Philately from post war Freudenstadt/Württemberg

After the end of the Third Reich in spring 1945, Germany and especially the postal service were in (total) disorder. Each of the four allies had different plans and ideas for the restart of Germany and its postal system. Some post offices restarted within days, others needed months. The allies agreed that the stamps depicting Hitler could not longer be used – for obvious political reasons – and this created a shortage of stamps. Some (local) commanders allowed overprints or even simple ink defacements (so called “Sächische Schwärzungen”). Other post offices – following older rulebooks by the German Reichspost and the UPU – used “postage paid” hand stamps – occasionally bilingual with the French “Taxe percue” as French was the language of the Universal Postal Union – and such post marks were part of the regular equipment of a German post office. Of cause these rubber stamps required that the paid amount was inserted manually. Some (not all) post masters as well as local authorities or local commanders from the allies start to print “provisional” stamps – some with very elaborate designs, others like the one here shown more simple.

Some of the organisers behind these local issues did not bother to clarify decisions with their superiors, others, as in Freudenstadt – a town situated on the western side of the Black Forrest – got the permission from the “representative of the RPD Stuttgart to the French military government in Tübingen” on 9th October 1945 – so this stamp with official recognition both from the German postal administration and the allied military authorieties is still listed in the Michel catalogue, whereas similar stamps, listed in the past, were kicked out. 

Nevertheless, the printing was done locally, and it looked that some characters in the letter box had shortages also: at the lower of the show stamps the “b” in “bez.” (=paid) is not a “b” but an inverted “q” – a constant error on position 15 of the sheet. Commercial used examples of these locals are rare, on a registered letter they are very rare – the registration fee was paid cash according to the manuscript note belong the pair.