Pigeon mail
With the pigeon mail (also pigeon mail ) carrier pigeons convey written messages. This type of mail delivery was already widespread in ancient times . In modern times it was initially only used for military purposes . In the 19th century, however, more and more carrier pigeon lines were set up for civil purposes. In some places they even issued their own pigeon postage stamps . After the Second World War , the pigeon mail was almost completely displaced by modern means of telecommunications.
In art, the motif of the pigeon post was mainly taken up at the time of its greatest spread in the 19th century, it is still a popular motif on postage stamps. However, the pigeon mail itself is only considered a small fringe area among philatelists . Only a few letters and documents from the Taubenpost have survived.
Historical development
Pigeon mail in antiquity
The pigeon mail is the oldest form of air mail . Even in ancient times, people recognized the special ability of pigeons to effortlessly return to their nesting sites from a great distance. This allows the pigeons to search for suitable food in a very large area. Around 5000 BC BC man began to domesticate the pigeon. By various breeding methods it finally became possible to use pigeons as messengers of news, and they gained more and more economic, military and political importance.
The Sumerians made the first major attempts to domesticate the pigeon . Sargon of Akkad had all of his messengers in Mesopotamia equipped with pigeons to be released in the event of an attack. This ensured that the ruler was quickly notified of an incident.
In ancient Egypt , too , pigeons were used to transmit messages quickly. For example, released pigeons announced the coronation of Pharaoh Ramses II in 1279 BC. The use of pigeons for letter delivery, which is often claimed in postal history literature, has not been historically proven. Four released pigeons were sent as messengers at the coronation of a pharaoh or at the Minfest , but this could not yet be described as regulated pigeon mail. The actual pigeon mail was probably not introduced into Egypt until the Roman or early Islamic period.
Pigeons as transmitters of messages were soon used in other high cultures . The Greek natural scientist and philosopher Aristotle provided the first description of pigeon breeding . Biologists assume that the carrier pigeon originally descended from the rock dove ( Columba livia ).
In ancient Greece , the geographic nature of the country made pigeons an ideal means of communicating, with many important flight routes within reach of the pigeons. For example, athletes traveling to the Olympics took their own racing pigeons with them. In the event of a victory, the athletes tied part of the target tape to the feet of the pigeons, which then flew back to the home of the athlete, thus signaling the victory of their fellow citizens to the residents. The Roman writer Claudius Aelianus reports in his Varia historia (9.2) that the Greek Taurosthenes conveyed the news of his victory at the Olympic Games to his father and his home village on the island of Aigina in this way .
In ancient Rome the carrier pigeon was primarily of military importance. The Roman general Julius Caesar had news of unrest in conquered Gaul delivered by his own messenger pigeons in order to be able to command his troops quickly. The Roman senator and writer Pliny the Elder reported for the first time in detail in his scientific work Naturalis historia on the military use of carrier pigeons. He retrospectively described how Brutus lived during the siege of Modena in 44 BC. Through Mark Anton, thanks to the pigeon mail, was able to continue to communicate with his allies like Aulus Hirtius and thereby defend the city for four months. Even then, the messages were tied around the feet of the carrier pigeons. Especially in the 4th century, the pigeon post was greatly expanded in the Roman Empire, at times up to 5000 pigeons were state-owned.
In China and India , too , the carrier pigeon was used early on to transmit messages. China built an entire postal system based on the pigeon mail .
Pigeon mail in the Middle Ages
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the carrier pigeons had largely disappeared from Europe. They were only brought back to Europe by the Crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries . In the Middle East , the carrier pigeon was still widespread for transmitting messages, it was also often used during the Crusades. In an attempt to take the city of Acre , the crusaders succeeded in intercepting a message sent by carrier pigeon in 1191: Sultan Saladin assured the inhabitants that he would arrive in the city with his army in three days to help them fight the Support crusaders. However, the crusaders falsified the message and released the intercepted carrier pigeon. The falsified news led the people of Acre to believe that they would have to fight without Saladin's support at all. Before the three days were up, the city was in the hands of the Crusaders, as the residents of Akkon hardly offered any resistance.
The pigeon mail in the Middle East was by no means restricted to military use; State pigeon mail services and regularly flown pigeon mail lines came into being. Saladin had its own pigeon post, which linked its capitals, Cairo and Damascus , among other things . To this end, he had a chain of fortresses built, which relayed messages by means of heliographs , beacons and pigeons (one example is the fortress Ajlun in what is now northern Jordan near Irbid ). In this way, important messages could be passed between the two cities within twelve hours. In the 12th century, Nur ad-Din , Caliph of Baghdad , also set up its own pigeon post . Even Genghis Khan pigeons used concerning the delivery of messages in the realm of the Mongols .
