Galerie

 

Office cachets with the extra letters A or B (1C6, 1C7), only a few covers are known. Interestingly, most of these covers are larger than usual. It is just possible that these PP Office cachets superseded the PU Office cachets as the former are, so far, only known used in 1923 and the latter only in 1922.

6. WAX SEALS

Insured letters were usuall’ sealed with wax and several wax seals were used at the Berlin W8 office. The two earliest ones that are listed in Table F both have the crowned Prussian eagle with the orb and sceptre in the centre and so are of war time origin. The PU Office seal (1S2) may be adapted from the seal used at Berlin 0 17 (1S1) with the words D.GARDEKORPS and o 17 cut out and some asterisks (*) inserted. It has been seen on mail delivered b’ the Post Office and mail brought to the counter by the public. If the PP Office seal has been adapted, then it has been done cleverly, since the letters W8 follow the word BERLIN. Riemer (reference 6) does not record any such wartime seals or cachets from Berlin W8, so if it is an adapted Berlin 0 17 seal, then it looks as if the word BERLIN W8 was also cut out from the bottom arc of the seal and the characters BERLIN W.8. inserted in the top right quadrant together with two asterisks and a small circle. This wax seal has been seen on only two insured letters posted in Nürnberg towards the end of 1921, addressed to Norway.

In 1922 one cover is known with dark colored paper seals, instead of wax. It was posted in Hamburg on 5 May 1922 and addressed to Wien. It was insured for 1000 Marks (19 Francs) and bears the 35mm long 2-line cachet (1C22) on the front. On the reverse are the seals which are in two groups, with each group apparently consisting of 3 overlapping roughly circular seals. The author has seen only a photocopy through the courtesy of Herr Ritter, so he cannot be more precise.

Two other wax seals have been seen used on insured mail in 1923. One is a PP Office wax seal of 18mm diameter with a Republican eagle in the centre, which so far has only been seen on mail brought to the counter by the public. This has serial number lS6. The other (1S7) is a 23mm diameter PU Office wax seal with the word Berlin W.8 across the centre instead of an eagle. Only one item with this seal has been recorded (by courtesy of Mrs. Manchester), used on mail delivered by the Post Office.

Letters brought in by hand to the counter can often be found with the wax seals of both the inspection office and the firm despatching the mail. Clearly, once the inspector was
satisfied, he would seal the envelope with his office seal and then the sender was allowed to put on his own or his firm’s wax seal in the inspector’s presence. The letter was then taken back by the inspector and put into the mail in the usual way. The letter in Figure 10 is a case in point and bears on the

 

Danzig Report Vol. 1 - Nr. 77 - October - November - December - 1992, Page 27.