Written on December 19 1916, it was censored. The censor mark is in red Freigegeben Ruhleben, with the letters T. a.' in the centre. 'F. a.' stands for Frist abgelaufen, translated as 'delay expired'. The meaning indicates that the delay built in would negate any 'secret' message conveyed. However, there is an arrival postmark of London dated January 4, 1917, and therefore the delay was minimal.
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| Ruhleben Stamp |
This particular card was given to us by David Springbett, the owner of, arguably, the finest collection of Ruhleben material extant; he gained a Vermeil medal at the recent IBRA '99 International Exhibition at Nuremberg for an exhibit of this material. The copying was discovered when David gave a display to the Cinderella Stamp Club in the 1996 Season. Charles Kiddle had just completed the draft of his major work Images of the Great War Volume IV, an illustrated catalogue of Delandre's Vignettes other than Military and Red Cross 1914-1917. In it he illustrated the stamp shown, catalogue No 495.1. The stamp can be found either in green (as illustrated) or in orange, perforated usually 10.5 x imperforate; we also have a black proof size 82mm by 51 mm.
To our astonishment, amongst David's superb display there shown was a postcard, printed in Germany, of a Delandre vignette, produced in France! So just how did this happen?
Gaston Fontanille, the French printer known as Delandre, started his poster stamp printing career by plagiarising Italian Regimental Vignettes that he sold during 1914. The reason he copied them was that supplies from Italy were insufficient to meet his market requirements and thus he copied the vignettes. From this small beginning, he first produced a whole series of French military poster stamps, and then progressively, Allied Forces (plus others such as Montserrat!) and Red Cross vignettes. Each of these productions was made to meet the demands of a major market he had developed, that of patriotic labels. Unfortunately, he attempted to pass off the poster stamps as official issues. In other words, the Red Cross vignettes, for example, often had a value indicated and the assumption by the buyer was that the purchase price was handed on to support the Red Cross. This was not the case and in April 1917 Delandre was arrested for defrauding the French Red Cross. Convicted and imprisoned, he died, probably from influenza, some time in 1923.
Delandre created over 4,000 different WWI vignette designs, many of them illustrated by some of the best French artists of the day. It is therefore not surprising that in certain cases, and not too many, he copied others' ideas. The most famous ones he copied were those produced by David Allen & Sons Ltd (England) and designed by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee. The artwork for these (eg, Lord Kitchener Says Enlist Today) was taken from The Process Year Book Volume 21: The Penrose Album published by Percy Lund Humphries. However, the Ruhleben poster stamp can be considered as little short of astonishing. |
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