In Europe, the pigeon post was mainly used in campaigns. Here it was still an important means of transporting news during the war that was difficult to replace. Especially in the Eighty Years' War the pigeon post was used frequently. William of Orange used carrier pigeons in 1573 for the Spanish siege of Haarlem by Frederik of Toledo and for the siege of Leiden in 1574. Outside the military, pigeons were only occasionally used by rulers and government agencies, sometimes as a means of communication between castles and monasteries.
Carrier pigeons in communications
With increasing industrialization , it became more and more important for the economy to get news as quickly as possible. At the beginning of the 19th century, several business people, especially in London and Antwerp , used carrier pigeons. Some banking houses even had their own trading pigeons at that time . Trading newspapers, such as the Antwerp Handelsblatt, also set up their own mail pigeon service.
In addition to individual business people, some intelligence services also used carrier pigeons. In 1850 Paul Julius Reuter founded the institute for the transport of telegraphic dispatches in Aachen . With 40 carrier pigeons he created a news airlift to close the gap in the telegraph connection between Brussels and Aachen. Most of them were stock market reports that were collected by Reuters agents in various European cities and delivered to Brussels. With the important cargo in their plumage, the pigeons flew back to Aachen faster than the train . Reuters employees received the messages on the roof of the building at 117 Pontstrasse and forwarded them to the main trading centers. Just one year later, all important connections in the telegraph network were closed and Reuter gave up the Aachen office. He emigrated to London, where he founded the Reuters news agency in October 1851 .
The increased use of carrier pigeons for economic purposes was short-lived as the birds were soon replaced by the first telegraph lines in the mid-19th century.
The siege of Paris
The best-known example of a pigeon mail connection among philatelists is the Paris balloon mail. The connection between Paris and unoccupied France during the Franco-Prussian War could only be maintained between September 23, 1870 and the surrender of Paris on January 22, 1871 through a clever interaction between balloon mail and carrier pigeons.
From Paris, a total of 55 intractable balloons were raised, which in addition to almost 2.5 million messages also carried 363 carrier pigeons. The pigeons were used to transport letters back from unoccupied France to besieged Paris. First the messages were written on extremely light tissue paper and tied around the pigeon. A carrier pigeon could carry very little information in this way. The first pigeon mail of this kind took place on October 9, 1870. From November 4, 1870, it was also possible for the first time to send private messages. The carrier pigeons usually started in Tours , where all messages to be sent were first collected and then transferred to tissue paper.
Thanks to an idea by the photographer René Dagron , the number of letters that a pigeon could transport could be increased considerably: the messages collected in Tours were placed in letterpress on gelatinous membranes and transferred microphotographically so that a carrier pigeon could carry up to 40,000 letters with a maximum of 20 words each could carry. At the destination, the message was enlarged using a magic lantern , copied by a scribe and then delivered. Until the surrender of Paris, 2 million messages were transmitted as pigeongrams (pigeon telegrams ). The fee for such a pigeongram was 50 centimes per word. Pigeongrams that have been preserved are among the most popular collector's items among philatelists.
The Paris balloon mail was not only of particular interest to today's philatelists. The great success of the Parisian balloons and carrier pigeons at the time drew great attention to these two modes of transport, which now also flourished in the civilian sector up to the turn of the century. One began to supply hard-to-reach areas, which were not yet connected to the telegraph network, with postal pigeons.
Letter pigeon mail around the turn of the century
The pigeon mail in New Zealand
At the end of the 19th century, numerous lumberjacks and gold prospectors came to Great Barrier Island in northern New Zealand , which was only able to receive mail from a ship every 16 days. The board of the newly founded coal and steel company on the island, Smailes, finally commissioned the pigeon fancier Parkin from Auckland to establish a pigeon mail connection with the mainland. The first flight took place on May 14, 1897. The messages to be transmitted were written on thin tissue paper and then tied around the dove's foot. A carrier pigeon could use this technology to transport up to five messages, also known as flimsies .
From April 21, 1898, S. Holden Howie's carrier pigeons were used to transport messages from Great Barrier Island. However, the carrier pigeons could only carry messages to Auckland and not in the opposite direction. For this purpose, they were brought to the island by ship at regular intervals so that there were always enough pigeons available. To set up an additional dovecote on the island would have been far too expensive, which is why it was not done.
In September 1898, proposals appeared for the first time to issue their own pigeon postage stamps. Henry Bolitho, a friend of the operator Howie, commissioned a printing company in Auckland to produce such stamps. On November 19, 1898, the world's first pigeon postage stamps could be used for the first time. After founding the Great Barrier Pigeongram Service and expanding it into an independent company, Walter Fricker was entrusted with looking after the carrier pigeons. For the first time, messages could also be sent in both directions. Shipping from Okupu, later from Whangaparapara on the Great Barrier Island to Auckland cost 6 pence, and in the newly established reverse direction it cost twice the price of one shilling. Because of the double price, the construction of the second pigeon mail line was initially profitable.
The special stamps also briefly attracted special attention from philatelists, which brought the company additional income. Soon more pigeon postage stamps were issued. Eventually they began to produce different denominations to take account of the tariff differences. After various rectangular postage stamps were issued, triangular postage stamps in the color red for 6 pence and in the color blue for one shilling were finally issued from 1899. The triangular pigeon postage stamps read Great Barrier Island / Special Post / One Shilling. The motif was a flying carrier pigeon with a letter in its beak and which, thanks to its special shape, should further increase the attention of the philatelists.
In 1899 another pigeon mail line of the Great Barrier Pigeongram Service was set up, which also issued pigeon mail stamps. The line connected Marotiri Island (also: Coppermine Island), on which copper mining had been carried out since 1898 , with Auckland. After the economic failure of the copper company, this pigeon mail line was soon discontinued. After the telegraph line to the island went into operation in 1908, the pigeon mail connection to the Great Barrier Island was also discontinued. On November 19, 1948, on the occasion of the 50th birthday of the pigeon postage stamp, a commemorative flight to the island took place, for which a private commemorative envelope was issued.
Other areas of application for the pigeon post
In remote areas of the United States , pigeon mail services were established at the turn of the century. Oswald Zahn founded the most important of these pigeon mail companies, which connected the small island of Santa Catalina Island with the Californian mainland about 35 km away from 1894 . The pigeons started in Avalon, the largest city on the island, and flew to Bunker Hill in Los Angeles . In 1898 the line was discontinued due to inefficiency, and a short time later the island was connected to the Californian telegraph network.
In Alaska there were also efforts to introduce their own pigeon mail. The idea for this came from Thomas Arnold in 1897, who was already making test prints for pigeon postage stamps with a face value of 1 and 2 dollars. The pigeon postage stamps produced on a trial basis were adorned with a carrier pigeon that - as on the New Zealand pigeon postage stamps - held a letter in its beak. The inscription read Alaska Carrier / Pigeon Mail / Service Company . Thomas Arnold wanted to provide the goldfields of Alaska with the pigeons by post. As with the Paris balloon mail, the messages to be conveyed should be transported in a smaller format.
In addition to these pigeon mail lines, the Belgian Congo had its own pigeon mail between the capital Boma and the port city of Banana in the 1910s . At the time, the Congo's telegraph network was still under construction. The first telegraph line Banana - Boma - Léopoldville - Coquilhatville was only partially completed in 1905. The Belgian government therefore decided to set up this provisional pigeon mail line, which existed until the opening of the remaining sections towards the end of the decade. The pigeon post as a temporary replacement for telegraphy was also used by the Dutch government. This used the military pigeons to transmit messages to Sumatra and Java .
In Germany at that time no pigeon post line was established. In 1876, however , attempts were made on the North Sea coast , especially in Tönning at the mouth of the Eider , to connect the light ships in the sea with the mainland about 55 kilometers away by pigeon mail. Although the carrier pigeons were able to deliver messages even during violent storms, the project was abandoned.
At the turn of the century there were only a few private pigeon mail systems left by commercial enterprises. However, the HAPAG ships still had their own carrier pigeons on board so that they could send messages to the nearest port as quickly as possible.
The world wars
The two world wars formed the last major area in which the pigeon post was used for military purposes. There were an estimated 100,000 pigeons in World War I for messaging . Their success rate in delivering messages was approximately 95 percent. Several monuments have been erected in her honor, the largest of which in Lille, France, commemorates more than 20,000 dead carrier pigeons. Since 1939 there has also been a memorial for the German carrier pigeons of the war in Berlin-Spandau.
With the help of racing pigeons, two different connections could be maintained. In addition to the carrier pigeon connections from the front to fixed pigeon lofts in the safe homeland, there were also numerous mobile carrier pigeon lofts that were initially only used by the French army. It was a specially adapted Berliet bus . Although the goal of the racing pigeons was constantly changing, they always found the right way. In the Battle of the Marne in 1914, for example, the French army used 72 mobile dovecotes for the first time.
