Behrens Neuheiten-Dienst

Walter Behrens (* Dec. 12, 1892 - † Nov. 19, 1950) had between the World Wars and even after WWII, in Germany, one of the premier world-wide new issues services, centered in the city of Braunschweig (in todays Germany, in the province of Lower Saxony). Neuheiten-Dienst translated means new issues service. As an Ad out of an Austrian philatelic magazine (Die Postmarke) in 1930 demonstrates, he was also big into aerophilately and Zeppelins.

But the story of the Behrens covers on this flight is also an interesting display of then already globalization of stamp trade and that dealers on all continents were networked together. Since this site deals primarily with the Brazilian covers, we'll explore the Behrens' philatelic triangle, with legs in Brazil and the USA. We won't go into the avalanche of covers that stem from everywhere except Timbuktu, frankings from just about every country in North and South America and beyond.

For the covers that carried the normal set of stamps, initially produced for the European mail, Behrens had a partner in the Casa Philatelica J. Costa & Filhos (sons) on the the Buenos Aires Street 30, downtown Rio de Janeiro. These were sent directly back to Germany. For the covers carrying the U.S.A.-Graf Zeppelin overprint, Costa prepared covers that were sent to New York, c/o Victor Weiskopf, a US dealer on the 5^th Avenue.

The Costa “Friedrichslafen” envelopes

One can only guess for the possible reason why even though there seemed to have been preprinted postcards for the covers to Germany that the Costa envelopes, especially prepared for this flight, where used for the letter rate cards. These Costa envelopes are notoriously famous for their misspelling of Friedrichshafen, where the “h” in “hafen”, has been replaced by an “l”. Another possibility is that enough was sent but somehow unusable, due to size, damage, whatever, but enough was there so that the Brazilians could cut out the addresses and paste them onto their own envelopes, as was done for the 59B and 59C versions.

For the “USA” versions, other preprinted material seems to have been provided and again the covers aren't consistently made, the reverse of the previous case.

In the case of the postcard 59D, it seems envelopes were cutup to provide the addresses pasted on the picture postcards. And there seems to have been a confusion as these cards were being prepared. Most carry a 0$300 Reis red Mercury stamp, the correct Brazilian postage for a card to Europe, but to North America, only 0$200 was needed. Someone must have eventually noticed, a minority of these cards come with the correct postage. Thus, over franked covers are not necessarily automatically unkosher.

A further explanation for the goofed-up postage could that that the 59E and 59F covers demonstrate. The Brazilian postage, consisting of two stamps comes in two versions, depending upon the order. It could well be that considering the sheer amount covers that had to be serviced, at least two people were at it and each had a different way of pasting the stamps. In the 59A case, one of them gets confused and grabs the wrong stamps.

When the new provisionals came out, 5$000/20$000 and 10$000/20$000, everything seems to have used up and the covers were created with handwritten addresses. Above I have a picture of a typical 59G on a picture postcard, but a 59H also exists. What I haven't seen yet, is any Behrens cover using the 59I, the 5$000/1$300 on the green Condor stamp.