Zeppelin Cover with Handel Stamps

This post features a 1935 zeppelin cover with Handel stamps from my collection. It is a somewhat unusual piece for me, but I really loved the illustrations on this cover and with the two Handel stamps it felt like a good addition to my collection. Regular readers of this blog know that while most of my articles features stamps, I also fairly regularly feature interesting covers from my collection.

One of the things I look for are pieces that have musical themes or connections, but that also cover the diversity of postal items. For example, I have a Civil War adversity cover made from a piece of sheet music. I also have several stampless covers, quite a few advertising covers, and other sundry pieces.

Zeppelin Covers

Zeppelin covers are a specialty within philately and feature items that were carried in these wonderful air ships for a few decades in the first half of the twentieth century. They are often very interesting, attractive pieces with beautiful postmarks, stories related to air routes, and there are pieces that survive from the many crashes that zeppelins had.

Yet, there are not many music pieces that I can add to my collections! One of the difficulties for my collecting such a piece is that there were few postage stamps featuring musical themes during the prime period of zeppelin mail service between 1919 and 1939. Foremost among these are some post horn stamps. However, there are also a handful of colonial stamps featuring musicians from this period. There are also some composer stamps from both Austria and Germany, and a few other miscellaneous pieces. Yet, that is a very slim selection of music stamps. I did find a pretty fantastic postcard featuring the German composer series from 1935. You can read about it here.

Therefore, finding this wonderful piece was a surprise and I had to have it for my collection!

The Handel Stamp

First, let’s discuss the musical connection, the two Handel stamps in the upper right corner (there is a third non-music stamp I will not discuss). The two stamps are from a trio of composer stamps that Germany issued in 1935. These were German composers with birth anniversaries that year. They include Heinrich Schütz born in 1585, with a stamp celebrating the 350th anniversary of his birth. The other stamps were for Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frederick Handel, both born in 1685. In addition to celebrating the genius of these three composers, in retrospect they may also carry a nationalistic message from the then Nazi government. You can read more about this set of stamps and my opinions about the set here.

One thing is certain though. Although Handel is one of the greatest composers in the western canon, he is usually overlooked compared to Bach. Due to the fact that they share the same birth year, Handel stamps usually only occur in sets with Bach. On the other hand, Bach is a composer that gets stamps all the time from countries across the world, even when it is not an anniversary year. There are collectors who specialize in Bach stamps and resources (print and digital), but not as much attention goes to Handel.

Illustrated Airmail Envelope

The cover is a pre-printed envelope that was readily available. The edges of the envelope have the red and blue stripes that help to readily identify the envelope as being airmail. In addition, on the left hand side is the exciting part! There, you can see a zeppelin ship in the background and a Lufthansa airplane flying towards the viewer. Behind them are clouds with sun rays emanating from behind. This cachet design is fairly common, I also have a blank, non-airmail envelope with the exact same decoration.

The Flight

The front of the cover has a red postmark for Deutsche Luftpost and stating the Europe-South America route. The address is handwritten to Hermann Collischonn in Sao Paolo Brazil. The postage stamps bear cancellations from Frankfurt and the date June 28, 1935.

On the back, the receipt of the cover in Brazil bears the date of July 3, 1935 (3 VII 1935). The additional stamp list the South American syndicate, “Condor,” of the German Lufthansa company.