Lot 3338
Germany 1937 (May 6) Hindenburg disaster cover, charred fragment from a registered cover originating in Munich to an unknown addressee, sealed in a cellophane pouch with a U.S. Post Office seal affixed on the end, an Apr. 29 Munich c.d.s. cancelled a stamp which has subsequently fallen off, Munich Telegraph Office registry label No. 570 at left and partial red flight cachet. The cover is addressed to a D. Grenko but the rest of the address has been burned away. In addition, the address of the sender, "Waldeckstrasse 50, München 9, Deutschland" is visible on the reverse. Due to the lack of a readable address the cover was returned to Frankfurt. An extremely rare and spectacular cover of this dramatic crash.
Estimate 10,000 - 15,000
Expertization: 1937 Alexander Berezowski Certificate.
Arthur Falk illustrates in his "Hindenburg Crash Mail - The Search Goes On", on page 54, a cover from the same correspondence as the cover offered here. Similarities in the handwriting, in the style of the cover, the imperforate airmail label, the crayon underlined routing instruction and the Münich dispatch postmark are obvious. The page 54 item also bears a Münich Telegraph Office registration label with the number 568 while the item offered here bears registration label number 570 from the same office.
The salvaged mail from the Hindenburg crash was recorded and forwarded by the New York Post Office via the destination's Post Office to the final addressee. Those covers are listed in the Falk book on pages 45 - 51. In addition, there were eight covers salvaged from the crash site which could not be forwarded due to unreadable addresses. These eight covers were sent to the Frankfurt Central Post Office on May 19, 1937 to be returned to the sender. These eight covers do not appear in any of the lists published by Falk. However, the letter of transmittal that accompanied the eight covers from New York to Frankfurt is reproduced in on page 35. The second, third and fourth paragraphs of this letter refer to the a Josef Niedermann correspondence and to a cover addressed to D. