Zeppelin mail
Under Zeppelinmail is understood in the philatelic mail that a Zeppelin was promoted and carries a corresponding flight confirmation certificate. Mail carried by other airships is called airship mail . Since the zeppelin is colloquially a synonym for airships, airship mail is sometimes also called zeppelin mail.
history
1908–1914: Early Zeppelins
The beginning of the zeppelin mail followed the beginning of airship travel around 1900, as the airships were soon used to transport mail. From the year 1908 there were the first drop cards for zeppelins. Following the example of balloon mail , these were dropped during the journey and had an imprint that asked the finder to hand them in at the nearest post office or telegraph station. In this way, information about the course of the journey could be quickly passed on to reporters on the ground. The first airship that was used to carry the drop cards was LZ 4 . The cards were still called “registration cards” and were to be handed in to a branch of Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau . A short time later, the Zeppelin LZ 3 was also used for this. The mail items carried by these two airships have not yet been specially marked.
With the LZ 6 , the first zeppelin was built in 1909, which was used commercially for the transport of passengers. From 1910, picture postcards written on board were dropped in small bags with a 50 pfennigs piece and a note to hand in the find at the nearest post office. For LZ 7 “Germany” there were already picture postcards with preprinted forms that were changed by hand or stamp after the crash that took place only nine days later. The actual story of the Zeppelin mail begins with the successor ship LZ 8 “Deutschland II” , as it was the first to have an on-board postmark in a post office. On July 17, 1912, LZ 11 "Viktoria Luise" took off , the first airship with an official post office on board.
The postcards were very popular with the passengers. The DELAG as operator of the Zeppelin trips made by the art publisher Eyb in Stuttgart therefore series "official postcard" print on the image side of drawings by the artist Michael Zeno Diemer contributed. The first of a total of nine series consisted of the six motifs "Landing in Munich", "Above the clouds", "'Z II' in a thunderstorm over the Rhine", "Journey to Switzerland", "Ascent to the so-called Echterdinger Fahrt on 4 . August 1908 ”and“ Landing in Munich on April 2, 1909 ”.
The airship's own postmarks came in various forms. The inscription, for example “On board the Zeppelin LZ 9”, always gave information about the particular mode of transport. The operators of the Zeppelin Post recognized their economic potential for the first time. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, however, no zeppelins were launched for civilian purposes, so that the transport of airmail in Germany came to a standstill.
1919–1924: Reparations Zeppelins LZ 120 and LZ 126
In December 1917, the Deutsche Luft-Reederei (DLR) was founded with the participation of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH . On February 5, 1919, this received approval to start air traffic between Berlin and Weimar “for the purpose of transporting mail, newspapers and passengers”. In particular, the mail traffic between the government in Berlin and the constituent national assembly in Weimar could be accelerated significantly. In August 1919, the LZ 120 “Bodensee” ascended for the first time and carried mail as well as passengers. On October 8, 1919, there was a one-off delivery of mail from Berlin to Stockholm. In the winter of 1919/20 the Inter-Allied Aviation Monitoring Commission issued a driving ban for LZ 120 “Bodensee” and LZ 121 “Nordstern”. The airships were confiscated and delivered to Italy and France in 1921 as reparations.
The newly built LZ 126 was also given as reparations in 1924, but this time to the USA . During the transfer from October 12 to 15, 1924, mail was also carried, some of which was dropped via Angra do Heroísmo on the Azores island of Terceira . The airship was used by the USA under the name ZR-3 "USS Los Angeles" for mail transport, among other things. This was the beginning of US zeppelin mail. The USA, like the German Reich, began with a steady expansion of the zeppelin mail.
1928–1939: LZ 127, LZ 129 and LZ 130
The classic era of zeppelin mail is the time when the airships LZ 127 and LZ 129 were in operation between 1928 and 1937, as these were in busy regular service with North and South American destinations and benefited in particular from official mail transport. LZ 127 undertook a total of 590 trips, including the world trip in 1929, the South America trip in 1930, the polar trip in 1931 and the trip to the 1933 World Exhibition in Chicago . Especially in South America , LZ 127 was enthusiastically received. For almost every flight there were specially designed, often very ornate flight confirmation stamps. Since an on-board post office was sometimes set up on passenger flights, there are also deductions from the corresponding on-board postmarks on receipts posted on board.
On special occasions, such as the world trip of LZ 127 in 1929 or the Chicago trip of the same airship in 1933, the Reichspost issued stamps intended only for these trips. Special Zeppelin stamps appeared in North and South America in the 1930s.
The most famous zeppelin letters come from the crash of the Zeppelin LZ 129 "Hindenburg" on May 6, 1937 in Lakehurst, USA . Of the 17,609 mail items carried, only 368 were saved from the flames. These rescued documents are now among the most sought-after collectibles in aerophilia. After the crash of the “Hindenburg” and the outbreak of World War II, the zeppelin mail came to an abrupt end. The last Zeppelin mail in Germany was carried on the LZ 130 airship in October 1939 .
Modern zeppelin mail
In today's airships like the Zeppelin NT , mail is occasionally carried, but this is mostly done on private initiative.
Mail processing
Usually, Zeppelin mail received a flight confirmation stamp in addition to the actual postmark . On board some airships a post office was set up on some trips to receive mail from passengers. A special on-board postmark was knocked off in the board post office.
During the LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” trip to America, which was canceled on May 16, 1929 , the mail was stored in Friedrichshafen and given a delayed stamp.
The mail carried on board of airships was handed over during take-offs and landings, but often only dropped in special mail bags if the airship did not land at the stage destination. In addition, there were "wild" mail items being dropped, on which the senders (mostly team members) asked to hand the mail items over to the nearest post office for delivery.
Demarcation
Zeppelin mail does not count if only a stamp shows a zeppelin. This is motive philately .
literature
Main literature
- Günther Wehner: For sending mail with Zeppelin airships . In: Archive for German Postal History , Issue 1/1978, pp. 6–23.
- Edwin Allgaier: When Zeppelins still carried mail . In: Archive for German Postal History , Issue 1/1991, pp. 27–40.
Supplementary literature
- Meighörner, Vagedes, Wrage: The Century of Zeppelins , Anniversary Edition of Deutsche Post AG, 1999.
- Arthur Falk: Hindenburg Crash Mail. The Search Goes on , Falk, Jericho NY 1975 (English).
- Dieter Leder: If only it had been day! The Orient flight of the airship LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin". An aerophilatelistic study , topo-Verlag, Meersburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-940702-77-7 .
- Walter Köcher: The last voyage of the airship “Hindenburg” (cover story). In: Briefmarkenspiegel No. 5/2012, pages 112 to 114
- Brigitte Kazenwadel-Drews: Zeppelins are conquering the world . Delius Klasing Verlag, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-7688-1817-9 .
Catalogs
- Hermann Sieger: Sieger Zeppelin Mail Catalog , Sieger Verlag, Lorch 2004.
Web links
- Zeppelin Study Group and the Zeppelin Post Journal
- Website of the German Zeppelin Post Working Group in the BdPh e. V.