RPPC With Interesting Postage

Found this card in a 50 cent box at St Louis Stamp Expo...I bought it for the interesting front picture.....it shows a river junction at the geographical meeting spot of 3 separate countries, Germany, Austria, and Russia. I was pretty good with geography in school, but I couldn't remember Russia, Germany and Austria all having connecting borders!! Well, as the map shows, way back in 1898 they did!!

That was surprise number 1.

Surprise number 2 is on the reverse side.....it has 3 stamps, one from each country, as if the sender wanted to remember this geographical spot and associate it with the stamps. Maybe he knew there were 2 world wars coming that would alter this borderland drastically....





The junction of the river is just north of the mountains on the map, in the 1898 map the mountains are located on Austrian northeast border. The 3 colored borders (...red for Germany, yellow for Austria, and green for Russia) meet at this junction...but its hard to see the river path. Anyway.....obviously this is an area which is present day Poland. Just thought it was cool....

Definitely worth 50c any day. After the third partition of Poland in 1795 by Russia, the Habsburgs, and Prussia, Poland was wiped off the map until independence in 1918. Interestingly Poland (and other Baltic nations--I was in Latvia when their 100th independence celebration happened) celebrated 100 years of freedom recently even though they were under the Soviet scourge for half that time.

Poland has definitely had problems.....!!! I wonder if the sender got all 3 stamps at the same post office or if he travelled to get them....all 3 have same town cancel, but I cant make it out. Yup, a 50 cent gem!

If you think the first letter in the cancel might be a "B" then Beuthen might fit? I can imagine myself seeing some of those letters in the right places? It wouldn't be right next door to the waterway, but it is, approximately, in the neighborhood (Oberschlesien).

This Three-Corners was at Myslowice (with barred l), Poland.

From Wikipedia:

Myslowice ( German Myslowitz ) is a town on the Przemsa River in the Polish Silesian Voivodeship. It is about 9 km east of Katowice at the confluence of the White Przemsa and Black Przemsa at the Dreikaisereck and has around 75,000 inhabitants.

Three-Empires-Corner

Here is a cut-out with Beuthen (now Bytom,Poland) cancel

Vayolene, NSK, Michaelschrieber, Cjd, Oldboldandbrash, I thank you for your opinions! Very cool....yes, I think Beuthen and Three Empire Corners fits like a glove!

Myslowitz- "MYSLOWITZ, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia. Pop. (1905), 15,845. It lies on the navigable Przemsa, across which an iron bridge leads to the Polish town of Modrzejow, 120 m. S.E. from Breslau by rail, and an important junction of lines to Oswiecim-Lemberg and Vienna. It contains a Protestant and three Roman Catholic churches, a palace and a gymnasium, and other schools. Extensive coal-mines are worked, and among its other industries are flax-spinning and brick-making. It became a town in 1857."

Thanks again!