Two or three questions reach this site every month, describing (and rarely illustrating) a mysterious stamp. The enquirer believes it is an Austrian postage stamp, but cannot find it in any stamp catalogue. Usually it is loose; it may have an almost-readable cancellation or perhaps a sqiggle in ink; occasionally it is stuck on a piece of paper. "It's old therefore it must be valuable." What is it?
The Austrian Post Office likes flowers-on-stamps, and for example the 2007 series of definitives featured flowers. However not all flowers are equal! As well as Personal Stamps that look much the same as these definitives, there are Subscriber Bonus Stamps of a similar design. You might see them on mail from a philatelist (standing-order subscribers receive some each year) but very few catalogues list them.
Here is a definitive stamp with a "marginal tab"; these tabs have no franking value, and occur with a variety of decorative, advertising, or political slogans. Rarely (and wrongly) these tabs are used for franking mail instead of a stamp.
These are cut-outs from parcel cards; the designs shown are those for 1888, 1893, 1899 and 1905. It's a tax, charged flat-rate on the paperwork involved in transferring goods, not on the value of the goods.
These are genuine Austrian postage stamps (oh yes they are!) just to show that life can be difficult. The lederhosen are leather; the round one is printed on plastic; the long-nosed figure is a character from a childrens TV show. On the right is a Personal Stamp. These are official productions of the Austrian Post, fully valid for postage - but usually designed by, commissioned by, paid for by, and delivered to any firm or private individual that cares to participate. More information on Personal Stamps is here.
You may encounter the Registration label; these began in the traditional format of a small adhesive yellow label with the letter R, the name of the despatch office, and a serial number. More recently they take the form of a computer-produced label with a serial number such as "RO 75452432 8 AT" and a bar code; similar labels beginning RR or CC are used for other postal purposes. So why, you may ask, do you also find an added small yellow label containing only R and a row of vertical lines? Allegedly, because the Post Office machinery could not recognise the Post Office computer-produced labels!
The two stamps on the right are 2020 definitives. The PRIORITY label is an Austrian answer to a self-inflicted problem: under the 2020 rules, it was not possible to send priority mail abroad if it was franked with stamps. After uproar from the Tourist Board as well as philatelists, this label was introduced. You now have to frank your missive with adhesives for the appropriate rate, then take it to a state Post Office and hand it in, stating clearly that you require priority service. The counter clerk then affixes this PRIORITY label, and the item is handled accordingly.
This is a Blackprint. Since 1946 the Austrian Post has produced a so-called blackprint version of most issues (it’s actually printed in ‘50 shades of grey’). Originally intended for the editors of philatelic journals, they were soon in demand by collectors – and naturally were placed on sale. Since 2000, "Buntdruck" have also been produced, stamps of the identical design to a normal issue but in different colours. Neither have any franking value, but they can sometimes be found illicitly used by enterprising philatelists.
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These are not Cinderellas, but postage stamps from automatic slot machines! Left is the Schilling-currency version; it wasn’t popular. (They are catalogued; this was one of the second issue of 11 May 1998 and is number 32 in ANK.) Right is the Euro version; the background design is location- or event-specific and they are much sought after at exhibitions. They are valid for franking, alone or with other stamps. |  |
This is a Postal Service Imprint, most likely to be found on the envelope provided to return an order to the Philatelic Bureau. However the preprinted address can be covered by a label and a different address printed - and usually these are delivered unscathed!
Quite often an unknown stamp is one of these, which are REVENUE stamps, used for the payment of a tax. The tax could be on mortgages, house deeds, residence permits, almanachs, documents submitted as evidence in a law court, driving licences ... the ingenuity of the Habsburgs in finding things to tax was unexcelled. The study of revenue adhesives is a subject at least as vast as postal adhesives; an extremely brief listing of the more common Austrian revenue adhesives is here.
The payment of tax was alternatively shown by an imprinted device. These come in a large number of designs and values, but they are obviously not an adhesive postage stamp! An example from a document of 1841 is shown. A document submitted to court in evidence was liable to a fee, normally paid with an adhesive revenue stamp; here a 15kr revenue adhesive stamp, 1870 issue.
Other revenue stamps exist; here are sugar tax; a 5kr and a 1fl share transfer tax; Vienna local tax; and a stamp for paying ones car licence in monthly instalments.
This is an example of an Austrian Newspaper Tax Adhesive Stamp; the link takes you to a brief outline followed by images of a 64-double-sheet display. A clue is that such stamps normally have "STEMPEL" or similar in the inscription. They are a revenue tax, but the Post Office handled their sale and application.
This is a 25 groschen revenue adhesive stamp, 1925 issue, used to pay the tax on a Heimatschein - that is, proof that you have certain rights (including residence) in a specified location. This is for St. Marienkirchen in Upper Austria and was issued to Johann Schienenlauer on 1 September 1935.
Someone’s bound to ask! The girl with the two Ugly Sisters is Aschenbrödel or Aschenputtel.
