Mercur private city letter expedition

Mercur building on Artilleriestrasse , corner of Andreaestrasse ;
Drawing by Albrecht Haupt , around 1896

Mercur card , sent in 1894 "To the royal government architect Mr. Schacht" at Seilerstrasse 13

Anniversary card for the 10th anniversary with various stamps
Lithography by A. Harbers & Brager ; 1896

The Mercur Private City Letter Expedition was a postal company in Hanover .

history

On November 2, 1886, the company Selly Hein & Co. founded the private mail delivery company Mercur in Hanover . The basis was the law on the postal system of the German Empire of 1871, according to which the carriage of mail within localities could also be carried out by private providers.

Mercur operated its first office in Grosse Packhofstrasse 28. Ten years later, in 1896, the company moved into its own building on Artilleriestrasse (from 1953: Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse ) and the corner of Andreaestrasse .

On September 1, 1896, the then independent town of Linden was also included in the postal area.

In 1896 the company also issued a special anniversary card “to celebrate its 10th anniversary” , with which it also documented the increased workforce from 15 “civil servants” (meaning permanent employees ) to 85 civil servants. On the "Mercur Card" made to this event, the enlarged private Stadtpost company also five stamps from different motives, besides the winged Mercury and the Lower Saxony Ross also Hermann Rasch and Ferdinand Haltenhoff , both city managers were of Hanover.

After the imperial postal monopoly resulted in the closure of all German private postal services on April 1, 1900 , Mercur was closed in Hanover for compensation of 262,000 marks.

Only after the postal reform in 1998 was Citipost in Hanover, a private letter post company established again.

Postage stamps

Mercur was the issuer of various postage stamps . The stamps of the stamps named “Private Post” under collectors were available individually in different value grades. There were also preprinted postal stationery items as postcards or envelopes .

Mercur canceled the stamps with its own cancellation. The stamps had different motifs: a Hermes head was common, but special stamps were also used, for example portraits of personalities from public life in Hanover, such as city director Heinrich Tramm . Anniversary and jewelry postcards are also known , for example with images of the birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm I.

literature

• W. Wescher: The private city post expedition "Mercur" to Hanover. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter . Neue Episode 27 (1973), pp. 269-296.
• Rainer Ertel : Mercur private city letter expedition. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 438f.
• Emil W. Mewes: Mercury. Magazine for private postage stamp collectors , various magazine issues from 1949
• Private mail. Journal of the working group Privatpost-Merkur in the BDPh eV
• Horst Müller: Michel special catalog of the German private postage stamps. New edition. Schwaneberger Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-87858-444-X .

Web links

Commons : Mercur Privat-Stadtbrief Expedition (Hannover)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• ebay : Various offers
• Delcampe : various offers

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Rainer Ertel: Mercur .... In: Stadtlexikon Hannover. P. 438f.
2. ^ Helmut Zimmermann : Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse. In: The street names of the state capital Hanover. Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung , Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-6120-6 , p. 152.
3. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Linden. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover. P. 406ff.
4. ↑ see this artist card
5. ↑ various offers on ebay
6. ↑ Offers at Delcampe.de
7. ↑ Amazon : Offers at Philabooks.com
8. ↑ Offers at philabooks.com

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 36.3 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 13"  E