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The House of
Sieger
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© Dr. Artur Knoth |
Brazilian Philately: The Pan Am Zeppelin Flight of 1930 |
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As both major dealers and at the same time the two recognized experts on Zeppelin covers, the names of both Sieger and Berezowski are intimately connected with the philatelic history of the Zeppelin flights. Even today, the current Sieger is involved in the new Zeppelin NT flights.
The amount of covers on the 1930 Pan Am Zeppelin flight that carry the address of this firm are enormous. The capital involved, considering the times, was truly mind boggling and gives an indication of the drawing power of the Zeppelin in those hard times.
This sub chapter will try to provide an overview of the types of Sieger covers, with a Brazilian franking, that one encounters in the philately of this flight. The covers are easily grouped into two main categories.
The Rio de Janeiro covers, using preprinted envelopes and cards. A main hallmark of these covers being their constant similarity
The Bahia covers, created by hand (i. e. typed), and therefore presenting a vast amount of variety.
In any case, the study of these covers will, as also with other dealers on this flight, that even pure, philatelic, dealer covers can present an interesting and not always expected variation that jumps out of their formal uniformity.
I. Rio de Janeiro Covers
The Rio de Janeiro Sieger covers are rather straight forward. The usual preprinted card/envelope was used and franked. Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of this subset of Sieger covers is that there are no 59C(20$000), 59G(5$000/20$000) nor any 59H(10$000/20$000) to be found until now. These seem to have been created exclusively (using the Sieger address) in Bahia (s. Sieger-Bahia).
59A - 5$000
Figure 1 demonstrates a typical 59A cover out of the house of Sieger.
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This batch of the covers were fairly constant in appearance, leading to the conclusion that the 59A's were made solely by one person. All have the typical “Condor” green and yellow sticker as well as the familiar rhombus cachet. In addition, all covers found so far were canceled in Rio with the Rdj4-device (Fig.2) and one strike only. The typical “Recife” large circular cachet always seems to have a shadow impression (probably due to a bounce when applied), which Fig.3 demonstrates enlarged. All covers are found equally back stamped upon arrival with the small circular Friedrichshafen device (6-6-30/19-20 – Fig.4). The 300 Reis Brazilian stamp is usually fairly well centered and pasted to the left of the 5$000 Zeppelin stamp with a small gap.
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59B - 10$000
The situation here is quite similar as Fig.5 demonstrates, except that now, instead of a card, a preprinted envelope was used.
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The main features of these covers is similar to the 59A's. The same Rdj4 canceling device was used and only a single strike was placed on the cover. But whereas in the 59A case, the Brazilian stamp is to the left of the Zeppelin stamp, in the 59B case the stamps are reversed. Another indication that several people were at work to prepare all the covers, each person applying the stamps (and perhaps doing the canceling if not the same individual), had his/her characteristic way of doing things. A further aspect, that reinforces this conclusion is that none of the 59B covers seen so far has a Recife “shadow” strike as is consistently seen in the case of the 59A cards. Yet about half of the covers I've seen have the Recife Cachet cancel tipped at a 45° angle, and the other half at 135° relative to vertical, further indicating at least this was completed by two separate individuals or runs. The only other major feature that seems to consistently run through all the covers seen so far is a small feature of the 500 Reis ultramarine Mercury stamps used as the Brazilian postage on these covers. As Fig.6 tries to demonstrate, the centering of these stamps was quite bad.
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Figure 6: The 500 Reis stamp is always at the left edge and evenly being touched by the perforation holes, as the case at the left demon-strates. The vertical centering varies between the bottom and the top. Constant is a large wide margin at the right hand side of the stamp. |
59C – 20$000
There seem to be no examples of Sieger covers on the same preprinted envelopes as used for the 59B's, nor any other type of stationary out of Rio de Janeiro. An advertisement (Fig.7) soon after the flight (that one finds in many of the German language philatelic publications of the period) displays a 59B cover. A Later advertisement (Fig.8) displays as an example, a preprinted 59B cover of the sort produced for the dealer Heck. My statistics show that there are quite a lot of “Heck” covers on this flight and the Heck 59C's are especially copious. Such cooperation is not really all that surprising considering the cost of each individual cover, the vast capital required and possible losses due to damage. Similarly, the 59D to 59F covers offered were also probably those of von Meister that used the same preprinted format for his covers.
