender indicia. A trial phase with machines from four manufacturers did not begin until 1923, however. The commissioned companies included the Furtwängler watch factory (formerly L. Furtwängler Söhne AG) from Furtwangen, BAFRA from Berlin and the Ankerwerke AG from Bielefeld, three companies that had already joined the company in July 1923 “Postfreistempler GmbH” (from 1925 “Francotyp Gesellschaft mbH” in Berlin, whereby the Furtwängler watch factory probably left) merged, as did the Komusina-Gesellschaft from Karlsruhe. The machine stamps from this test phase did not yet contain a day stamp, this was rejected by the post office as a delivery and cancellation stamp after the postage paid mail had been delivered. It was only in the course of the 1920s that the place and date stamp became an integral part of the sender franking and was now also considered a cancellation stamp. A stamp processing by the Post was no longer necessary.
The testing phase ended in 1925 with a positive result. While the Post let its customers use the franking machines in the trial phase, they now had to be bought from the manufacturer and approval applied for from the Post. Francotyp and Komusina machines were used in Germany in the 1920s. When the Komusina-Gesellschaft filed for bankruptcy after losing patent disputes with Francotyp GmbH in 1931 and ultimately had to stop production, Francotyp postage stamps became increasingly popular on the German and international market. As early as the early 1930s, the company was promoting its successful “Francotyp C” model with the slogan: “The post office in the house has been introduced in all the world's cultural states”. In Germany, for the time being, only "Freistempler GmbH", Frankfurt am Main, founded in 1938 by the company " Telefonbau und Normalzeit ", later under the name "Postalia GmbH" based in Offenbach, managed to gain certain market shares. Francotyp and Postalia merged in 1983 to form Francotyp-Postalia AG, which has had its headquarters in Birkenwerder near Berlin since 1994 . Before the Second World War, the American manufacturer “ Pitney Bowes ” was a notable competitor on the international market, and after 1945 it was able to develop into the world's leading manufacturer of franking machines. Pitney Bowes was present on the German market with indicia machines from 1964. In 1969 the companies “ Frama ” from Switzerland and the European market leader “ Neopost ” received approval from the Deutsche Bundespost for their franking machines, followed in 1974 by machines from “Rena” and 1978 from “Krag”.
The sender indicia varied depending on the manufacturer and the machine used, but were largely the same, apart from the trial phase in the mid-1920s, due to the standards set by the post office with regard to the design of the day stamp and the stamp cliché. Only in terms of the arrangement of the individual elements did the Komusina and Francotyp indicia differ significantly. With the stamp imprints from Komusina there was a totalizer on the left in a vertical position, followed by the advertising field for the sender, then the local date stamp and on the far right the value stamp. The franking stamps on the Francotyp machines showed, from left to right, the local date stamp, the sender's advertising field and - also on the far right - the value stamp. Initially, both manufacturers had room for a company or authority designation below the day and value stamp, but this was later dispensed with on Francotyp and Postalia machines. The relevant information was integrated into the advertising field, provided that the customer placed value on it.
In 1958/59, the German Federal Post Office, taking international practice into account, declared the sequence of the sender field, location date stamp, value stamp (from left to right) to be the norm for all new franking machines.
The sometimes long period of use of franking machines by companies and authorities meant that the postage stamp clichés had to be repeatedly adapted in accordance with the changing requirements of the respective postal administration. The country names, for example, changed from German Reich, German Reichspost, Deutsche Post, Deutsche Bundespost to Deutsche Post AG, there are also the names Saarland, Deutsche Bundespost Berlin, Deutsche Post (GDR). Often the entire cliché was not always exchanged immediately during conversion phases, but - especially in the emergency years after 1945 - only unwanted parts of the stamp were initially removed (adapted), e.g. B. swastikas or the word part "Reichs" in "Deutsche Reichspost". The same applied to political slogans in the sender field. Such adapted stamp impressions are particularly sought after by collectors.
In the 1980s, every stamp manufacturer approved by the Deutsche Bundespost was assigned an identification letter, which from then on was printed on the value stamp together with an identification number for the respective franking machine.
Stampit and Frankit franking imprints
In September 2001, the Stampit process was introduced in Germany as EDP franking for everyone with printing of the franking and accounting process via the Internet. DPAG's Frankit program was launched in April 2004, with the aim of gradually replacing franking machines that were still in use with franking machines that worked on a digital basis. Stampit and Frankit led to a fundamental change in the way of cash postage and its proof on mail.
The frankings generated in the Stampit or Frankit process are also counted as postage stamps by many collectors , although they are no longer created by stamping ( letterpress printing ) but as printouts from laser or inkjet printers . This is particularly true of the Frankit imprints, which with legible information on postage and date, but above all with the identity code , which provides information about the manufacturer, the type and the serial number of the franking machine used, are still clearly similar to the traditional sender franking.
Completely new for franking imprints from both processes is the elimination of the postage stamp-like value stamp imprint and the day stamp. Important information is now - in addition to the display in plain text - primarily encrypted in a 36 × 36 DataMatrix code (2-D barcode). The space to the left of the matrix code can be used with the Frankit process (in the Stampit process, which was discontinued in 2011, this was only possible in the business version) for advertising the sender or for specifying additional letter services. This also results in a certain proximity to the traditional sender franking marks for Frankit imprints.
Metered Mail
A special form of postage stamp is the "Metered Mail" used in the USA, Canada, Switzerland and other countries. The postal customer uses a machine that, after entering the desired postage amount and paying the same, the corresponding stamps on fee slips prints which the customer sticks on his mail. The stamp imprints usually contain a day stamp in addition to the value imprint.
literature
- Wolfram Grallert: Lexicon of Philately. 2nd Edition. Phil * Creativ GmbH, Schwalmtal 2007, ISBN 978-3-932198-38-0 .
- Horst Niescher, small stamp customer. transpress Verlag, Berlin 1984.
- Jürgen Olschimke: The new sender franking mark (Frankit). Philately and Postal History 245, philately 324, pp. 23–24, June 2004.
- Heiner Dürst: The history of the machine indicia 1884/1928. Edited by the Research Association for Post and Sender Freestamps e. V., 1992.
- Heiner Dürst, Gerd Eich: The German post and sender franking marks. Volume 1: The sender franking marks of the German Reich and their adaptations. Manual and catalog. Edited by the Research Association for Post and Sender Freestamps e. V., 1999.
- Heiner Dürst, Gerd Eich: The German post and sender franking marks. Volume 2: The German sender franking marks of the post-war period from 1946 without identification. Catalog and manual. Edited by the Research Association for Post and Sender Freestamps e. V., 1999.
Web links
- Research Association Post and sender indicia
- Jürgen Olschimke: Modern postal history
Individual evidence
- ↑ Research Association Post and sender indicia
- ^ Horst Niescher: Small stamp customer. transpress Verlag, Berlin 1984, p. 136.
- ↑ Jürgen Olschimke: The new sender franking (Frankit). Philately and Postal History 245, philately 324, pp. 23-24, June 2004. Online version of the article