East African Maritime Mail
The East African Lake Post was a private postal company of the Hamburg chemical company Schülke & Mayr in German East Africa .
history
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In 1890 Schülke & Mayr set up a station on Lake Victoria to test the disinfectant Lysol and other medical products. At this time, the colony's state postal system was limited to the coastal towns, where postal facilities were established from 1890 onwards.
In 1891, the company signed a contract with the Imperial Gouvernement of German East Africa for the postal connection of its station. It concerned the transport of mail between the East African coast near Zanzibar and the great East African lakes in the hinterland. Once a month, after the arrival of German imperial mail steamers in the port of Dar es Salaam, an expedition to Lake Victoria was to set off. The porters wore a brass plaque on their chests with the inscription Imperial Gouvernementspost . The members were armed with Mauser model 71 carbines . The total weight of the mail items was up to ten kilograms. The first of these expeditions left Dar es Salaam on January 6, 1892. The route led via Mpwapwa , where, in addition to the station mail, mail for British and French missions was delivered. Then the route ran via Tabora to Bukoba on Lake Victoria. The march back to the coast followed with mail for the opposite direction. The march lasted up to eleven hours a day. As a result, the entire route there and back could be covered in around 100 days. The delivery of a letter from Berlin to Bukoba should take around 70 days. The answer could be in Berlin about four and a half months later.
A series of private postage stamps was printed in 1892 for the regular handling of mail delivery. The private messenger post Dar es Salaam – Bukoba ended after a year because the contract was not renewed by the governorate. The postage stamps therefore did not come into circulation. From 1894, the governorate took over the construction of the messenger post to the interior.
philately
Since the private postage stamps were never issued, only unused or unstamped copies are recognized by stamp dealers and philatelists . The stamps show a lake landscape under palm trees surrounded by foliage and African weapons (club, shield, spears). The inscription reads SCHÜLKE & MAYR'S / AFRIKANISCHE-SEEEN-POST with the addition under Contract with the Kaiserl. Governorate in GERMAN EAST AFRICA . Different colors and amounts of money are known. The printing was done by the Leipzig company Giesecke & Devrient in sheets of 25 stamps each. To mark the 50th anniversary of Schülke & Mayr in 1939, the brands were reprinted for the company's publication In the fight against the epidemic.
| colour | amount | unit |
|---|---|---|
| red | 5 | Cents |
| orange | 10 | Cents |
| blue | 25th | Cents |
| green | 50 | Cents |
| brown | 1 | Dollar ( $ ) |
literature
- Friedrich F. Steuer, Ronald F. Steuer: manual and catalog of the German colonial forerunners. 4th edition. Schwaneberger, Unterschleißheim 2006, ISBN 3-87858-398-2 , p. 236.
- Birgit Kuse-Wöstmann (Ed.): Carrier pigeons, balloons, tin canisters - mail delivery between innovation and curiosity. Deutsche Post AG, Bonn 2012, p. 120 f.
- Ton Dietz: African Postal Heritage - Tanzania 1885–1920s - Part I: German East Africa, 1885–1914. In: African Postal Heritage (APH) papers , No. 3, African Studies Center Leiden / Leiden University 2016, p. 21 f. ( open access ).
- Philipp Ruge: Schülke & Mayr's stamps, in: Working group of collectors of German colonial postage stamps (ed.): Reports for colonial stamp collectors. No. 142, March 2016, pp. 4563–4566.
Web links
- Gert WF Murmann: East African Sea Mail. May 10, 2018, accessed April 4, 2020 .
- Handelshaus Storf: German Colonies of German East Africa DOA 1892, private edition “Schülke & Mayr”. Storf Internationales Handelshaus GmbH & Co. KG, accessed on April 4, 2020 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Waldemar Gruschke: brand Länderlexikon AG. Vol. 1, Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 978-3-8334-1044-4 , p. 16.
- ^ Anne Brüggemann: The broken wire. The Deutsche Post in East Africa - historical photographs. Published by the Deutsche Postmuseum Frankfurt am Main , R. v. Decker's Verlag, G. Schenck, Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-8114-3889-3 , p. 19.
- ↑ Jürgen Ruszkowski: Seafaring and Post - The role of seafaring in postal history. Mritime yellow book series, vol. 100, Neobooks, Berlin 2018 ( Google Books ).
- ↑ John Fuhlberg-Horst, Hermann Köster: In the fight against the epidemic. Looking back over fifty years of “Lysol”. Schülke & Mayr Aktien-Gesellschaft, Schettler, Köthen 1939, p. 85. ( Photo of p. 84 f. )
