Miscellaneous covers

Some covers, all unrelated to my interests, acquired under obscure circumstances at some point or other.

This page (as with every other on the site) employs no consistent system of orthography whatsoever, and I vary between modern and historic (both English and French) forms based on the context, my mood, the relative positions of the planets, etc. No usage or non-usage is intended to imply any kind of political stance.

My knowledge of rates is restricted to a rather narrow set of countries and eras — far narrower than the range of both covered here. Where I simply note the franking without elaboration, this means I presume the cover has been paid correctly, but lack the knowledge to make any detailed comment.

Istanbul 🠚 Prague, 23 December 1921

Letter to Czechoslovakia from the Ottoman Empire — at this point, the former had existed for about two years, and the latter had less than a year left to run. Pera is a borough of Istanbul, now better known as Beyoğlu. I can’t do much with the handwriting here unfortunately (“Hospital” on the sender’s address at least). The left and middle stamps (as oriented in this picture) are from the 1920 Bradbury Wilkinson issue (or, re-issue), the latter a 1921 overprint on one of the Vienna stamps.

Postmarks: characteristic “U. P. U. / Turquie” registration handstamp on the obverse. Reverse, three strikes of Pera 23 December 1921, and “[illegible] / Départ” 25 December 1925 — the missing word is Pera or Constantinople, surely.

Franking: 15 piastres: 7½ for a basic-weight foreign letter and another 7½ for registration.

Istanbul 🠚 Giengen, 4 June 1940

Two engineering companies, with different destinies ahead — Mototraht of Istanbul seems to have vanished without a trace, but Albert Ziegler & Co. is much alive, and still headquartered in Giengen. Mototraht’s stationery is charming, as is the stamp, showing Kemal Ataturk next to George Washington. A commemoration of the United States’ 150th birthday is the ostensible reason, but the comparison between the two statesmen is also a flattering one.

A mostly unconnected thought this stamp has provoked in me — only one of the two bottom corners has a value tablet. The achievement of symmetry in a design by duplicating one side’s value tablet into the other, balancing out the stamp at the cost of introducing a wholly unnecessary element, is a practice so commonplace one hardly notices it — but it’s probably a rather unimaginative way to proceed. That having been said, the arrangement here looks simply as if the designer forgot his second tablet — asymmetry in a frame generally achieves better results when deployed boldly, rather than hesitantly as in this case.

Postmarks: Galata / Istanbul / 4 June 1940 on the obverse. Much smudging on the reverse: either offsets of other Istanbul postmarks in the pile or some unrecoverable transit postmarks.

Franking: 12½ kurush.

Censorship: the classic German “Wehrmacht High Command / Opened” tape, and red “Wehrmacht High Comamnd / Passed” postmark. The green “6094” on the obverse is also part of the German censor markings, though I’m unaware of its actual purpose.