Swiss Cancellation From 1909 On US Stamp?

Hello,

I found this interesting combination - US stamp and Swiss cancel. I post this here under World Classic, as my questions go into the direction of the cancellation, not the stamp.

- I am not a Swiss expert and not a cancellation expert, but I guess this is Basel from Switzerland, not a Basel in the USA?
- anybody knows what says the bottom line of the cancel?
- the year is 1909 ?
- how could this work, or is this common perhaps due to UN or any Swiss organization that they sent the letters from Switzerland with US stamps?

hope you enjoy this stamp and thank you!
stamperix

The text at the bottom is likely to be BRIEF AUFGABE, or a variant.

Looks like a receiving cancel. They could be placed on the front of the envelope, back of the envelope, or on the stamp.

thank you both. wouldn't the stamp then also have been cancelled (normally) in the USA before?
Perhaps a Swiss stamp collector can say more about the Briefaufgabe or receiving cancels to that time.

Even in the last several years I have received mail from Europe, both cancelled and unconcealed, and the US Postal Service has either cancelled them again, or run a marker over the stamps. However, this practice has lessened considerably. Mostly they don't bother with the stamps...their machinery tears them up!

The date is March 11, 1909

The date makes it a little more interesting. Makes me think that it was probably stamp dealer/philatelic correspondence.

Yes, in any way it's an interesting stamp for me. And I guess there is no chance to know more about its postal processing without the cover? At the beginning I thought that this might be common to that time in Switzerland (probably isn't) or that with this cancellation there is more to say. But at the end it's just a Swiss cancellation on an US stamp, either an error or receiving cancel, and we will never know :).

If clerks of the period in Switzerland were anything like the clerks in Latvia, receiving cancels could have wound up anywhere. Especially if the stamp was on a postcard and the available area for a cancel was limited. The clerk may have been trying to keep the cancel off the message if it was a postcard. I have seen Latvian cancels obliterate each other and also obliterate messages where clerks didn't care.

In the lower left corner & upper top right (from the 4th perf) there seems to be a part of a cancel.We can assume it was a cover with multiple franking.Not much space as mentioned.