Vilnius 1941 - Postcard of Trakai

This is a postcard of Troki (now Trakai, Lithuania) sent in 1941 from Vilnius, part of German occupied Ostland to Riga, which was also part of the same territory. It has a nice simple single Hindenburg stamp franking with a postmark of Vilnius C. dated 14 XI 1941. As I've already mentioned in the past in this blog,  regular Reich stamps were also valid along with the Ostland overprinted stamps. It looks like the text is written in Russian and the slightly visible trace of red ink on the upper left corner of the stamp is probably hand stamped censorship mark. It is interesting that Polish postcards with Polish inscriptions are still available for the local market considering the place was under German occupation which often replaced anything printed in the local language by their own productions.

Vilnius 1910

This is a beautiful postcard of Троки / Troki (now Trakai, Lithuania) sent in 1910 from the post office Вильна Вокзаль / Vilna Vokzal (Vilnius railway station) to Рига / Riga. The picture is so beautiful that it makes you think of an artistic modern photography. Trakai castle was and still is a popular day trip site for tourists and Vilnius residents as well. The postmarks are interesting, the right one is a perfin cancel of Vilnius station, the middle one is a regular cancel of the same post office and the left one is a machine arrival cancel of Riga.

Recent Acquisitions

Lately I haven't been able to have enough time to neither acquire new covers nor time for posting threads... However, here are some stamps I have found recently in various sources.

Memel Local issue
Postmark Memel 25.03.1939

Not new to this blog but another copy of Fuhrer's 50th anniversary
 with an illustration of the Municipal theater in Memel

Central Lithuania (I personally prefer to translate it "Middle Lithuania")
Postmark Troki (now Trakai, Lithuania) 7.1922

Вилыкомıр/Vilkomir (now Ukmergė, Lithuania) 15.IV.190?

Coat of Arms series - 1

Modern Lithuanian stamps are not really my speciality but however, there are several of them I really like. One of them are those Coat of Arms series, issued every year from 1992. It shows you different city coat of arms (except in the first issue, there is a national one) across the nation. 

 1992 issue - Kėdainiai, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania

This first issue is the only one with Talonas as the face value.

The size is slightly smaller than others.

1993 issue - Skuodas, Telšiai, Klaipėda

 1994 issue - Punia, Alytus, Perloja

1995 issue - Virbalis, Kudirkos Naumiestis

This issue is the only one with 2 stamps.

 1996 issue - Šeduva, Panevėžys, Zarasai

Zarasai has an eccentric coat of arms with an imaginary creature symbolizing the wealth of its nature.

1997 issue - Neringa, Vilkaviškis, Pasvalys

1998 issue - Kernavė, Trakai, Kaunas

Trakai's arms has a head of St. John the Baptist, just in case you are wondering... It supposed to symbolize the Christianization of the town.

1999 issue - Marijampolė, Šiauliai, Rokiškis

Very nice coat of arms of Šiauliai

This modern arms is based on the 1791 arms with the Samogitia bear (Šiauliai was the center of  the duchy Samogitia), Eye of Providence symbolizing parliament and the red calf of the House of Poniatowski, the royal family of King Stanislaus August Poniatowski who granted this arms.

Trakai 2011

This is a FDC of one of the 2 stamps of the church series issued in 2011. The church on the stamp is the Church of the Visitation of Saint Mary/Švč. Mergelės Marijos Apsilankymo bažnyčia in Trakai, originally build in 1409 by Vytautas the Great. The basic gothic features of the building itself are still preserved but the exterior has been redecorated in Baroque style. You can also see the church on the lower left picture of the postcard. Nice arrival cancellation of Vilnius 38 which is Naujininkai.

Užuguostis 1935

This is a cover sent in 1935 from Užuguostis to Kaišiadorys.  Užuguostis is a village with a population of little less than 300, not so far from the destination of the letter Kaišiadorys. Thanks to the postmark, it mentions the name of the district (in this case Trakų apskritis/Trakai district) so it was easy to locate this village. But.. isn't Trakai (Troki in Polish at that time) occupied by Poles in 1935? Yes, and it is the same as it has been done to Vilnius. Vilnius was the official capital of Lithuania in 1935 but the function of the capital city was transferred to Kaunas as "temporary capital". The same thing happened here, the administrative function of Trakų apskritis/Trakai district was "temporarily" moved to Kaišiadorys, therefore it carried the name of Trakai even though Trakai itself was in Polish hands. What was different, is that part of Trakai district remained in Lithuanian hands so the district was divided in 2 parts both named Trakai district (Powiat Trocki in Polish). In that respect, we can say that it was more similar to Kreis Tilsit than Vilnius. When Memelgebiet was detached from the rest of Germany as the result of WWI,  Kreis Tilsit/Tilsit district was divided in 2 parts by the border but both sides remained as "Tilsit district" until 1922. Some postmarks such as the post office of Kamščiai /Kampspowilken for example, had the inscription "Kreis Tilsit" even though the city of Tilsit itself was on the other side of the border.
It is amazing that a simple postmark can be a witness of such complicated history. 2 different "Trakai district" existed simultaneously... It reminds me a bit of a TV show I'm watching now called "Fringe" with 2 alternate universes but it is so irrelevant to philately so I'd better finish this post...

Presidential Election 1993

 Panevėžys 1993

Ukmergė-4 1993 

Trakai 1993 

Today I'm posting some modern Lithuanian philately rarities. Those are anonymous registered mails used to send the ballots of the Prezidento rinkimai/Presidential election of 1993. This election was a historic event because it was the first presidential election after the restoration of independence in 1990.  Those covers were supposed to have been all destroyed after the election but somehow, some of them survived under an unknown circumstance. They are all anonymous, which is unlikely to happen to a regular registered mail, use specific no-franking postal stationery for the election and the back is sealed with postmarks. "rinkimai" stated in the upper left part means election. What is also interesting is that all 3 postmarks display dates differently. Panevėžys postmark displays day - month - year, in this case 9 02 93. Ukmergė-4 postmark shows full year - month - day 1993 2 9 and Trakai, last 2 digits of the year - month - day 9300 02 10. Who knows, maybe a century later, those covers could have some historical values...

Trakai 1929

This is a postcard sent in 1929 from Troki (now Trakai, Lithuania) to Paris, France. The picture shows the ruin of Trakai castle which is presently reconstructed. The postcard is printed in Wilno (Vilnius, Lithuania) by F. Musko.