What ARE "Cinderella Stamps"? [The term "poster stamps" refers more or less to the same thing.] Various definitions have been used; the simplest is probably "things stuck on an item of mail which aren’t official postage stamps". You won’t find them in a normal catalogue – even the ANK Special has only a few. The list can include local postage stamps; railway post stamps; telegraph stamps; phantom & bogus issues; wax or paper seals; registration labels; charity labels; commercial savings stamps (eg "Green Shield Stamps") and political & wartime propaganda. There are probably hundreds of thousands of such items! Note that the Personal Stamps issued by Austria are not Cinderellas, nor are revenues. A lengthy (404 pages) treatise on WWI cinderellas is "For God, Kaiser and Fatherland, 1914-1918" [ISBN 0-473-02251-6] by Alan Jackson published in 1993. In this area, what you choose to collect is very much up to you. [Note: the illustrations are not all to the same scale.]
This is a piece of a modern cover, sent from Vienna to GB. The left-hand label is gold-coloured (other years' versions are in other colours and designs); it instructs the postal service to send the item to the Christkindl Post Office for the special Christmas cancel and it costs the same as a standard inland letter. Here, the label has been correctly cancelled by the office of posting and the postage stamp was cancelled at Christkindl; sometimes they get it wrong. The PRIORITY label refers to the speed with which the postal service handle the item; PRIORITY usually costs more and is supposedly faster.
From an earlier time: political labels were printed in great quantities by German-speakers in areas they wanted to rule – especially in today’s Czech Republic & Slovakia. This is a Deutscher Schulverein label used at Freiwaldau in Silesia; the ‘2’ is the donation made to promote the cause of German culture and language tuition in schools.
Below are two pieces of postcards, showing German labels used in Silesia next to the postage stamps on postcards. In theory that made the item into a letter, which would then be underfranked and charged postage due; in practice the rule was ignored if the label was in German.
Here are some more examples of "things you might find on an envelope or postcard".
The mark on the left shows that the item is part of a bulk mailing paid for in cash. In the centre are two typical imprints from official Postal Stationery; quite often the designs are not available as adhesive stamps. On the right is what looks like a cancelled stamp; however it is a picture of a hotel alongside a different paid-in-cash mark used for their winter brochure.
Almost always, markings in blue crayon are instructional, applied by the office of posting. Blue L-marks round a stamp mean it is has been deemed invalid. A blue or black capital T, usually large, and often followed by a fraction means that postage due has been levied: see elsewhere. A blue number (eg 101) at the top left of a letter posted to a Vienna address probably means it went by pneumatic post: again, see elsewhere.
This label was often applied by philatelists in the pious hope that the Post Office would then cancel the stamps nicely. Sometimes they cancel the label nicely...
Two bogus stamps produced by the Vienna dealer Friedl to mark the discovery of Franz Josef Land in 1873.
Some of the stamps produced in Leitmeritz in 1860 to pay for local delivery
This is a fund-raising stamp for a chest-diseases hospital at Alland, near Mayerling, which opened in 1896.
Maria Josepha (1867-1944) was the daughter of King Georg I of Sachsen; in 1886 she married Erzherzog Otto Franz Joseph, a son of the Kaiser's brother Erzherzog Karl Ludwig. In 1887 her first son was born: Karl, the later Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Her husband died from syphilis in 1906. During WWI she turned her palatial residence, the Palais Augarten, into a nursing home for wounded soldiers. Barred from post-war Austria under the Habsburg Law, she lived in Bavaria for the rest of her life, although she was buried in the Kaisergruft in Vienna.
Red Cross charity stamps from 1914.
The dates 1862-1924 make it the 62nd anniversary, odd even by Austrian standards ... the German version of Wikipedia probvided the answer! The dates are the beginning and the completion of the New Cathedral in Linz, which is the capital of Upper Austria. So these are charity labels, sold to raise funds. During the strike of Austrian rail workers on November 10/11 1924, a private emergency postal route from Linz to Vienna was established. To cover the cost, the fund-raising stamps received a two-line overprint "Notpost / Linz-Wien".
The Liebe Augustin stamp is a rejected design submission by Prof Margreiter for a new series of definitives.
The leftmost label above is propaganda in favour of the Austrian People’s Party candidate in the 1960 Presidential Election. In the middle is a pair of "cut-outs", ie pieces cut from postal stationery so as to include the imprint and then used to frank an item – this was sometimes permitted, sometimes tolerated, and sometimes forbidden. On the right are a pro-German-language (and culture) item and a WWI patriotic label.
Seal of the Vienna military command; Seal of the Finance ministry; Advert for the 1913 Graz dog show; WWI War Ministry charity seal
In the 1920-38 period, several hotels and guest houses in remote regions organised their own postal service, an employee taking guests' mail to the nearest post office. This they charged for, and some printed and sold "adhesive labels indicating the payment for this service". This produced conflict with the postal authorities, who while refusing to collect mail from the hotels even if paid, also refused to allow anyone else to! One of the better-known examples is Katschberghöhe, on top of a mountain in Carinthia.
Austria occasionally produces block issues, having both postage stamps and non-postal labels. A good example is the 1991 "Mozart 200th death anniversary", with a central label flanked by stamps. As before, the label is not postally valid but can be found used. It is less uncommon on FDCs, where one can apply the left stamp alone, or the right stamp alone, or the left stamp plus the label, or… A greater source of such peculiar frankings comes from the 1969 3x3 block "100 years of the Vienna Opera House", which has a central label surrounded by 8 stamps; the catalogues list 16 possible arrangements that include the label!
This card bears a "Tarp Label", produced for a free postal service for Austrian refugees in the Danish Red Cross camp at Tarp in the spring of 1946.