State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht (stamp series)

State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht was a definitive series of the Deutsche Post in the German Democratic Republic , which appeared between 1961 and 1971 and was mainly used until 1973. It was replaced from 1973 by the permanent series construction in the GDR . The permanent series only lost its validity with the end of the GDR on October 2, 1990.

Description and special features

The series consisted of single-color postage stamps and comprised 19 different values. A complete set of stamps had a face value of 14.40 marks , all the printed stamps together 1,850,995,500 marks. The motif was the same on all values ​​and showed the portrait of the first State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht, who looked to the left from the perspective of the beholder . The series had 14 different brand values, each with a different color. There were three different editions of the 1-mark and 2-mark stamps due to the changing currency denomination, which apart from the currency denomination did not differ from each other.

One week after the death of Walter Ulbricht, on August 1, 1973, a special stamp was issued in the drawing of the mark values, but this is not part of the permanent series.

Already in the permanent series Five Year Plan , the actual predecessor of this permanent series - a series Landscapes and Historic Buildings published in 1961 only served as a short-term interim edition - a stamp for standard letters in domestic traffic was supposed to depict Walter Ulbricht, who was politically leading in the GDR in 1953, even though he was at the time as deputy chairman of the GDR Council of Ministers and from 1953 first secretary of the Central Committee of the SED according to the GDR constitution after President Wilhelm Pieck and Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl only held third place. On April 15, 1953 , a draft of this stamp was shown on the cover of the specialist journal for philately and other collecting areas in the GDR, the Collector Express . In the definitive series of five years plan that was then issued , however, there was neither a picture of Walter Ulbricht or other politically active persons, nor any references to the SED as the leading party.

Printing and watermark paper

The stamps were printed in the VEB Deutsche Wertpapierdruckerei in Leipzig . The print shop had belonged to Giesecke & Devrient until 1948 and was then made public . In 1978 it was renamed VEB Wertpapierdruckerei der GDR .

The stamps were printed in two different formats and techniques:

• The small-format Pfennig values ​​and the 1 Mark roll stamp from 1970 were produced in the letterpress process in sheets (10 × 10), booklets (sheets) and rolls. The draft came from the DWD .
• The values ​​of 1 and 2 marks issued in large format, on the other hand, were produced in sheets (10 × 5) using the complex intaglio printing process (steel or copper engraving). The design and the engraving were done by Wolf .

Specialists also differentiate between two types of printing with further sub-types, which were created by revising the printing cliché during the long production period, and two main types of gumming .

In principle, watermark paper with the pattern "GDR um Kreuzblumen" (Michel No. 3) was used for the production of the stamps , which occurs in two different positions due to its given symmetry. A mix-up of paper rolls resulted in the use of watermark paper with the pattern "Kreuzblüte" (Michel no. 1) at the end of the 1960s, which was only used for stamp production until August 1952. B. was still used for the production of checks or tokens. The four frequently used values ​​(10, 15, 50, 70 Pf) were for the most part used up undetected in the mail on demand. In particular, of the 15 Pf value with which the business printed matter (sending invoices and business papers) had to be franked, only small stocks are available.

A total of 10,989,287,000 postage stamps with the portrait of Walter Ulbricht were produced. Almost half of these, 5,450,640,000 copies, were accounted for by the 10-pfennig stamp, the postage for a simple inner-city letter or a domestic postcard.

List of brands

Continuous series

image	Value in pennies (unless otherwise stated)	Issue date	particularities	Printing process	Total circulation	Michel no.
	5	Aug 29, 1961		Small format (I)	1,605,660,000	845
	10	Aug 29, 1961		Small format (I)	5,450,640,000	846
	15th	Aug 29, 1961		Small format (I)	689,040,000	847
	20th	Aug 29, 1961		Small format (I)	1,827,710,000	848
	25th	0Jan. 2, 1963		Small format (II)	144,770,000	934
	30th	0Jan. 2, 1963		Small format (II)	165,120,000	935
	40	0Jan. 2, 1963		Small format (II)	273,380,000	936
	50	0Jan. 2, 1963		Small format (II)	188,800,000	937
	70	0Jan. 2, 1963		Small format (II)	280,940,000	938
	1 DM	June 25, 1963		Large format (I)	see: Note 1	968
	2 DM	June 25, 1963		Large format (I)	see: Note 2	969
	60	0Dec 9, 1964		Small format (III)	111,190,000	1080
	1 MDN	Feb 10, 1965		Large format (II)	see: Note 1	1087
	2 MDN	Feb 10, 1965		Large format (II)	see: Note 2	1088
	80	0Dec 6, 1967		Small format (IV)	50,480,000	1331
	1 M.	04th June 1969		Large format (III)	see: Note 1	1481
	2 M.	04th June 1969		Large format (III)	see: Note 2	1482
	1 M.	Jan. 20, 1970		Small format (V)	9,790,000	1540
	35	0July 8, 1971		Small format (VI)	104,500,000	1689

Note 1 : Michel no. 968, 1087 and 1481 together 57,385,000

Note 2 : Michel no. 969, 1088 and 1482 together 29,882,000

• Currency designations on the stamps and the upper margin of the sheet (see also: Mark (DDR) ):
  • DM (Deutsche Mark of the German Central Bank)
  • MDN (Mark of the German Central Bank)
  • M (Mark of the German Democratic Republic)

Special stamp

image	Value in pennies	Issue date	particularities	Printing process	Edition	Michel no.
	20th	August 8, 1973	Special stamp on the death of Walter Ulbricht		5,000,000	1870

Philatelic evaluation

The special features of this permanent series, which was produced over a decade and was used by post until 1990, are recorded by special collectors.

literature

• Michel catalog Germany Special 2004
• Martin Rehfeld and Dr. Michael Jasch: The Walter Ulbricht series. 1994
• Wolfgang Lemke and Alfons Dölz: From the GDR series Walter Ulbricht. 2006, results of an analysis of sheets of the book printing series in web printing (manual part 1), ARGE DDR-Spezial, issue 19.

See also

• People who were honored on a German postage stamp during their lifetime
• People who were depicted on a GDR postage stamp during their lifetime
• In what was then the other part of Germany, the Federal Republic, the series Federal President Theodor Heuss and Federal President Gustav Heinemann were both present for over half a decade in the late 1950s and mid 1970s.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Image of the planned brand with Walter Ulbricht
2. ↑ Note in the Saxon State Archives in Leipzig ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ Postage stamp research group of the GDR permanent series "Walter Ulbricht" with further information

Web links

Commons : Walter Ulbricht on postage stamps  - collection of images, videos and audio files