On the eve of the founding of the German-Austrian Postal Union, there were more than a dozen independent postal administrations in Germany alone, which had arranged their exchanges of mail and communications by means of greatly differing treaties. For items of mail in transit through several postal areas, postage was added with each new area that was entered. This collective confusion was first harmonised in 1850-51, by the creation of the DÖPV between the German states. The contractual arrangements with foreign postal administrations remained initially unchanged. The choice of different routes enabled the postal customers to choose the optimum route for them. In the course of his growing preoccupation with postal history, Dr. Karl Zangerle developed the idea to study the foreign postage rates of the southern German states with “guilder” or “kreuzer” currency. The necessary research work in all the archives of the individual postal areas leads to a systematic record of the postal routes from 1850 to 1875 with the sometimes complex charges and postage rates. Several publications are the result, also the collection of “Foreign letters of the South German states 1850-1875”. In addition to numerous frankings of mail sent abroad, the collection is also supplemented by incoming mail from abroad. For these the charges paid on each letter are explained in detail.
175 pages, of which 151 are full-colour plates showing pages from the collection, hardbound with dust jacket, bilingual in English and German