The last mission of the American carrier pigeon Cher Ami near the French city of Verdun , which was seriously injured by a gunshot wound to the chest, became particularly famous . Even so, she managed to relay her message from Major Charles Whittlesey of the 77th Infantry Division. His division lost contact with the rest of the US Army during the Meuse-Argonne offensive and was trapped behind enemy lines without food. Thanks to the news from Cher Ami, 194 soldiers were saved. Because of the brave efforts of Cher Ami, she was solemnly awarded the French war award Croix de guerre . A total of 442 carrier pigeons were used on the American side during this battle.
In some parts of the German army, carrier pigeons were also used, mostly stationary, only rarely mobile carrier pigeon stations. The consignments carried by pigeon mail were marked by the German side with the confirmation stamp Kgl. Preuss. Carrier pigeon loft marked in blue.
In the Second World War, too, the pigeon mail was used to deliver messages. The US Army alone maintained 54,000 carrier pigeons as well as 3,000 soldiers and 150 officers who were part of the US Army Pigeon Service . In the British Army up to 250,000 carrier pigeons were used for military purposes. During the Second World War, carrier pigeons were also increasingly used at night to transport messages in order to avoid greater losses through fire. However, in the run-up to the war, the German army had specially prepared for the use of hostile carrier pigeons. Birds of prey , especially falcons , were trained to attack the racing pigeons in flight. During the war this method proved to be extremely effective.
As part of Operation Columba , the British Army obtained information that was important for the war effort by means of carrier pigeons. The civilian population was able to send messages to Great Britain via pigeons weaned in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. A message exposed u. a. the location of the German communications center near Bruges .
A total of 32 carrier pigeons were awarded the Dickin Medal for outstanding performance. The carrier pigeon GI Joe was one of the most famous award winners . This gained great recognition primarily through its work in the small Italian town of Calvi Vecchia on October 18, 1943. The 56th British Brigade had succeeded in taking the city without major resistance from the German troops. The Allies had not expected this fact, because the US Army was supposed to make it easier for the British Army to take the city by means of air raids on Calvi Vecchia. However, any attempt to contact the allies to stop the attack failed. The carrier pigeon GI Joe was therefore entrusted with delivering the important message. She covered the 30 kilometers to the US command post in just 20 minutes and arrived before the bombers took off. GI Joe is therefore awarded the life of 100 soldiers.
The decline of the pigeon post
After the Second World War, carrier pigeons were used less and less to transport messages. The last major use of American carrier pigeons took place during the Korean War , when messages were transmitted to covert soldiers behind enemy lines. The British Army abandoned its carrier pigeon program in 1948. Soon other armies followed. In Switzerland , the pigeon division was only dissolved in 1997. Nowadays there is hardly any military use of carrier pigeons. This can mainly be attributed to the rapid development of modern means of communication.
After the Second World War, the Austrian gendarmerie set up a carrier pigeon network, which was relocated from Rennweg to Tyrol in 1958. In Tyrol (Austria) there was a mail pigeon service from 1958 to 1974: carrier pigeons were stationed in many shelters, and if necessary (alpine accidents, avalanches, etc.) they were sent to the Innsbruck regional police command to strike at home. Since there was no close-knit disaster radio network in the mountains before 1970, this was the only way to get the message across quickly. In the Indian state of Orissa the police maintained a similar pigeon mail until March 2002. This was set up in 1946 and was primarily intended for the rapid transmission of messages in the event of natural disasters . However, such facilities remained largely the exception. Towards the end of the 20th century there were also some events in which a pigeon post was set up - but always for philatelic purposes and therefore more of a gimmick than a postal service. The Philatelic Foundation Christchurch , for example, held such an event annually from 1978 to 1984.
Pigeon mail in this day and age
The pigeon mail has disappeared from all areas of life today. The main features of this type of transport can only be found in sporting competitions , but these no longer have anything to do with the historical pigeon mail for the transmission of messages. In the sporting competitions, the carrier pigeons are transported with a special transporter ( cabin express ) to a “release point” several hundred kilometers from their home town, from where they begin their flight home. The arrival times of the individual animals are registered by means of a clock when they arrive at their home loft . Like the pigeon post, these competitions are based on the pigeon's sense of direction, but no messages are transmitted any more.
Occasionally it is reported that carrier pigeons are used very effectively as drug couriers in the border areas around the Netherlands.
In London , pigeons are to monitor air pollution in the future . Equipped with a GPS transmitter and sensors, they measure the level of fine dust, ozone and nitrogen dioxide in the air.
