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| German Poster Stamps |
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On Saturday, November 6, 1999 we were invited to give a display on Cinderella Philately to the Farnborough Group of the Germany and Colonies Philatelic Society. Slightly desperately we gathered together a mix of material from both our collections, including an example of that fine book For God, Kaiser and Fatherland 1914 - 1918 by Alan Jackson,1993. (Desperately, as it was only three years previous that we had given a 200 page display of the same title to the same group.) For those not familiar with this excellent book, suffice to say that it consists of 408 pages and lists (and mostly illustrates) in excess of 6,000 German WWI Poster Stamps. Ian Nutley, one of the best authorities on Zeppelins and German airmails, in leafing through this mammoth book came across an illustration of the poster stamp shown here as figure 1. He said that he had known of the existence of this stamp but had not seen an example and that it was important as the 'Ll9' referred to the L19 Zeppelin and its crash in the North Sea.
When Charles returned home and checked further in another invaluable book Nichtpostalische Flugmarken Katalogisierungen - Volume 7, Zeppelin Parse-Val + Andere Lufischiffe by Kuno Sollors, 1973, he found that in fact there were three stamps, each printed in a different language - figures 1 to 3 in German, French and English respectively.
The text reads 'Remember Weddingen/Baralong/L19 and the endless list of proofs of "English Humanity" everywhere'. The stamps were printed for antiBritish propaganda purposes.
Life being always full of coincidences, two weeks later Charles, looking through a large stock of Cinderellas in the Channel Islands, found all three stamps! The fact of finding them, we felt, meant that we should investigate them further. What does 'Weddingen Baralong Ll9' mean? Attempting searches on the Internet did not get us far until we fed each name individually into the computer and then we found the following, three fascinating stories, not quite what we would expect to find being used for German propaganda!
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| Weddingen |
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| Otto Weddingen, born September 15, 1882 in Herford, and died March 18, 1915 in the Pentland Firth, North Sea. He joined the German Navy in ,1901 and became commander of a U-boat in 1911. As commander of U9 he was famous (or infamous) through sinking the British Cruisers HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue on September 22, 1914. He also destroyed the Cruiser HMS Hawke on 15 October 1914. Transferring to the U29 U-boat, he sunk four merchant ships in February 1915 and attacked the British Battle Fleet near the Orkneys in March. Returning to Germany following this attack, HMS Dreadnought detected the U-boat and rammed and sank the U29 with its whole crew on March 18, 1915.
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| Baralong |
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| At the start of the War, the only real means of sinking U-boats was by gunfire or ramming. In an attempt to use a 'secret weapon', the British invented the 'Q ship' which usually was an old looking tramp steamer up-rated with guns and torpedoes. They were designed to lure U-boats to attack them, and then to outgun the U-boat as it tried to sink them with gunfire. On 19 August, 1915, the Q ship HMS Baralong, captained by Lt Godfrey Herbert RN, sunk the U27, commanded by Kpt Lt Wegener. Herbert hated Germans, and in particular those engaged in U-boat warfare. He executed all the German survivors, including their Commanding Officer, as they were rescued. The British Admiralty attempted to keep the information a secret, but the news spread to Germany. Ironically, the incident was never prosecuted as a war crime. |
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| L19 |
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On January 31, 1916, nine Zeppelins left Friedrichshaven and Lowenthal with the mission to over fly England and attack Liverpool; the most extensive raid to be launched by Germany. Due to navigational problems both the L21, captained by KptLt Max Dietrich, and the Ll9, captained by Kpt Lt Loewe, did not find Liverpool, but instead bombed by accident Wednesbury, near West Bromwich, 75 miles south east of Liverpool.
After the bombing attack, Loewe headed towards the East Coast and Germany. The engines continued to cause problems and finally the Ll9 crashed in the North Sea. The wreck was spotted by a British trawler whose captain, after establishing how many Germans were in the wreckage, refused to have them on board fearing that they would overpower his small crew. The trawler sailed for port and to let the Royal Navy know about the crashed zeppelin, but before a rescue could be made, the zeppelin had sunk and all the crew had died.
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| At the start of the War, the only real means of sinking U-boats was by gunfire or ramming. In an attempt to use a 'secret weapon', the British invented the 'Q ship' which usually was an old looking tramp steamer up-rated with guns and torpedoes. They were designed to lure U-boats to attack them, and then to outgun the U-boat as it tried to sink them with gunfire. On 19 August, 1915, the Q ship HMS Baralong, captained by Lt Godfrey Herbert RN, sunk the U27, commanded by Kpt Lt Wegener. Herbert hated Germans, and in particular those engaged in U-boat warfare. He executed all the German survivors, including their Commanding Officer, as they were rescued. The British Admiralty attempted to keep the information a secret, but the news spread to Germany. Ironically, the incident was never prosecuted as a war crime. |
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| Postscript |
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| Loewe and his crew lived long enough to seal messages into bottles, and some of these were
found some months later. Loewe's message read:
'With 15 men on the top platform and backbone girder of the Ll 9, floating without gondolas in approximately 3 degrees East longitude, I am attempting to send a last report. Engine trouble three times repeated, a light head wind on the return journey delayed our return and, in the mist, carried us over Holland where I was received with heavy rifle fire.
The ship became heavy and simultaneously three engines failed. February 2, towards 1 pm, will apparently be our last hour.'
Whilst appreciating the stamps, as prime examples of lack of 'English Humanity', Germany must have been getting desperate! Two of the events were simply 'fortunes of war'. However, the three poster stamps are of importance, and we are pleased to have been able to shed some light on their history. |
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| The Legacy of L21 |
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| The L19 was a new zeppelin that had been launched in November 1915. It had engine trouble throughout its flight and arrived over Wednesbury about half an hour after L21. They dropped their bombs but caused only minor damage and no casualties; L21 had killed at least 22 people including the Mayoress of Walsall. |
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