UPNS Release 95-031 (East German Stamp Trade)
Ed Jackson
Release 95-031
May 21, 1995
UPNS editor's notes:
1. John Haag, a history professor at the University of Georgia,
contributed several UPNS articles in 1994--including an unfinished series
on stamps associated with the Holocaust. Last fall, the deteriorating
health of his mother led Dr. Haag to move her into his home. Because of
the considerable time he must now spend with her, John has been forced to
suspend most non-teaching activities--including his philatelic writing.
However, he promises to resume his articles as soon as possible. In the
meantime, I have selected several of his articles written for the Athens
Philatelic News during recent years for reprinting as UPNS releases. This
one was written in February 1992.
2. Two illustrations accompany this article and may be found in the
anonymous FTP archive
<igs.cviog.uga.edu/user/exchange/jackson/gif-jpg/UPNS.gifs/95-031gifs>.)
The East German Stamp Trade: Communist Businessmen and Nazi Stamps
by John Haag
A recent article in the German news magazine Der Spiegel has provided
philatelists with fascinating details on how the sale of stamps enabled
the former East German government (German Democratic Republic, or GDR) to
inject considerable sums of Western currency into its ailing economy in
the 1980s.
Starting with its birth in October 1949, the Communist rulers of the GDR
looked at stamp collecting from two very different points of view. One,
the "pure" Marxist ideological perspective, saw stamps as the product of
political and economic conditions and regarded philately as simply another
weapon of political warfare. In 1949, the GDR began producing large
numbers of stamps to advertize its status as the "first worker's and
peasant's state in German history."
The other viewpoint was that stamps had an economic importance at least
equal to their propaganda value. Starting in the 1950s, the sale of GDR
stamps provided the regime with much needed hard currency, be it West
German Marks, Italian Lire, French or Swiss Francs, British Pounds, or
American Dollars.
The revenue from the sale of stamps was so attractive to GDR tax officials
that by the mid-1950s all private stamp businesses in the country had been
nationalized by the state. Stamp dealers were permitted to liquidate
their stock but had to deliver their supplies of Nazi German stamps
directly to state authorities, since as an "anti-Fascist state" the GDR
presumably felt it had a unique responsibility to combat all facets of
Nazi and Fascist propaganda and to protect the ordinary citizen from
ideological contamination.
By the 1960s many collectors had become familiar with the stamps of the
GDR, which was now a world power in sports competition and generally was
regarded as the most prosperous Communist society (despite its lack of
political freedom and the need for a wall to keep its citizens from
fleeing to West Germany).
Attractively designed and excellently printed, GDR stamps appealed to
collectors of topicals. Of course, they were also sought by collectors of
Germany who felt their collections were not complete without an album
section reserved for GDR issues.
Although conceived within an obviously Marxist perspective, GDR stamps
nevertheless gave one a valuable insight into the forces that had created
German history. Many East German issues served to commemorate Communist
and Socialist heroes and martyrs, as well as the current leadership --
particularly the founders of the GDR and veteran Communist party bosses
Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht (Scott Germany -- German Democratic
Republic nos. 54-57A, 92-93, 120-121, 423, 511-511A, 582-590C, 751-752,
1112A-1114A, 1022, 1483, and 1702).
The erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 strengthened the regime of the GDR
and led to significant economic improvements during the next decades.
Financing these economic changes put great pressure on Communist officials
to find hard currency with which to purchase the latest technology from
the West, and one of the many methods of raising cash was through
philately.
Not only were attractive stamps and souvenir sheets issued every year, but
by the late 1960s state officials had become deeply involved in the sale
of rare stamps in the West. In 1972, the State Monopoly for Stamp Exports
(VEB Philatelie) was created, with offices and staff situated in the town
of Wermsdorf in Saxony.
Although some of the stamps packaged, catalogued, and mailed from
Wermsdorf to dealers and auction houses in West Germany were obtained in a
normal fashion from East German collectors (or heirs of deceased
philatelists), with each passing year the market for rare stamps grew.
West German and other European collectors had the financial clout to pay
for rare stamps, and GDR officials in the 1980s grew ever more aggressive
in their search for high-quality material. The secret police (Stasi)
seized stamps from individuals caught attempting to flee the GDR, while
custom officials confiscated philatelic items from East German citizens
legally crossing the frontier into West Berlin or West Germany as visitors
or emigrants (mostly individuals over the age of 65).
