ZEPPELIN COVERS AND THOSE 5 LITTLE NUNBERS por Art Knoth
I. Introduction
Take a look at any random batch of Zeppelin covers of the years 1930 and 1931, and inevitably you will find a few that have a row of five little black numbers on the front (Fig.1), usually in the lower left quadrant. For an unknowing general collector, one could easily come to the conclusion that these digits represent an official postal registration number.
Even more knowledgeable collectors as well reputable auction houses can fall into this trap. The numbers are “registry” numbers, but not official postal registration numbers. To prove this consider the cover in Fig.2. Clearly written in the upper left corner is the word “registrado” (return addresses of these types of covers are often Buenos Aires and Chile). Yet nowhere is there a registry number to be seen. The answer is that in the early years, the Zeppelin was not allowed to carry anything but simple mail, no registration nor insurance.
Up to 1932, most Zeppelin flights were singular affairs, a one time only special and/or test flight. They generated a hell of a lot of publicity and a storm of collector interest. Only in 1932, when “scheduled” flights to South America occurred on a regular basis, do you see covers that are really registered, in the postal sense. To see why this “regularity” was so important and why there are no registered covers for the previous years, one can tap an interesting source.
The Bros. Senf, located in Leipzig, were famous dealers who also edited the “Illustriertes Briefmarkenjournal” twice a month. Due to collector inquiries (complaints?), Senf wrote a letter in 1931 to the “Reichspostministerium” asking why registered letters were no allowed on the current Zeppelin flights. The official answer was then published in a 1931 issue of the Journal (see ref.). Basically the reply contained the following points: - no regular scheduled flights (i.e. flight timetables with fixed dates and routes) - mail drops (often done on this flights, the mail pouch was dropped from the Zeppelin without landing).
What the PO ministry really wanted was being able to tell when the mail went, on which flight, to where. And when the mail arrived at its destination, that a PO official of the that country would sign-off on the sack (this, by the way, being a UPU regulation). The German Reich’s PO would have to pay for any letters lost on drops and/or not countersigned at the destinations. Bureaucrats are the same everywhere (though maybe worse in Germany!). (Here I even wonder how much the Hindenberg disaster cost in terms of lost registered mail?).
II. Background
So what are these numbers, who’s responsible for them and since when (and until when) were they used. To answer these questions, one needs to see the situation of the Zeppelin in 1930. After the great success of the around the world flight of 1929, the number of Zeppelin collectors was growing rapidly beyond the initial circle of aerophilatelists. It’s an open secret among Zeppelin collectors that the most revenue on any flight came from the, guess who, yes, the collectors. Without the crazy Zeppelin collectors filling the coffers, the company would have had to soon file for the equivalent of Chapter 11.
Even though the Zeppelin carried passengers, and at exorbitant rates, it was the collectors who helped pay the bills (sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?). That’s why Dr. Eckener tried to get the countries (in the case of the 1930 Pan Am flight) to issue special stamps, to fuel the cover business even more. Just using the numbers of cards and letters sent from the Americas (North and South) and assuming a similar amount for the German covers, the flight had revenues, minimum, of way over $100,000 (1930 dollars that is!). This had become a big business. That meant that you needed agents along the stops to facilitate things.
That also meant that, by having agents who helped collectors to get their cards and letters on the flights, the aerophilatelistic revenue could be increased even more. This agent in the US was Mr. F. von Meister, and that is why these numbers are called von Meister numbers.
III: Zeppelin Agent von Meister
An official circular posted at the POs all over the US in 1930 (see reference) even mentions that if a collector wants to get flight covers with German, Spanish and/or Brazilian franking, he can send them with the payment to von Meister in N.Y.City. The circular also mentions, in bold type, “Registered mail will not be accepted for this flight”. The appearance of these “von Meister” numbers started with the 1930 Pan Am flight (see Fig.3). The cover in Fig.3 is franked with a Brazilian stamps (500 Reis) and a private Zeppelin stamp franking for the Pan Am flight and carries the number 00001! (Fig.3a is an enlargement of the number to able to see it more clearly). The practice continued until the Polar flight of 1931. Figures 4 through 11 showed a selection of the cachets for those flights, where one finds von Meister numbers on US collector’s covers. It seems that these numbers were placed upon the covers to keep track of the submissions, thus a sort of “registry” number.
The numbers for the Pan Am flight begin with 00001 and the highest I’ve seen up to now is a cover with # 30851. For the last flight - at least it seems so - that had these numbers, was the Polar flight of 1931 (Fig.11). In this case the numbers begin around 50000 and the highest I’ve seen so far is 54830. After that it seems to stop.
IV Philatelic Mail
One point in this case is now obvious, no matter how unphilatelic a cover may look or seem to be, if those five little black digits are on it, it is philatelic mail. This mail was prepared by collectors and sent to von Meister for further sent. Real business letters actually exist for the 1930 Pan Am flight (a subject for a future article), but perhaps as much as 99 and 44/100 % of the mail, or more, was philatelic, prepared by dealers or collectors.
Since most of the records from the Pan Am flight have been lost, I’m attempting to keep a record of von Meister numbers from my own covers and those that have appeared in auction catalogs, trying to reconstruct the original list. This endeavor could even prove very practical for such aspects as expertizing and discovering possible forgeries and/or manipulations. Any one who has covers and wants to help, they’re gladly invited to share “their numbers” with me.
References:
“Warum darf Graf Zeppelin keine Einschreibesendungen befördern?”; Illustriertes Briefmarkenjournal 58(13), 199 (1 July 1931 - Leipzig)
Zeppelin Post Katalog; Sieger-Verlag, 21st Ed. (Lorch/Württemberg- Germany 1995) “Graf Zeppelin” Europe-Pan America Round Flight; W.Irving Glover, Second Asst. ostmaster General, 59102° (ed. 0,000)
Figures
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figures 3 and 3a