About German postage stamps..East or West Germany?

Show all answers

Alwin E

Those that say "Deutsche Bundespost" are from West Germany, those that say "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" are from the former east. Since reunification in 1990, the two postal systems also are unified, and stamps now carry only "Deutsche Post" on them. The "Luftpost" stamp must be from Western Germany before reunification; they had special air mail (that's what Luftpost means) stamps before they introduced the "air mail" stickers.

---
A short annotation:
Should you come to Europe, be aware that we only have one currency now, the Euro, and denominations on stamps are in Euros, but still you cannot use stamps you bought in one country in another one. I have a handful of Italian ones which are practically worthless here.

---
@Mousy, the Luftpost stamp is most surely from the West shortly after WW2, say, the 1950ies or so. The East (the German "Democratic" Republic) wouldn't have allowed letters to America without censorship, and if, they used their own stamps. You make me feel unsure, however, if that stamp could be from BEFORE WW2; in that case, it could be a valuable item.

---
edit (2):
Two of the stamps shown on your last picture (the ones with the 10 and 80 on them) are deinitely western German, from the 1970ies; the 50 seems to be older, maybe 1950ies, and the other ones I don't know. May I just forward you to the Michel catalogue
http://www.michel.de/
which is THE reference for philatelists in Germany?

The Postman

Don't care about post stampstoday we stamp our post with an imprint of our weenies

BTW you misspelled your name I guess you wanted to say anal

The Postman

Don't care about post stampstoday we stamp our post with an imprint of our weenies

BTW you misspelled your name I guess you wanted to say anal

CheGuevara

I don't know which idiot is giving all those thumbs down.. Alwin's answer is absolutely correct.

want2know126

The ones with "Deutsche Demokratische Republik'" are definetely from East Germany.

The 3 "Deutsche Bundespost" are from West Germany and they look like if they are from before the reunification.

About the Luftpost Stamp I couldn't find some information.

Heike

Alright..I'm not an expert but German :P. The one in the first link seems to be from West Germany before the unification. Ok...all three of them are (at least I guess so from the looks because the East German ones looked different for sure - more communistic lol). "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" means "German Democratic Republic", so the former East Germany.
"Deutsche Luftpost" means "German Air Mail". It could be one which got out after the unification in 1990 because we had "Mark" (former German currency) until 2002.

der PINGU

I wouldn't generally say that the Luftpost stamp is West German. Because you said it's 1 Mark (1 M). Mark was the currency in the GDR while in West Germany it was Deutsche Mark (DM).

Maybe you should post a pic of it, too.

Edit: Well, I can't really see it but if it says "Deutsche Mark", then you can bet that it's West German.

Enter Your Message or Comment

User Name:
User Email:
Post a comment: