Advertisement afterwards
Now and then I receive some stuff from a stamp dealer in Germany, with the question whether I am interested in it. In the last shipment I found a non-used collectors card carrying a cancellation stamp with an advertisement for the races for the "Germany Cup" on the Grenzlandring (borderland circle) circuit in Wegberg. I already had a few, thus I was not interested. But wait! Looking better I saw something strange on the stamp.
First some information about the circuit. The circuit lies as ring-road around Wegberg (a village a few kilometers from Roermond) but when you are driving there it feels like a straight road, due to the sloping road surface, with only 1 sharp left corner.
The length of 9 kilometers and 5 meters made it suitable for high speeds, and it was Georg Meier on his BMW motorcycle who first reached a shorter laptime than cars, with 216 km/hr against the cars record of 211.9 km/hr. In 1952 a serious car accident happened in the Roermonder-Kurve getting 13 people killed and 42 injured, and this intended the end of the races on this circuit.
Back to the stamps. Of course it is usual to advertise in flag cancellations before the date of the actual events.
On the first image with date stamp 23-8-49 we see an advertisment for the races to be held on September 11th 1949, here on a sent letter with insufficient postage, and an obliged added 'Notopfer' tax stamp to finance the air-lift to the surrounded West-Berlin.
On the collectors card on the other hand, the stamp carries a date stamp that is later than the actual racing date. The postage will be just enough to pay for the lowest rate to send a postcard: 4 Pfennig. With a little bit of computer techniques we manage to clear up the date and then see….
The date in the round stamp is 3-10-49, actually being 3 weeks after the races. Strange. It can be that a lazy post functionary has forsaken to remove the stamp flag on time, or somebody has made this on purpose. Thinking of the German "Gründlichkeit" I think the latter will be the case.
Hans de Kloet
Top - Back to former page - Home |