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59G – 5$000/20$000 and 59H – 10$000/20$000
Here the story repeats itself with respect to 59C. There are no Rio de Janeiro covers that I have seen up to now. The Sieger covers of this type are all out of the “Bahia” factory. Whether, or what extent, the Bahia covers were used for subscribers and mixed with Rio covers is unknown. Noteworthy in the case of these covers, whether they be from Rio or Bahia, is that they were not initially in the Sieger offerings. Compare the two advertisements in Figs. 7 and 8. Only beginning with the August advertisement do the 59G and H covers show up in the lists.
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59I – 5$000/1$300
For the case 59I, there seem to no Sieger covers, and the covers of this stamp were not offered for sale by Sieger. As Figure 9 demonstrates, the mint stamp was offered but not on cover. Note also, again not a Sieger preprinted 59B cover is displayed, but the Heck cover of the previous month is repeated.
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II. Bahia
The covers out of Bahia create a stark contrast to the basic uniformity of the Rio de Janeiro case. They were all typed, with indications that several people were at work doing the vast amount of typing necessary to create the numbers of covers one sees on the market. In this section we will try to delineate the main variations that one typically encounters. The second major aspect, that contrasts with the Rio de Janeiro case, is that not only were there 59A's and 59B's, but also there are Bahia covers of 59C, 59G and 59H.
59A – 5$000
Right off the bat, one can sort all the 59A's out of Bahia into two major categories by observing the typed message in the upper left hand cover of these cards:
One group has what seems to be a three line message all in violet just as the rest of the address on the front. We will denote this variety as 59A(Bahia)3v. Figure 10 demonstrates this type.
The other group, has two lines that are red, with the third line of the above case definitely further apart in violet. We denote this as 59A(Bahia)2r. This case is shown in Figure 11.
59A(Bahia)3v
The main variety among these covers, seems to be the fact that after they had been typed and stamped, they were subsequently canceled with the Bahia device by two different persons. About half these covers carry a single strike of the cancel whereas the other half was struck twice, with an overlap. Figure 12a and b displays the basic difference.
Other than that, both canceled version show a high degree of uniformity as regards to further philatelic markings.
They all carry a strike of the rhombic cachet
All carry the characteristic Recife cachet (Fig. 3) with varying degrees of the shadowing effect seen in the Rio de Janeiro case too.
All have a copy of the Friedrichshafen arrival cancel (Fig. 4) on the front and upside-down in orientation.
All these covers seem to have been typed by the same person and typewriter. As a confirmation that they were actually always typed by hand, one cover has been found with an interesting typographical error (Fig. 13).
“Correo Aereo” is used, whereas in Portuguese correio aereo is correct.
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59A(Bahia)2r
The most obvious aspect of these covers is that the airmail routing instruction in the upper left hand corner is in red (Fig. 11). Probably this due to that fact that another typist with a different machine and a two tone ribbon were at work here. One also sees here that this typist started the address (i. e. Illmo. Snr.) much lower than in the “3v” case, thus highlighting the fact that really this piece of the typed message doesn't really belong to the routing message as it seems in the “3v” case. Further attributes of this subgroup are as follows:
All covers carry two cancellation strikes, whereas some as in Fig. S1 seem to have been canceled upside-down, most have the usual orientation.
A meaningful fraction of these covers come with the 5$000 applied upside-down on the cover (s. Fig. 11).
Besides the red color in part of the address, another feature contrasts with that of the “3v” variety. The “3v” covers (Fig. 14a) have the “Lorch” part of the address completely capitalized and a closed underlining. The “2r” have it written in the same style as the rest of the address. The underlining is a line of dashes (Fig. 14b).
