House order number
The house order number (HAN, rarely HAN) is a sequence of digits that occurs in German stamps produced using plate printing , is printed on the edge of the sheet and is identical to the numerical recording of the printing orders placed in the respective fiscal year by the printer . House order numbers can also be found in the stamp issues of the Allied Control Council for the Soviet , American and British occupation zones from 1946 to 1948 and in stamps of the Federal Printing Office until 1966. Collecting sheet edge pieces with house order numbers and their documentation is a specialty of Germany philately, which is cultivated by numerous philatelists . Such pieces are often used to enrich a country collection.
HAN in the Reichsdruckerei
In the Reichsdruckerei , all print jobs from the Reichspostamt or the Reichspostministeriums , but also from other authorities and offices in the respective financial year were recorded with a consecutive number. In order to be able to clearly assign the printing work carried out to the respective orders later, the respective house order number was printed on the edge. For the first time at the beginning of the 1902 financial year (April 1, 1902 to March 31, 1903), the Reichsdruckerei's house order number can be found on sheets of stamps. It initially consisted of three (starting with the number 101) or four digits. Probably at the beginning of the accounting year 1904 a capital "H" was placed in front of the respective number. At the end of the 1908 financial year and then continuously from 1909 onwards, after the actual house order number, separated by a dot, the respective financial year with its last two digits was also recorded. For example, a HAN from 1908 is H 5824.08. This made it possible, also for the collector, to create a clear chronology of the print jobs. If the HAN was initially printed in different places on the print sheet, it can later be found mostly under the two middle fields of the last row of stamps (field 95 and 96 for a sheet with 100 stamps).
The house order number was also used for orders for which an already printed stamp sheet was to be provided with an imprint . Stamp sheets with imprint therefore sometimes have two house order numbers.
HAN in the Bundesdruckerei
With the code common at the Reichsdruckerei, the house order number was also used in the Bundesdruckerei until the 1st quarter of 1950. The HAN was then changed as follows: Example 16274.51 1, where 16 represents the code number for the print job by the post office, 274 the serial number of the job and 51 the year in which the order was placed. The following 1 is the form number , a label to be found in plate printing for the various plates of the printing form. From 1953 the code was changed from 16 to 15. There was another change from 1955: The final number of the order year was also placed in front of the postal order number. A typical HAN now had the following appearance: 515041.55 1 . 5 stands for the year of the order (in this case 1955), 15 is the code number of the print order by the post office, 041 is the serial number of the order and 55 is the year of printing. The 1 in turn indicates the shape number. Using this code it was possible to differentiate between the year of the order and the year of printing.
The last Federal German stamp issue with HAN was the 1 Pf-digit issue on fluorescent paper, which was printed for the last time in 1966.
Imprints on GDR postage stamps
While the house order numbers were used for the internal control of the respective printing company, the printing notes occurring in the GDR stamp sheets primarily had the function of documenting the legality of the executed print order by the state. They contain the name of the printer, if necessary with the respective license number, information about the number of copies, the printing date and so on. These print marks can be found on the lower margin of the stamp sheet. They also appear on postal stationery .
literature
- Wolfram Grallert: Lexicon of Philately, 2nd edition, Phil * Creativ GmbH, Schwalmtal 2007, ISBN 3-9321-9838-7 .