München-Passau 1845

Hi Sylvain,

I don’t want to prejudice you, this cover is nice enough (what with the seal and the address), but fairly average with some signs of wear and tear to boot.
If you want it expressly as an eyecatcher at the beginning of your collection, then there will be better choices if you keep your eyes peeled, and they won’t cost you more than this one. My reason for saying that is that at the beginning of my collector’s career I was convinced a particular cover just might be the last one to come my way. I got food for thought more than once afterwards. Prephilately, alas, is not exactly hip in Germany nowadays (provided a letter doesn’t show any special features that makes it interesting for postal historians), which is good for buyers. Take your time - or buy it, if you really like it.

Best wishes from Erding!

Hi Sylvain, hi Erdinger,

what Erdinger already told you is of course a good and correct statement from him, as he is expert for bavaria post at both times, stamps and prephilatelic, nothing more to say from me to the cover.

The only little thing i like to add to the discussion, is that i really like the idea of showing some prephilatelic covers (1,2,3....) in the beginning and if you do it, as Erdinger said put better a "diamond" in it, than anything less

Yust my two cents

Dear Sylvain,

I can see your point. The combination of Munich (it seems anyone who hasn’t heard of the place must have spent his or her whole life locked away in a cupboard) and some patina should go down well overseas, and the supply is limited compared to Europe. I tend to forget that.

But be warned: prephilately is contagious. You might find yourself tempted more than once after you pocketed your first letter. The smell and rustle of old paper, the exotic watermarks, the seals on the back of the letters, the strange hieroglyphs in different hands and colours on the front - the appeal is clearly there.

When I buy a letter from this period it is usually with some idea in the back of my mind about what to do with it. More often than not it is a small collection started as an excuse for buying old paper.

Having said that, here are some letters in the $5-$20 bracket I simply couldn’t resist buying. None of them come from Munich, but they are from different periods or show the variety of cancels in use then.

As I said in my first posting, don’t let yourself be prejudiced. If you like the letter in question and the asking price is okay, go for it. One can always think of a good reason, no matter what the wife or others will say. By the way: The "8" (kreuzer) noted on the front of the letter from Munich to Passau gives the rate for a letter in the first weight class up to 0,5 Loth (or 8,75 grammes) and for a distance under 24 miles (at about 7,5 km each) under the tariff from January 1st, 1843. And it is a private letter which makes it a tad more desirable as most available correspondence from this period is official. It is addressed to "Seiner Hochwohlgeboren/Ritter Max von Kobell/Könl. Trieft-Inspecktor/in/Passau". The man in question had something to do with rafting wood.

Best wishes from Erding!

Hello Sylvain, hello Erdinger,

those covers are top examples from Erdinger, for the Question, what can be shown prephilatelic in the beginning of a Collection.

The Cover I would like to show you, as Example for one of my Beginnings, is adressed to " Seiner hochwohlgeborenen Exzellenz....den Grafen von Montgelas..." in Munich.
(So the Town that is already well known in your Country, as you remarked)

He is called in the bavarian History as the "Builder of modern Bavaria", as he was a powerfull double-minister and I was happy, to become the Cover for a Part of my Collection.

http://www.hdbg.de/montgelas/pages/hmv100.htm

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_von_Montgelas

Yust an Example of what I like in this period.....

Hello Bayern Social & Sylvain,

the letter to Montgelas would make a great starting point for any prephilatelic collection, indeed. Few people cared for a calligraphic approach like this, even then. At first glance I’d say it is a letter from the late 17th century*, weren’t it for the personality it was addressed to, who gives the game away immediately.

From the same period (1810) comes a letter which is outwardly perfectly unremarkable and does not show any postal markings at all. Once you unfold it, an engraved letter-head appears, very unusual at a time when these were mostly lithographed. The municipal court of Munich summons the Senior Court Librarian Johann Christoph von Aretin to appear three days later to help with some inquiries. Aretin was embroiled in the so-called „Akademiestreit“; taking the part of the „patriots“, he protested loudly in word and print against the appointment of scientists from Northern Germany, mostly protestants, to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He was suspected to have inspired some ghoulish pranks against the newcomers, but nothing could be proved. The summoner knocked on his door several times, delivering letters like this personally (which makes this one especially interesting for me and my collection of more or less formally insinuated letters).

Best regards from Erding!

* bayern klassisch suggested the 18th century. Well, yes and no. Having spent a lot of time in local and regional archives I find it safe to state that in Bavaria the art of handwriting declined rapidly from about 1720 onwards.

Hello Sylvain, hello Erdinger,

first of all, thanks for your nice comments, always good to hear that you like that kind of cover with postal history on it

I sometimes wonder why didnt more collectors show in the beginning a special cover of history from the state or period they collect.....(for exampel the king or the queen, a special minister like montgelas, a general, scientist, an artist...many ways to go.

