German Marshall Islands Jaluit Provisional

In November 1899, the post office in Jaluit, Marshall Islands, placed an order for 2,000 each of the 3 Pf (MiNr 1 I) and 5 Pf (MiNr 3 I) Marschall-Inseln overprints, as their stock was running low. These stamps were prepared for shipment from Berlin on 12-13 February 1900, and arrived in Jaluit in April 1900.

Prior to the arrival of these stamps, however, the Jaluit post office ran out of 5 pf stamps. To remedy the shortage, 10 Pf stamps were bisected for use as 5 Pf provisionals (MiNr 3 I H). It's estimated that no more than 100 stamps were bisected in this manner.




Legitimate uses are on postcard or wrapper, not on cover. Cancels exist with dates from February to May 1900.

The copy shown above is one of only two known registered postcards with this usage. The other is Jaluit Registered #292, and was also offered at auction within the last couple months. This copy is also notable for being a non-philatelic usage, which is somewhat of a rarity with German colonial provisionals.



As far as the German colonial provisionals go, Marshall Islands MiNr 3 I H is second in catalog value (on postcard -- €30,000) only to Marshall Islands MiNr 12 H (on cover -- €45,000), a bisect from December 1900 of which only 8 copies are known to exist.

Thank you for showing us, PostmasterGS

Peter

I recently paid a service to decipher the old German handwriting on a bunch of postcards, this one among them. As it turns out, the card was likely a philatelic usage to a private party:




The recipient of the card was Wolf-Werner von Blumenthal. The von Blumenthal's were a prominent German family that lived at the Staffelde Castle (Schloss Staffelde) outside Tantow, Germany. Wolf-Werner von Blumenthal would have been 14 years old at the time the card was mailed to him. The brother mentioned in the text, Albrecht, was approximately 11 years old at the time.

Wolf-Werner von Blumenthal would go on to chair the family firm, Bachmann-von Blumenthal, which manufactured fighter aircraft during WWII. From my limited Google research, he appears to have fled Germany at the end of the war, and possibly died in South America in 1968.

His brother, Albrecht, was a noted philologist and poet, and was a Rhodes Scholar. He was associated with the Stauffenberg family, which cause the von Blumenthal family some amount of problems following Claus von Stauffenberg's attempted assassination of Hitler in 1944. Albrecht and his immediate family committed suicide in 1945 to avoid capture by advancing Allied troops.

I haven't been able to ascertain exactly who the sender was. The text seems to indicate it's from a brother, Karl, but Wolf-Werner and Albrecht had only one other brother, Robert.

More fabulous work, Postmaster.
Fascinating.

Thanks for the info, so the hunt is on for a non-philatelic useage?

Hello,

I am the grandson of Albrecht von Blumenthal, mentioned in the postcard.

The postcard is written by my great-uncle on his way out to the South Seas. As a subaltern he gambled his inheritance away in the officer's mess. His father paid the debts but sent him to the south seas to earn a living (poor man); he was disinherited from the family estates, including Staffelde where this postcard is addressed, which went instead to Wolf-Werner, the addressee. He ended up buying plantations in New Guinea which were then expropriated by the allies after the war. In Rabaul he was known as Lord Bob.

When the Australians invaded, he took part in the action at Bitapaka where he was awarded the Iron Cross after not much of a fight. He was one of only three German officers in the colony.

He was a PoW at Berrimna. On the cessation of hostilities he sailed back to Germany. On the voyage he fell in love with the beautiful Elsa Rauch von Nieck, whose husband had died in the Marshall Islands (though some said she and Bob pushed him over the side of the ship).

Having forfeited his estates he lived first at Rossbach, scene of Frederick the Great's victory, which his von Oeynhausen relatives owned, and after at my grandfather's estate at Schloenwitz, where he allowed the famous Dietrich Bonhoeffer to run an illegal seminary. Bonhoeffer was hanged in the aftermath of the plot by Stauffenberg, who, as you rightly say, was a friend of my grandfather.

Wolf-Werner was the "safe pair of hands" in the family. There were 2 Wolf-Werners in the family and I am uncertain which one ran Bachmann von Blumenthal; in any case the addressee of this postcard certainly did not flee anywhere. His son, Detlev, inherited the grounds at Staffelde and Detlev's sons are still living in Germany.

Kind regards

Henry von Blumenthal