Deutscher Altbriefsammler Verein e.V.

Project Postal Treaties

Sources for border crossing mail up to World Postal Union - UP

This project will try to generate a comprehensive collection of postal treaties and regulations covering the exchange of mails between different countries postal administrations in the time before UPU.

This project has no financial interest and lives of your enthusiasm. Therefore, please help and contribute with your own special knowledge.

2784 database entries (postal treaties, etc.)
2906 linked files (PDF, JPG, et al.)
(about 18.000 Pages)

Acquisition of postal history sources

Serious postal historians and collectors frequently require for their research information from primary sources like postal treaties, regulations or tariffs. To find and/or copy these sources can be difficult and costly involving many visits to archives or libraries. If lucky one knows someone who has the wanted document and is prepared to let one copy it. But if not the efforts needed can become very time consuming and expensive. Moreover the existence or location of a missing source may not always be known to the aspiring researcher and frustration will tempt him or her to abandon the work.

Sources about border crossing mail

The study of sources referring to the exchange of mails between different postal administrations, resp.the conditions of their transit across relevant borders generates particular difficulties. One does not only need the relevant treaties but also the administrative instructions for their execution and the tariffs concerned. The problems studying the sources from Sources about border crossing mail

Project Postal Treaties

The problem can only be resolved permanently by bringing together all source material presently in the hands of individual postal historians / collectors in one site and making it available to all interested parties. The worldwide exchange of information with the involvement of many individuals, the focussed search for sources and the constant addition of further source material will be called for. This requires the flexibility of the electronic medium. Only the use of the internet will make this project feasible. The resulting collection of data files will be available for downloading free of charge - which this writer sees as his kind of “a heaven for postal historians”!

Obviously all of this requires a considerable and continued effort by many enthusiastic contributors - but the example of the online encyclopedia Wikipeda shows what can be possible within the space of a few years. Is there any reason why we should not be able to achieve something similar in the field of postal history? Themselves included! All it takes is that many are ready and willing to contribute with their sources for the betterment of all -

The DASV as Guarantor of the Project

The support by DASV assures that the project shall not become the object of the pursuit of some group’s special interests. It follows that the collected knowledge shall not become dependent on particular individuals and will assure its continuity over time. Most importantly:

The access to the bank of data files and the downloading of sources from it will be free of any charge.
(except those which users may have to pay to their own internet provider)

Therefore I have placed my own data bank of postal history sources into this project and and shall actively engage with this project. Many hundreds of postal treaties are already available for download. Further sources will follow.

Focus of the project

The necessary time frame for the project will be the period up to 1875. However, anybody who would like to actively work for and contribute to an extension of the project's time frame or types of sources is very welcome and should approach us about this.

Aim 1:To assemble in our data bank all postal treaties and sources related to border crossing exchanges of mail. A search here will establish what sources are actually to be found.
Aim 2: To provide copies of these sources in the form of downloadable data files
Aim 3: (Planned) Analysis of letters, explanations of routes, charges and hand stamps relevant to the treaties
Timeframe: From the beginnings of organised postal exchanges until Universal Postal Union (UPU)

The use of transliterations (modern transfer from originals) will help those who have difficulty in deciphering old handwritten documents or respectively where originals are missing. Therefore these will be included as well.

Calling for your Help

We need all the help you can give us. Without your - and everybody’s - assistance this project will become a One Man Show: All will profit, but nobody will provide. In that case this project will fail. So - we are looking forward to your queries and offers!

Clicking on the subheading “File Input” will enable you to submit data for new sources. Scans of sources of limited size can be sent per e-mail. In all other cases contact us directly.

Contact

I shall be happy to respond to questions, suggestions and improvements from within Germany if you will send me your landline connection.

Contact: buschhaus@postvertraege.de
Rudolf Buschhaus, Friedrich Alfred Str. 69, 47226 Duisburg

Calling on Societies and Working Groups both here and abroad

This Project Postal Treaties will only become alive if you inform your members of it and actively support us. We would like to engage with you in a spirit of constructive co-operation. We hope to join forces with you in bringing together the known facts of postal traffic across borders and engage with your specialists in a conduit of knowledge which will benefit them and everybody else. We are happy to talk to you and answer your questions at all times.

Rudolf Buschhaus

Technical Management

We would like to thank Rudolf Buschhaus who is supporting this project with his enormous collection of postal treaties, and we would like to thank also all those who support us already by sending us their sources in turn.

The technical management of the project is my responsibility. lenke@dan-online.de

Michael Lenke