Questions About German Covers From WWII

I've recently acquired some German Reich Era WWII covers and wonder if my take on these is correct.

This is a typical censored cover, cut open on the end and sealed shut with tape.



Is this also a censored cover?

Also have some of both without any markings stamped onto the tape.





Virtually all the German covers with an express sticker have a red x through them which a take is meant to help flag them, much like the blue crosses through registered covers from Britain. Is this true?

Also, what does the circular 'Ae' stamp signify. I believe it means airmail. Is that right?

Hi modern_who

Although I am not an expert in the German field, I can tell you that the covers have been censored / examined.

The marking "Ae" is not airmail but is either a censor's mark or a postal carrier one.

Hopefully, more members will have some input in here as well.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Thank you, Bujutsu.

Hopefully, they will.

A side note about the third cover, with three 25pf stamps. This usage of more than one copy of IDENTICAL stamps is called "mehrfachfrankatur" [MeF] and sometimes carries a substantial premium. In 1985, in the Michel cover catalog, this cover cataloged 30 Deutsche-Marks, or about something over $10; now it would be considerably more, I would guess.

The other two matching terms found in German cover catalogs are:
einzelfrankatur [EF] - ONE copy of a stamp, and no other stamps;
mischfrankatur [MiF] - a mixture of various stamps.

Interesting, your first cover is einzelfrankatur, and your second cover with two stamps is mischfrankatur, so they illustrate the definitions perfectly.

As an example of high premiums, consider the 90pf yellow-green posthorn of 1952:
EF = 320 marks
MiF = 120 marks
MeF = 1200 marks

Watch for MeF's in dealers' junk-cover boxes!

I've been looking for the bookmark with the German censor information. Haven't found it yet but will post when I do. The OKW is Oberkommando der Wehrmach. The one you have looks early as the tape changed. The tape was applied and then hand-stamped. The "AE" is a censor marking. I believe the Geoffnet with "e" below is the Frankfurt censor office. I think it was around 1942 they consolidated offices there under the SS. The stamps, people, and censor area can determine the values.
It was pretty risky to communicate with people in other countries. It might have brought scrutiny by the SS or Gestapo. Was there any correspondence with the covers? Do you know anything about them?

During 1942-43, the commune of Ay would have been occupied by the Germans, so less of a problem writing someone there. Ay is in north-central France, in the Department of Marne, and the primary home of Grand Cru champagne.

The covers are all sent from Karlsruhe, where I lived in 1969.

The southern zone of France was occupied in 1942. I have some covers from the era. The underground was very good at using communications to to alert others what was happening. Obviously they didn't just write it out. There were codes and ways of writing that would mean something to them. The Germans tightened the post to restrict the transfer of information and would send Gestapo out to shake the bushes.
The covers I have are mostly from Lyon, however they are people that were in the underground or using it to smuggle Jews to Spain and then to Portugal. It has been excruciatingly hard to get information. Back then they kept secrets till they died. Today if you shoot Osama you write a book.

I forgot to mention the red German hand-stamp is probably Gestapo. Can you see the receiving date on the back of the cover? I have 1 that took 7 months.

Thanks to all of you for your useful and interesting input.

And Doug, regarding the cover designations, is there anyone else that does such a thorough job in cataloging everything?

And is there anyone who collects them as such?

A while ago I posted pages of German se tenant and tete-bech stamps which PostmasterGS helped me sort out

https://goscf.com/t/16922

Every possible combination was listed and valued by Michel, right down to the inscriptions on the labels!

The only thing I think they left out of the mix was the selvedge.

But try to sell them!

It takes a real specialist to be interested.

The specialized German-area belongs on Delcampe or eBay-Germany. Agreed, it's not simple to squeeze the anticipated retail premiums out of "collector-printings," what the Germans (and Michel) call zusammendrucke. But it's fun trying to match wits with them.

Thanks, Doug, I will have to check them out. I did find a collector on Bid Start who picked up a few a while ago. Thought I'd place them into APS circuit books.

If you are using circuit books successfully, wish you would start a thread about the pros and cons, and especially concerning the preparation time. That would be useful to many of us who can't quite seem to get started.

To add a lttle of explanation, The Ae in the circle on the third cover is a transit marking applied by the censorship office in Frankfurt indicating that the cover was passed without opening by the censor.

Doug, preparation time does make using circuit books a beast. Putting everything in the order APS demands is a slow process. Take their suggestion to assemble selections on stock pages (or in glassines that can be arranged in alphabetical order and in catalog number sequence) before putting the stamps into their circuit books as very good advice. Having to resort to mounts, rather than just hinge stamps like in the good old days, when NH material is involved, complicates it further.

Dmui, very helpful information about the Ae transit marking. Thank you.