Postal administration of the Order of Malta

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The Postal Administration of the Order of Malta ( it. Poste Magistrali dell'Ordine di Malta ) has maintained a post office in the Magistral Palace of the Sovereign Order of Malta for several decades , which issues its own stamps and maintains postal relations with a growing number of states.

Malta

At the time when the Order of Malta was sovereign of the present Republic of Malta (1530–1798), he set up a courier service for the order's government in 1571, which can be seen as the forerunner of his current Poste Magistrali. Initially, it was used exclusively for the transport of documents from the Order's government, which were then sent to its extensive branches of the Order via already existing distribution networks in Europe . It was not until 1612 that he opened this postal service to members of the Order and the population of Malta. Presumably, the volume of mail from private individuals grew so much that the order apparently charged a transport fee from the middle of the 18th century.

Rome

Mailboxes of the Poste Magistrali at the Magistral Palace in Rome

In 1834 the order moved to Rome . There, in Palazzo Malta, on Via Condotti (access via a side entrance in Via Bocca di Leone), he established a new postal administration and from 1966 issued his own postage stamps through his post office. A few weeks earlier, the order had informed the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the project and had thereupon announced to Italy in a communiqué that the postage stamps of the order were not valid in traffic to or from Italy. A postal agreement sought by the Order did not materialize.

The seat of government of the Order of Malta is Italian territory, but enjoys a special status under international law ( extraterritoriality ), comparable to an embassy property. The functional area of ​​the postal administration was therefore extremely small: it could only transport mail within the spacious Palazzo Malta or to its likewise extraterritorial property on the Aventine (Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta). Obviously the order assumed that its limited sovereignty , often referred to as functional sovereignty, allowed it to set up a postal administration, to maintain it on Italian territory with a post office in consideration of the extraterritorial privileges and to post on / via Italian territory on the he had no privileges to promote. Steculorum is considering whether this could already have violated the postal sovereignty (territorial sovereignty) of Italy. This type of mail management may have been more than an in-house mail distribution service with only optional postage.

The value on the order stamps was made in the currency of the Order of Malta , which it still issues today - more for collector's purposes (last minted on the order's homepage - as of January 2015). Since it would not have made economic sense to pay postage with the order's precious metal coins, the postage stamps were paid for in lira and later in euros according to a conversion table on display.

Bilateral postal agreements

In 1975 Malta freed the Order's postal administration from its almost non-functional importance and made stamps in an almost common sense out of the Order's stamps: Malta was the first state to conclude a temporary, but now expired, bilateral postal agreement with the Order. In Rome, for example, it was possible to post items with the franking of the order in the Magistral Post Office to Malta. More bilateral postal agreements followed, some of which are still in force.

There are currently postal relationships with 57 countries and their postal services. The Universal Postal Union turned against the Melitensian (= related to the Order of Malta ) early on . Postal administration and does not recognize them to this day. As a result, the Order continues to rely on bilateral agreements. The contracts are subject to confidentiality; However, agreements with various partner countries are circulating among collectors. For the purpose of transforming the bilateral agreement into Austrian law, Austria has published it in the Federal Law Gazette, which is accessible to everyone. There the unusual procedure is also described how the mail from Palazzo Malta should reach Austria via Italian territory, since there was no postal agreement with Italy. In 1998, the Order of Malta signed a contract with the Republic of Malta for its seat there at Fort St. Angelo in Birgu ( Vittoriosa ). The idea of ​​a stamp delivery by the Order on St. Angelo was considered there. It is not clear whether this should create an additional post office. In any case, no such additional agreement has yet been concluded.

The postal agreements with the State of Vatican City (2008) and the Italian Post Office (2004) are of particular importance . After all, it was a papal tribunal that in 1953 established functional sovereignty as a kind of limited sovereignty of the Order compared to states; the order fully recognized the judgment on this point. Apparently the Vatican authorities assume that the Order of Malta's postal sovereignty is part of its (limited) sovereignty. Whether Italy indirectly recognizes the Melitensian postal administration active on its territory, in the Palazzo Malta, with the postal agreement, can only be assumed, because the Italian postal service has long ceased to be a state institution but is organized under private law. It is she who, now formally acknowledging, takes over the postal "transit traffic" from the Melitian postal administration to the country of destination. At least there are no major studies on the compatibility of these postal agreements with the functional sovereignty of the order as a subject of international law with exclusively medical and charitable tasks.

Indication of the value on the stamps

According to the contract, the values ​​on the order stamps are now in euros . Apparently, as a member of the European Monetary Union , Italy could not or did not want the use of another currency on its territory to be sanctioned by the postal contract, even if the stamps were actually paid for in euros. The Order has given up the only formally existing purpose for its currency; In his field of sovereign activity, too, he is now completely - presumably unilateral - euroized. In any case, in the postal agreement there is no reference to an accompanying currency agreement with the European Union or with Italy, such as exists for the state of Vatican City or San Marino . It should remain open here how such a unilateral act would be judged under international economic law.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolf-Dieter Barz: Philatelic rarities, the postal system of the Order of Malta on Malta and in Rome. In: Malteser Mitteilungen. Volume 3, 1993, p. 42 f.
  2. ↑ Images of all stamps issued since 1966 (accessed on June 13, 2017)
  3. ^ Robert Prantner: Order of Malta and international community. Berlin 1974, p. 79 f.
  4. ↑ ibid.
  5. ^ Georg B. Hafkemeyer: The Order of Malta and the Community of International Law. In: Adam Wienand (ed.): The Order of St. John, the Order of Malta, the knightly order of St. John from the hospital in Jerusalem, his history, his tasks. 3. Edition. Cologne 1988, pp. 427-438 (432 ff.)
    Fabrizio Turriziani Colonna: Sovranita e indipendenza nel Sovrano Militare Ordine di Malta, rapporto con la Santa Sede e soggettiva internazionale. Citta de Vaticano, 2006, p. 147 ff.
    Ludwig Hoffmann-Rumerstein : The Sovereign Order of Malta Knights from 1945 to the present day. In: Christian Steeb, Birgit Strimitzer (Hrsg.): The Sovereign Maltese Knight Order in Austria. Graz 1999, pp. 250-271 (260 f.).
  6. ↑ J. Steculorum: The postal system of the Order of Malta. In: German newspaper for postage stamps. 1983, pp. 2367-2373 (237 f.).
  7. ↑ Monetary system of the Order of Malta (as of January 2011).
  8. ↑ Member States of the Postal Agreement (as of June 2017).
  9. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 447/1989 .
  10. ↑ Wolf-Dieter Barz: A “Melitensian” Vatican in Malta? In: The Order of St. John in Baden-Württemberg. Issue 99, pp. 23-27 (25).
  11. ^ Heribert Franz Köck: Völkerrecht, the right of the universal community of states. 6th edition. Vienna 2004, p. 242, gives the year 1979 for the conclusion of the contract with the Italian side.
  12. ↑ Hafkemeyer, Georg Bernhard: The Maltese Knight Order. Hamburg 1956, p. 107 ff.
  13. ↑ Alexis Ziogas: Legal Issues of Euroization. Master's thesis, Saarbrücken University, 2005.
    Andreas Wessly: The legal and political framework of Euroization. In: Legal issues of economic integration. 2009, pp. 197-213.
    Adalbert Winkler u. a .: Official Dollarisation / euroisation, motives, features and policy implications of current cases. Frankfurt am Main 2004.
    Charles Proctor: Man on the legal aspect of money. 6th edition. Oxford 2005, pp. 571 f., 798-800.

Web links

Commons : Sovereign Order of Malta  - collection of images, videos and audio files