As word of the quality of the stamps coming from VEB Philatelie spread
throughout the philatelic world of western Europe, the professional
expertise of the staff at Wermsdorf steadily improved in order to maintain
and even enhance that organization's reputation. Unlike the Western
world, where individuals work for an employer as a free choice, the East
German stamp monopoly was able to employ totalitarian tactics to fill some
of its empty staff positions. In one such case, a man accused of cheating
on his taxes, Jürgen Müller, was sentenced to a prison cell as
punishment. But, since he was a well-respected philatelic expert, Müller
found himself incarcerated in the Leipzig County Court. His tasks here
were to examine and appraise stamps seized by state security forces in
order to sell them to Western dealers through the VEB Philatelie
organization. Although a prisoner, Herr Müller was well treated, and in
fact permitted to order any food he desired from outside the prison.
The collapse of the Communist regime in the GDR in the last months of 1989
brought fascinating revelations concerning the economic aspects of state
stamp dealing in the 1980s. Corruption became rampant among high state
officials in the 1980s as large sums of Western money flowed into an
increasingly troubled economy. The stamp trade was simply too lucrative a
money maker not to be eventually drawn into the web of intrigue and
corruption that characterized the Communist bureaucracy.
In 1985, VEB Philatelie became part of the economic empire directed by
Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a shadowy individual whose job as State
Secretary for Foreign Trade enabled him to deposit huge amounts of hard
currency in secret Swiss bank accounts and effectively use the funds of
GDR taxpayers to run a private business in the arms trade. The stamp
enterprise became part of the notoriously corrupt office of commercial
coordination in the GDR Ministry of Foreign Trade, known popularly as the
"KoKo" and held in contempt by ordinary people.
Most of the funds from the sale of stamps evaluated and packaged in
Wermsdorf were now unaccounted for and simply disappeared into various
pockets. Mr. Müller believes that instead of VEB Philatelie's
officially-admitted annual income of 10 or 12 million Marks, the actual
income of the organization may well have been many times that amount.
From 1972 to 1989, he believes, the income reached 1, or even, 2 billion
West German Marks -- a staggering amount equal to perhaps $1 billion!
Besides the amazing financial revelations about the GDR stamp trade and
its involvement in the financial corruptions of that failed regime, some
of the purely philatelic information is also very intriguing. For
example, after the death of GDR president Wilhelm Pieck in 1960, his
daughters sold his stamp collection, which included many rare Nazi stamps,
including superb copies of the rare Rommel stamps (see fig1.gif), which
showed a swastika in front of a palm tree and were printed for German
troops in Tunis in 1943. The fact that Pieck, who was a founding member
of the German Communist Party in 1918, was a collector of rare Nazi stamps
banned in the GDR, was never revealed to the people.
Other Nazi-era rarities that VEB Philatelie supplied to Western collectors
with sufficient cash included the extremely rare Reinhard Heydrich
memorial souvenir sheet of 1943 from German-occupied Bohemia and Moravia,
a souvenir presented only to top Nazi officials (see fig2.gif).
Sometimes the staff at Wermsdorf was requested to find rare stamps for
high officials who fancied themselves to be expert philatelists. In 1979,
they purchased from Swiss dealers a set of rare Zeppelin stamps which the
GDR regime presented as a gift to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who was
on a state visit to his East German ally.
Besides stamps, VEB Philatelie also sold to eager Western buyers other
collectible items of a historical nature, including such desirable
artifacts as copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf in rare early editions, a
collection of wartime letters written by the notorious Adolf Eichmann, and
unusual documents and medals issued by the Third Reich. With the
disappearance of the German Democratic Republic in October 1990, the
intriguing chapter of Communist officials enriching themselves from the
sale of Nazi stamps was closed, thus ending a fascinating aspect of modern
German philatelic history.
(Usenet Philatelic News Service is a free, non-commercial service that
provides philatelic articles, news releases, stamp images, and other
material to editors of stamp club newsletters. Contributors are
encouraged to submit articles for possible use as UPNS releases. In
granting permission for reprinting with acknowledgment in club
newsletters, authors do not expressly place their material in the public
domain nor relinquish claims to copyright protection. On the other hand,
authors are usually very generous in allowing reprinting of their
material. To inquire about other uses, or for more information on UPNS,
contact Ed Jackson at <jac...@igs.cviog.uga.edu>.)