This lovely card with the "matching" (both thematically and colour-wise) stamp, arrived recently, to my great delight. It shows two postal workers of the from the 19th century and is one of a series that commemorates 500 years of the German postal services.
Five hundred years! I was sure it must be a misprint. But no, in 1490 Franz von Taxis of the Thurn and Taxis family set up a postal service on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian, to replace an ad hoc courier service already in existence. This earlier system used horns to announce its arrival and these horns have since become the symbol of many postal services, including the German.
Deutsche Post has yellow as its primary colour, and this too is thanks to Emperor Maximilian whose imperial livery was yellow and black.
It continues to fascinate me, the things you can learn from a postcard.
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Coool! I had no idea! You've just killed my writer's block Sheila! I want to write about this now too:)
ReplyDeleteVery interesting story. I knew the horn, but had never thought about it before. The flower stamp is part of a nice series. Happy PFF!
ReplyDeleteI love "postal" postcards and am glad to learn about the symbolism of the horn.
ReplyDeleteWow! Happy PFF
ReplyDeleteWonderful! Happy PFF!
ReplyDeleteWhat a great card! Thanks for sharing it. Happy PFF!
ReplyDelete500 years...I had no idea. How wonderful.
ReplyDeleteAnother GREAT image and a stamp to match!
ReplyDeleteWow, that's really interesting. And a postcard of postmen...I think you get double PFF points for that!
ReplyDeleteWhat fun trivia..... TFS an awesome postcard and stamp.
ReplyDelete500 years is a long time! Wow! Happy PFF!!
ReplyDeleteYes. I'm learning so much from the postcard that I receive and from your informative blog too :)
ReplyDeleteWonderful! I think card from Germany are top rank in my collection too.
ReplyDeleteYou Got A Posty
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that's a beautiful card! i wish my postman announced his arrival with a horn :D
ReplyDeleteJust FYI to anyone who may be interested: If you're interested in board games at all, there's a wonderful game called Thurn und Taxis that's available in which you construct postal routes across Germany in the 16th century. It's a little bit like Ticket to Ride, but IMHO it's even better. :-) I recommend it highly, it's a great game, and especially fun for mail buffs. ;-)
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