Monday, June 4, 2018

Šilutė 1942


Postmark of Heydekrug March 1942

Sender's address: Kolleschen bei Jonaten Kreis Heydekrug (Ostpr.)

It has been long since I have posted something here the last time I guess.. I'm planning to slowly come back on track!
Anyway.. So, here is a registered cover sent in 1942 from Heydekrug (today Šilutė, Lithuania) to Kassel in mainland Germany. 1942 is in the middle of WWII as we all know and Heydekrug / Šilutė  has been re-annexed by Germany along with the rest of Memelland. I guess the followers of this blog know that but let me mention it just in case if you happened to be new to this blog..
The sender's address is in Kolleschen (previously called Kolletzischken) b. Jonaten, a small village not far from the narrow-gauge line Heydekrug - Jonathen (or Jonaten). I wonder if the sender was working or just happened to be in Heydekrug to send this letter because there were closer post offices from where he was living, notably Jonathen.
I bought this cover at Yahoo Japan with a ridiculous price of 500 JPY (4.50USD or 4.30EUR) along with a Tilsit and a Skaisgirren cover (which I'm not going to post here because those are not part of Lithuania but part of present Russia) buried among hundreds of German covers. Regular dealers don't usually notice Memelland covers unless Memel stamps are used on it.

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Please do not post irrelevant comment with a commercial link.

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I find your posts to be quite informative.
    Was there any particular reason you think caused you to focus attention on Lithuania?
    I've confined my reading so far to the parts of your collection from the end of the First Republic and to the events in Klaipeda during the 1930's.
    I have located a first person account regarding the March 1939 overprints that I think you would find interesting and possibly worth posting about on your blog.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your visit!
      Why Lithuania? Well... It goes back when I was studying Czech history (I used to live in the Czech Republic) and stumble across the name of the Jagellon dynasty. There have been 3 major dynasties in Czech (Bohemian) Kingdom: The house of Premyslid, Jagellon and Habsburg. The first was a local Czech family. It is common that a local family starts a dynasty in most of the countries. The house of Habsburg is pretty famous, I am sure most of people have heard of it before. But what was new to me was the Jagellon (This is the Czech spelling, Jagiello in Polish) and I was further surprised that they originated in Lithuania. That was how I got first interested in Lithuania. I have been collecting stamps for the last 30 years so it didn't take long until I started to collect Lithuanian stamps.
      1939 overprint is indeed very interesting!

      Delete
  4. Hi. I have just discovered your site. I am very interested by your expertise of Lithuanian stamps during German WWII occupation. I am trying to identify the location of the Lithuanian postmarks on two DeutschesReich stamps. The postmarks are dated 6/7/1941, but they are faint and I cannot identify the location. Would you be willing to examine them? I could email them to you as JPGs. Thanks in advance. Patrick

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Patrick!
    I would be glad to help you. Dated 6/7/1941 on D.Reich stamps? Then it is most likely to be a Memelland postmark if the location is within Lithuania as you suspect. Off course that is not 100% because operation Barbarossa started on June 22nd 1941 and there might be some cases where Reich stamps have been used in some minor villages or towns in main land Lithuania. You can email me from my profile in this blog is you wish to send me JPGs.

    ReplyDelete