Gallery

 

Mail to and from Great Britain appears to have been inspected at Berlin from November 1919. The author has no evidence so far as the other countries are concerned, other than that shown in the Table I.

These route instructions were not always followed exactly. Mistakes were made and letters sent to the wrong office for inspection, as has been described at the end of Section 2.1, where the cover that went to Koln—Deutz before it went to Berlin was discussed. It was, for instance, forbidden to open mail in transit from one country to another. However Figure 20 shows a letter posted from Salzburg Austria on 19 November 1919 addressed to Helsinki, Finland. It was sent via Germany and almost certainly opened at the Berlin W8 Office, where it was resealed with an unnumbered label (iLul).

One other major change needs comment. This occurred in February 1923 when the French and Belgians were engaged in occupying the Ruhr. Mail for Holland had, until then, been mostly inspected at Emmerich. However, Eminerich was occupied by the Belgians on 14 February 1923 and most mail for Holland was sent to Berlin for inspection, despite the long detour.

9. BERLIN 0 17 OFFICE

The main office of censorship in Berlin during the war was at Berlin 0 17. However, few postwar items appear to have survived, and the office may have closed by April 1919. Only three items have been recorded by the author with another three that may have been inspected at Berlin 0 17. The earliest was posted from Zurich on 13 November 1918 and addressed to Berlin. It presumably arrived after the change in regulations on 15 November 1919 (but not promulgated in the Government Gazette until 21 November 1919) since it was resealed by the top half of a wartime censorship label (lLwla) previously used at Berlin 0 17. The label is illustrated in Figure 4 and the cover is in the collection of A.J.Bertling.

The second item was a registered letter from Viborg, Finland, postmarked 31 January 1919, censored in Helsinki and bearing the Finnish 2—line cachet “Tarkastettu Suomessa / Censurerad i Finland”. The reverse bears a Helsinki postmark of 1 February 1919, and the letter is addressed to Lübeck. On arrival in Berlin, it was opened and resealed with the bottom half of the Berlin 0 17 censorship label with the word Kriegrecht and Uberwachungsoffizier crossed out in purple crayon. The label (lLwlb) is tied to the envelope with a Berlin 0 17 wax seal (1S1) features a Prussian eagle and is illustrated in Figure 4. The cover also bears an inspector’s numeral cachet 213 (lNlbl) plus initials.

The third item is a letter with postmark of BerLin 0 17 dated 29 January 1919 addressed to Berne in Switzerland. On the reverse, it bears the circular wartime cachet of the

 

Danzig Report Vol. 1 - Nr. 77 - October - November - December - 1992, Page 37.