All covers have the giant Recife cachet on the back of the card.
About half of the covers seen have a Friedrichshafen arrival cancel of the type seen in Fig. S4 on the front of the card.
The other half has instead the “*b” version of the Friedrichshafen arrival cancel as shown in Fig. 15, of which most have the smaller Friedrichshafen cancel on the back. One cover seen has only the “*b” on the front without its smaller brother on the back.
Typical rhombus cachet on all covers
Whereas the “3v” seems to have a half Spanish version of “correio aereo” (correo aereo), the “2r” seems to be a faulty Portuguese version (correio aero).
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59B – 10$000
As it seems to be always the case, here too, two major categories are present. Again it is the routing message in the upper left hand corner being either in violet or red is the determining factor. But whereas, in other cases, the cancels formed varieties; here all covers seen so far have two strikes of the Bahia, but in, at times, wildly differing orientations.
59B(Bahia)2v
The main varieties can be seen considering the Figures 16 and 17. The main difference comes from the degree of capitalization used in the address proper as well as the routing message in the upper left hand corners. Again a confirmation that several people were at work when it came to addressing what must have been a myriad of covers sent on this flight.
Another major variation is exhibited in the application of the cancels. Both types have two strikes. Yet from these two examples one sees that the cancels can vary from a basically straight up orientation to an almost upside down condition. Could indicate that the canceling was done not straight through, but interrupted and taken up again with the covers orientation changed relative to the employee.
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Whereas the rhombus cachet is on the front, the Recife cachet as well as the Friedrichshafen roller arrival cancel (called type c) by the author is found on the back of the covers.
59B(Bahia)2r
The other variety, with a red routing notice (Fig. 19) seems (from the 3 covers we have) to have been typed by the same person and show very minimal differences. The only “major” variety is that two covers were canceled in Friedrichshafen using the roller (Fig. 18) and one was found with the circular *b (Fig. 15). The Bahia cancels all are skewed about 45° to the left as shown in the Figure 19.
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59C – 20$000
Whereas the Rio de Janeiro group of Sieger covers didn't have a “59C”, the Bahia set seems to have everything except, perhaps, a 59I. Thus, the Bahia covers allow one to have a complete set of three covers for the unoverprinted stamps. Yet, considering the frequencies with which certain covers appear at auctions, there seems to be a lot less of this version of the 59C than the As and Bs.
As is the case with its cousins, two basic types are discern able here too, depending on whether the routing instructions in the upper left hand corner are in red or violet.
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59C(Bahia)-2v
As can be seen in Fig. 20, the double strike cancellation so typical for this whole Bahia ensemble. The Recife cachet is on the back and the Friedrichshafen arrival back stamp is the type of Fig. 15 (*b).
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59C(Bahia)-2r
Accordingly, the cover, as shown in Fig. 20, also has the double strike cancellation but almost upside down, as is the case for the B in Fig. 17. No doubt the same “cancellor” was at work in both cases. Again, the Recife cachet is on the back and the Friedrichshafen arrival back stamp is the roller version of Fig. 18 (circle-lines).
59G – 5$000/20$000
Due to the lack of much reference material for both the G and H versions, and that the files of auctions usually have the copies in black-and-white, no definitive conclusions can be made here. Especially whether besides the *-2r version a *-2v doesn't also exist.
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The files show one example that seems to be the same sort as in Fig. 22. But the other has differences (small p in pelo) and the address written as to prove a further variety does exist. All seem to have the double cancellation, either to the left or once almost upside down. Also the arrival cancels are on the front, either circle-*b or the small circle machine cancellation. The Recife cachet appears once on front (other two on the back).
59H – 10$000/20$000
Again, here the material sample is extremely small, one form my collection and two BW lots from auctions. Figure 23 demonstrates the collection copy
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The sparse picture material seems to confirm, at least for the status of this moment, that there is only one type. Double cancellation strikes, and only the rhombus cachet on the front. Our copy has the Recife cachet as well as a Friedrichshafen machine (small circle) cancel on the back.
