Гродна 1919

I haven't had much time to post on this blog nor to acquire new material lately, so I went quickly through my stock book to look what I can post and these 2 stamps caught my eyes. I've noticed I haven't posted yet the Гродна/Hrodna (Gardinas in Lithuanian) cancel. Гродна/Hrodna is a city at the edge of the present Belarussian territory between Vilnius and Białystok, Poland, known as Гродно/Grodno in Russian language. The above postmark has been used in the post office of Hrodna in 1919 when it belonged to Lithuania. It is written in Cyrillic and it says: Гродненская почтово телеграфн. контора / Grodnenskaya pochtovo telegrafn. kontora. This "date-less" postmark was only for provisional use but the city was soon taken by the Poles and never came back to Lithuania since then.

Kretinga under German Occupation

I have found 2 postmarks of Krottingen (now Kretinga, Lithuania) from 2 different German occupations, WW1 and WW2, so I thought I would post these. As I have mentioned in my posts in the past, the German name of Kretinga is rather confusing. "Russ (Russisch) Krottingen" was for the present town of Kretinga and "Deutsch Krottingen" was the name given for Kretingalė. Both names were also spelled "Crottingen" with a "C" at the beginning. The ones cancelled simply "Krottingen/Crottingen" can be identified according to the stamp, when Memel stamps were used then it means that it was Kretingalė, when it was the Ostland overprint, then it was Kretinga.

I also have some other WW1 and WW2 occupation stamps still umposted in this blog so I would like to take the oppotunity to post them as well. 

 Mariampol 1917 (now Marijampolė, Lithuania)

Schaulen 1942 (now Šiauliai, Lithuania)