Mi.850 - 853 (26.06.1943)
Unusual souvenir sheet displaying all four Labour Service postage stamps. The sheet has a title that reads, '10 Years/ Reich Labour Service'. The issue of RAD stamps on the 26th June 1943 was for the 8th anniversary. The information below may shed light onto this discrepancy. To the reverse the printed text reads, 'Our Signature/ Your Signature' and the imprint code 'B/0045'. The cancellation used is JB:Wien108/769. Ref: 01.09.1943
Discrepency in inaugral year may stem from previous incarnations of the RAD and its continuation from 1933 onwards.
From Wikipedia:
In the course of the Great Depression, the German government of the Weimar Republic under Chancellor Heinrich Brüning by emergency decree established the Freiwilliger Arbeitsdienst ('Voluntary Labour Service', FAD), on 5th June 1931, two years before the Nazi Party (NSDAP) ascended to national power. The state sponsored employment organisation provided services to civic and land improvement projects, from 16th July 1932 it was headed by Friedrich Syrup in the official rank of a Reichskommissar. As the name stated, participating was voluntary as long as the Weimar Republic existed.
The concept was adopted by Adolf Hitler, who upon the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 appointed Konstantin Hierl state secretary in the Reich Ministry of Labour, responsible for FAD matters. Hierl was already a high-ranking member of the NSDAP and head of the party's labour organisation, the Nationalsozialistischer Arbeitsdienst or NSAD. Hierl developed the concept of a state labour service organisation similar to the Reichswehr army, with a view to implementing a compulsory service. Meant as an evasion of the regulations set by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, voluntariness initially was maintained after protests by the Geneva World Disarmament Conference.
Hierl's rivalry with Labour Minister Franz Seldte led to the affiliation of his office as a FAD Reichskommissar with the Interior Ministry under his party fellow Wilhelm Frick. On 11th July 1934, the NSAD was renamed Reichsarbeitsdienst or RAD with Hierl as its director until the end of World War II. By law issued on 26th June 1935, the RAD was re-established as an amalgamation of the many prior labour organisations formed in Germany during the Weimar Republic, with Hierl appointed as Reich Labour Leader (Reichsarbeitsführer) according to the Führerprinzip. With massive financial support by the German government, RAD members were to provide service for civic and agricultural construction projects. Per Reich Labor Service Act of June 26th, 1935.
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