Than i`d like to say, covers like Erdinger shows us is also what I like a lot, outside nothing very special but inside great!!
Together with the explaining of an expert he is.....really a fine pice of postal history in my opinion-thanks for showing

Here comes a Picture with wikipedia things of Librarian Johann Christop:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_von_Aretin

With kind regards from Siegen!

Dear Sylvain,

first of all, a splendit cover from Munich-Passau to an baronet, maybe Erdinger or another Expert can tell us more about him, because I am not shure in reading the name, because of the tax written over it.
("Seiner hochwohlgeborenen Herrn Ritter Max von ......königlicher........in Passau" )

The taxe is the "8" kreuzer, written by the munich post, so that was the taxe for the way from Munich-Passau in 1845 for an cover with a single weight.

Anyway a reall nice pice of the time bevore the Stamps started, in a reall good condition, with an interesting seal to a special adress.
What more would you like to find

Kindly regards

Bayern Social

Hello Sylvain,

you made no mistake by getting this letter from eBay.

About Ritter ("knight") Max von Kobell I found that in the internet:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schloss_Oberellenbach

Quite below you can see that he married Maria von Hilger, widow, who owned the manor.

His most famous relativ ("father?"):

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Kobell

Hello Sylvain,

if you won´t find something, nobody will find it either. I hope you´ll get some interesting covers and postcards to show us, what they´ve got there.

Hi there,

I think @BK is allright with it, if not you, who will find it-good luck and we are looking forward to see what you will find, silvain

Zitat von Hornet785

But...I will post in the appropriate threads what I found..

Hi Sylvain,

yes, indeed some very nice pieces....great and thanks for showing

Dear friends,

time to give this thread a boost again.

Prephilately is one of the most rewarding fields of collecting postal history, in more than one sense of the word. You don’t have to worry about forgeries too much and every piece you add to your collection brings with it a sense of history that will survive when all the paper from later ages has turned into dust. The machine-produced paper that flooded receptive markets from the mid-19th century onwards had many advantages: it was hyper-smooth, extra-white and dead cheap. It seemed like a real progress then, but as it is with so many inventions human ingenuity has brought about, the long-term effects are devastating. We are now facing a serious problem. Have you ever tried to carefully erase a pencil marking (brainlessly added by a dealer) from a letter written on thin machine-produced paper, ca. 1880, with a rubber? You might end up with a nasty surprise when, for example, one corner comes off without warning. All wood-containing paper deteriorates with time, literally being eaten up from the inside because the ingredients turn sour. The most visible aspect of this process is a change of colour from white to various shades of brown. In the end the paper structure is so weak, the sheet will break like glass even when the faintest mechanical pressure is being applied. Libraries and archives are facing an uphill fight against the deterioration of large parts of their collections. They have found ways to make files and books acid-free again, but the process is laborious and expensive. And it won˚t help collectors of letters because part of the process involves drenching the paper in (chemical) solutions to get rid of the acid that has built up inside. Imagine for yourself what that means for inks and stamps.

You have to be really roughing it to see the same happen to a letter written on old-fashioned laid or wove paper that was made up to about 1850. If you don’t stab, burn or drown such a piece, the chances it will survive approach 100 percent. Don’t expose them to direct sunlight. Avoid using clear protective sheets made from PVC, because red markings might turn into black when stored under almost air-tight conditions. Don’t apply chemicals if you don’t have to. A dry environment with stable temperatures will certainly help. But that’s about it.

With a prephilatelic letter, character comes in buckets and bags. As I said earlier, the smell and rustle of old paper is simply irresistible. People didn’t write as if they were using brooms dipped in ink, but very often considered handwriting an art and a form of courteousness. Postmarks weren’t standardised so much, and even if they were, intriguing and beautiful exceptions to the rule were still abundant. Manuscript markings denoted postal rates (sometimes many of them) and both sides of a letter were (and still are today!) important, because transit markings and seals on the backside reveal a lot about the routes these letters took or give hints about the people who wrote them. With social philately gaining ground, the historical importance of not only the postal aspects of a letter has grown steadily in recent years.

I bought the letter shown in this posting because of the method it was delivered to its addressee. Imagine you’re a civil servant in Bavaria in the first third of the 19th century and you need evidence that a certain letter has reached not only its destination, but was delivered straight into the hands of the addressee, evidence that would stand up in court, if necessary. Now, what to do? To aggravate your position, the addressee, although having bonds of some sort with your country, is living in a neighbouring country, so a registered letter and a return receipt won’t probably be a proposition, because special handling of letters like this wasn’t stipulated in the applicable bi-lateral postal conventions. To shorten the story considerably, the addressee had provided for a solution. He nominated a mandatary in the person of a priest domiciled on the bavarian side of the border. The castle of Sachsgrün was (still is) situated in Saxony, while Arzberg, where the Protestant pastor Scherertz lived, is a place in Bavaria.

I love the look of the letter, and it fits snugly in my collection of specially delivered letters.

I would certainly like to treat you to more details, but this posting is getting too long anyway, and there is some danger you won’t be any wiser, so I bid you good night for today.