Pigeon mail in the internet age
With RFC 1149 and RFC 2549 there is at least a theoretical standard (thought of as an April Fool's joke), how the Internet protocol commonly used on the Internet can be transmitted using carrier pigeons. It wasn't just theory: on April 28, 2001, an experiment was carried out in Bergen in which IP packets were actually transmitted. A total of four packets were transmitted with a runtime of around 1.5 hours. ( Ping times are usually on the order of milliseconds to tenths of a second.)
Philatelic Aspects
The pigeon post is a small fringe area of philately . It can be viewed as a closed collection area, as there is hardly any pigeon mail these days. There are only a few specialists and, as a result, very little specialist literature; one of the most important experts is Salvador Bofarull . Since pigeon letters from the 19th and 20th centuries have hardly survived, pure pigeon mail collections are very rare.
Today's pigeon mail collections are mostly limited to the period from the Franco-German War to the Second World War. The pigeongrams of the Paris balloon mail are very popular . On the one hand, these are included in the collection because of their great importance for postal history (see air mail ), on the other hand, the adventurous history of the letters fascinates many philatelists. The civil pigeon posts towards the end of the 19th century are only sought by specialists. Even the pigeon postage stamps can only be included in their collection by a few philatelists due to their extremely low circulation figures and the resulting high prices. Pigeon post letters from the world wars are a welcome rarity in field post collections.
The pigeon mail in art
The pigeon post can also be found in art. This motif can be found especially at the time of Romanticism , when the distribution of the carrier pigeon rose sharply. The most famous example of this is the poem Die Taubenpost by Johann Gabriel Seidl , which was set to music by Franz Schubert . As Schubert's allegedly last song composition, it was published posthumously in the song collection Schwanengesang .
|
I have a letter pigeon in my pay, she |
During the day, at night, while awake, in a dream, it |
In addition to the pigeon post as a motif in poetry and music, it is mainly found as a motif for the artistic design of postage stamps . These stamps are not necessarily pigeon post stamps; Postage stamps are also often adorned with a carrier pigeon. The most common motif is a carrier pigeon with a letter in its beak. The first postage stamp on which a carrier pigeon could be seen is the Basler Taube . It was published on July 1, 1845 by the Canton of Basel . The design was done by the architect Melchior Berri . The pigeon was minted and therefore protrudes slightly from the stamp paper. The stamp motif was produced in the three colors black, blue and carmine and is therefore also the first multi-colored stamp in the world.
The first German postage stamps on which a carrier pigeon was depicted are also the first flight stamps in Germany: they were issued on June 10, 1912 on the occasion of the air mail on the Rhine and Main as a stamp series with three values. The design of the stamps came from Professor Kleunkens. Later the airmail stamps with the name of the aircraft carrying the Gelber Hund and the abbreviation E.EL.P. overprinted for Ex Est airmail .
literature
- Ullrich Häger: Large encyclopedia of philately . Bertelsmann Lexikon, Gütersloh 1973, 1978. ISBN 3-570-05338-5
- Salvador Bofarull: Pigeon mail through history . Stuart Rossiter Fund, Bristol 2001.
- John Douglas Hayhurst: The Pigeon Post into Paris 1870–1871 . Hayhurst, Ashford Middlesex 1970.
- J. Reg. Walker: The Great Barrier Island 1898-99 Pigeon Post Stamps . Collectors Club handbook. Volume 22. Walker, New Zealand 1968.
- Schletterer Martin: The pigeon through the ages. Biological and historical variations . DAV non-fiction book. The other publishing house, Osnabrück 2004. ISBN 3-89959-175-5
- Military regulation of the German Empire: DVE No. 98 - regulation for the military carrier pigeon traffic in war - 1904
Individual evidence
- ^ Lothar Störck: Keyword dove . In: Lexicon of Egyptology. Volume VI, columns 240-241
- ↑ Der Spiegel : With carrier pigeons against the Wehrmacht , April 3, 2019, loaded on April 3, 2019
- ↑ October 18, 1943: Winton T. Prater: Carrier Pigeon “GI Joe” wins medal , World War II Today; accessed on November 21, 2014.
Web links
- Historical development of the pigeon mail
- Detailed account of the history of the pigeon post (English)
- The pigeon mail in the Franco-German War (English)
- The pigeon post in New Zealand around the turn of the century (English)
- Military operations of carrier pigeons during the two World Wars (English)
- Image of a mobile military dovecote
- Implementation of RFC1149 by the Bergen Linux User Group
- Use of carrier pigeons in the military in the 1st and 2nd World War (German)
