6th March 1935 1/2 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

18th April 1945 Pages from 'PUNCH' 18th April 1945 Pages from 'PUNCH' Punch icon.png Punch icon.png 1/1 Cartoon from PUNCH 18th April 1945. Japan removes its Samurai mask and replaces it with one of the diplomat/ civilian... yet is still dressed as the warrior. The caption reads A CHANGE OF MASKS Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Postcard depicting the National Gallery, Berlin. The Hindenburg Medallion postage stamp is tied with special cancellation JB: 289/830. Ref: 04.06.1938 - 22/65 4th June 1938 National Gallery, Berlin Postcard depicting the National Gallery, Berlin. Postcard depicting the National Gallery, Berlin. 1/1 Postcard depicting the National Gallery, Berlin. The Hindenburg Medallion postage stamp is tied with special cancellation JB: 289/830. Ref: 04.06.1938 - 22/65 National Gallery, Berlin The National Gallery in Berlin, Germany, is a museum for art of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. It is part of the Berlin State Museums. From the Alte Nationalgalerie, which was built for it and opened in 1876, its exhibition space has expanded to include five other locations. The museums are part of the Berlin State Museums, owned by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In 1919, after the abolition of the Prussian monarchy, the gallery acquired the Crown Prince's Palace ( Kronprinzenpalais ) and used it to display the modern art. This became known as the Neue Abteilung (New Department) or National Gallery II, and met the demand by contemporary artists for a Gallery of Living Artists. It opened with works by the Berlin Secessionists, the Impressionists and the Expressionists. This was the first state promotion of Expressionist works, which were unpopular with large numbers of the public, but the collection was, in the judgement of Ludwig Justi's assistant Alfred Hentzen, superior to that of all other German galleries then collecting modern art. By far the largest share of artworks in the 1937 exhibition of 'Degenerate Art' under the Nazis were taken from this collection. Justi was one of 27 art gallery and museum heads forced out by the Nazis in 1933 under the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, to be succeeded for a few months by Alois Schardt and then by Eberhard Hanfstaengl, who was in turn dismissed in 1937; he had refused to meet with the commission under Adolf Ziegler, president of the Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts, who were charged with purging the gallery of 'degenerate' works. Some artwork from a dealer had been burnt in the furnaces of the National Gallery building in 1936, and the modern art annexe in the Crown Prince's Palace was shut down in 1937 as a 'hotbed of cultural Bolshevism'. The gallery was placed under the control of the Berlin State Museums and Hanfstaengl was after a while replaced by Paul Ortwin Rave, who despite being more acceptable to the Nazi regime, conscientiously guarded the artworks and as the war drew to an end, went with them to the mine where they were to be stored for safety's sake and was there when the Red Army arrived. He remained in charge of the gallery until 1950. Source: Wikipedia (2025) Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

Mi.648 (10.06.1937) Mi.648 (10.06.1937) 1/1 Block 9 (Mi.648). Ref: 26.01.1938 - 1/8. Poor example on cover. Posted from Stuttgart to London. Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

25th September 1939 25th September 1939 1/1 Early feldpostkarke (imprint 'SBW.11.'). Ref: 25.09.1939 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

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30th November 1945 30th November 1945 1/1 'Horst Kempe' Coswig cover featuring stamps 10pf Mi.52, 12pf Mi.119Y, and 20pf Mi.48D. Ref: 30.11.1945

29th November 1937 Heinrich Köhler 29th November 1937 Heinrich Köhler 29.11.1937 Heinrich Kohler reverse.jpeg 29.11.1937 Heinrich Kohler reverse.jpeg 1/1 Return addressed cover sent by a book dealer in Munich to the philatelic auction house of Heinrich Kohler. Postage stamps featured include W123 from MHB 61. Ref: 29.11.1937 Heinrich Köhler Source : heinrich-koehler.de It was Wednesday 23 April 1913, at 2-30 pm: the festive hall of the House of Artists on the Bellevuestrasse in Berlin fills with people. Both the participants and the curious want to see the sensation of the day - the first general stamp auction in Germany. This first auction was an extraordinary success for Heinrich Koehler and the auction house that he founded. An important centre of world philately had come into being - and the company flourished in the years that followed. The most famous collectors of the time, Philippe la Renotière von Ferrary, Baron Rothschild and Fabergé, the celebrated court jeweller of the Russian Tsars, visit the firm in Berlin. Many other important collectors become Koehler's close personal friends: Gaston Nehrlich, Lichtenstein, Weinberger and Oberländer. King George V, and King Carol II of Romania are illustrious guests and customers of the Heinrich Koehler auction house. And not without reason - most of the large collections of the day were auctioned by Heinrich Koehler. Heinrich Koehler achieved worldwide recognition and was a member of important international organisations, also the Expert Committee of the Royal Philatelic Society London (RPSL). He was also invited to sign the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in England - being the second German, after Munk, to achieve this honour. The seizure of power by National Socialism meant an enormous drop in the activities of Heinrich Koehler - from now on the international public largely stayed away. Nevertheless, he was able to hold important auctions before the outbreak of war and also in the early years of the world war - but it was no longer his time. His death on 22nd August 1945 was a huge loss for German and international philately. When he died, he and the philatelic world could look back on 116 auctions containing countless superb items. With the death of Heinrich Koehler an era of philately and philatelic auctions came to an end - though one would hardly like to mention this against the background of world events which overshadowed the evening of his life. Heinrich Koehler's widow Anna, supported a little later by her daughter Henriette Grosse-Heinrich Koehler, nevertheless took over the tasks - in some respects difficult tasks - associated with their inheritance and decided to continue the Heinrich Koehler auction house. Berlin was destroyed. In 1948 the principal building at Friedrichstrasse 166 was requisitioned. Anna Koehler moved the company's headquarters to Wiesbaden, where there were family connections. Eventually, on 19th May 1949 they were finally able to hold the 124th Heinrich Koehler auction, the first at the Nassauer Hof in Wiesbaden. In doing so they began a new era for the auction house, continuing of a tradition whereby Germany stood for values very different from those which the country had embodied from 1933 to 1945. Commercial cover sent from Heinrich Köhler. Featuring a block of 5 & 12 Pf stamps (Mi.468 and Mi.487) taken from booklet sheet MHB 30. The booklet sheet was produced for the Hindenburg 1933 booklet and the block shown on cover may well have been part of H-Pane 77. Ref: 23.04.1934 - 15/93 Further reference: As the son of the opera singer Bernhard Köhler and his wife Ida, he grew up first in Darmstadt and later in Leipzig from 1883 to 1892. He attended school in Leipzig and was a member of the Thomanerchor. He later attended a high school in Cologne until around 1896. In 1897 he began an apprenticeship with the Cologne stamp dealer August Wilhelm Drahn. After completing his apprenticeship, Köhler went on a trip to Nicaragua with his cousin Josef Rener. After returning in April 1901, he worked as a stamp dealer in Cologne for three years. With Gérard Gilbert he founded the company Gilbert & Köhler in Paris at the end of 1903. On 7th October 1904, Köhler married Anna Rener. They had two children together: daughter Renée, born on 26th November 1907, and another daughter named Henriette, born on 17th October 1909, both in Paris. In the 1920s, Köhler had a relationship with his secretary Lina Bereiter. This also resulted in a daughter. Gilbert & Köhler began auctions in 1908. They held 40 auctions until the beginning of 1913, then they separated. Heinrich Köhler started anew in Berlin and held his first auction there on 13th April 1913 and founded the Heinrich Köhler stamp auction house. By the end of the Second World War there would be a total of 116. Famous collectors of their time, such as Philipp von Ferrary , Baron Rothschild and House of Fabergé Agathon Fabergé, the court jeweler of the Russian Tsar, visited him in Berlin. Other well-known collectors became his friends, such as Gaston Nehrlich, Alfred Lichtenstein, Consul Weinberger and Oberländer. King George V, Carol II of Romania , and Simon Wiesenthal, were guests and customers of the Heinrich Köhler auction house. Köhler dealt intensively with counterfeits and counterfeiters. In 1925 he opened an official testing center after years of issuing reports on stamps purchased from his company. In 1925/1926 he managed to convict Rudolf Siegel, a well-known Berlin auctioneer, of distributing and producing counterfeits. In 1926 he developed a 'test stamp system'. In the 1930s he was a member of the associations' supervisory board. Köhler's company was the official auctioneer of IPOSTA Berlin in 1930. He had also worked as a sworn expert for the Berlin Courts (Regional Courts I, II and III) and as a publicly appointed expert for the IHK Berlin. Köhler owned a large collection of forgeries, in which the forgeries of Goegg-Mercier, Hirschburger, Fournier's predecessor and successor, and many 'Ferrarities', but also Fouré forgeries, were documented. The well-known inspector Fritz Starauschek, who later became head of the senior inspection office in the GDR, was among his employees. Heinrich Köhler had been a juror since the 1920s, adjudicating in Paris, Monaco 1928, Berlin – IPOSTA 1930, WIPA 1933, OSTROPA 1935). During the Third Reich he tried to stay out of politics. His daughter Renée had married a Jewish-Russian emigrant. The last time he saw her was at PEXIP in Paris. Köhler's business at Friedrichstrasse 166, which was badly damaged before the end of the war, was run by his wife Anna after his death, together with their younger daughter Henriette and their son-in-law Hans Schmidt, from 1948 onwards. Source: Wikipedia Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

6th May 1937 6th May 1937 1/0 6th May 1937 Leutstetten to 27 Queen Square, Bath Dear Madeleine! You are a perfect sweet to have sent us the Coronation programme. We are all very excited about it, as everyone is, to be sure. It would be most beautiful to see it. Perhaps we shall at some cinema. But we are sure to listen in. We did so at the funeral of King George V. And at the wedding of Marina. Many thanks also for your nice long letter. Am I not hateful not to have written for so long? But I was very busy sewing. Maybe I shall become clever in sewing. Until now I am not. The most exciting was to sew a tennis dress for Baby with a cape and all sorts of complications. It is not finished yet, but it will be very nice. Next I shall make a white organdie frock, a perfect sweet. I am quite in love with it, although I did not even start it. I was at a wedding of a friend, and it was great fun. I danced a lot. In ten days I shall assist at another. I wish everybody to marry because weddings are such immense fun. But not to be married myself. I was at Lindau for a week with Muck and Deidi. I tried to go by car, did you ever? It is very exciting and rather difficult. We have cars of our own but Pappi would never let us go by our self. He is afraid we could crash. So at Lindau we went in the car of a cousin. The most difficult is going backwards. Here we can’t play tennis, in Sarvar we have a court. But this weekend we are going to see the German champions von Cramm and Henkel playing the Austrians Count Bawarovski and Metaxa. It is about the Davis Cup. It will be awfully exciting. I love to watch tennis, bit I don’t like to play it myself. I saw some very good films “San Francisco” with Clarke Gable and Jeanette Macdonald. And “Romana” a coloured film, very nice but sentimental. And “Janeschikc” or “Love, Liberty and Treason”, a Polish film, talking German, very exciting with beautiful pictures. About a Polish highway-man and having adventures as much as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the end is sad, he is hanged. We did not make up our minds about the holidays. I wish we would go to Belgium again. But that depends on grandma. Why don’t you go for your holidays to the Plattensee in Hungary. It is a very big lake and very warm water, always sun and good weather. It is quite near to Sarvar. I wish we would go there again very soon. But maybe we remain here till August. In Sarvar we can ride and do everything. And we have an immense garden and heaps of flowers and fruits. Here we have a dozen of apple trees which are empty before the apples are ripe. Yesterday we saw the opera Golderdammering by Wagner. It lasted 5 1⁄2 hours that is much too long. I am dreadfully untidy. The sisters send much love to all of you. I am very fond of you. Loll Right: Gottfried von Cramm. A German amateur tennis champion who won the French Open twice. He was ranked number 2 in the world in both 1934 and 1936, and number 1 in the world in 1937. He died in a car crash, Egypt 1976. He did, however, survive his fellow players of that day; Henkel played his last tournament at Bad Pyrmont in the summer of 1942, he had already received his draft notice. In the Battle of Stalingrad, Henkel was shot into the upper leg. He died of this injury on 13th January 1943. Bawarovski joined the German Wehrmacht. On December 21st 1942, when the Luftwaffe evacuated his troops from Stalingrad he ceded his place on the last flight to a heavily injured soldier and decided to stay in the trenches with his subordinates. He was hit by the Soviets and died in agony without receiving any medical help. Metaxa was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and was killed in action by American artillery fire at the town of Arnoldsweiler near Düren on 12th December 1944. Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

14th May 1946 14th May 1946 1/0 Large 'nachnahme' cover sent from Leipzig to an address in Chemnitz. Featuring 6 Pf Großrächen (Mi.43A), 12 Pf Großrächen (Mi.44C), 12 + 8 Pf Plauen (Mi.5y), and 20 Pf Sachsen (Mi.81X). Ref: 14.05.1946 - 11/18

21st December 1940 JB: Iglau (B&M) 1/1 Decorative cover and cancel for the Christmas period in 1940. Franked but not postally used (collectors cover) from Iglau - Jihlava in Bohemia and Moravia. The cover depicts the nativity scene below which is the verse , 'Hell leuchten Die kerzen am Igelstrand,/ heisz glühen die herzen in Igelland,/ Die Flammen lodern zum himmel hinauf,/ Dir deutsche heimat: Glück auf! Glück auf!' (The candles glow brightly on the hedgehog shore, the hearts in hedgehog country glow hot, the flames blaze up to the sky, to my German homeland: Good luck! Good luck!). Ref: 21.12.1940 - 17/9 The origin of the city's name (Iglau in German) is unclear. Most common theory has it derived from the German word Igel, meaning 'hedgehog', usually in reference to the city's coat of arms. However, the name was in use since before the symbol of a hedgehog was. It is more likely the city is named for the river that flows through it, the name of which is also unclear in its origin, either being derived from the German word Igel as the first theory suggests, or from Slavic word jehla (i.e. 'needle'), referring to sharp stones in the Jihlava river bed. (Source: Wikipedia) IGLAU (JIHLAVA) cancellations Iglau 1 - Jihava 1 - '2 Weihnachten in befreiten Iglau'. Hand-stamp dated 21st December (with subsequent franking of definitive stamps on 31st December). Ref: 21.12.1940 - 17/9 Contact Brief History to inform us of additional information regarding this page

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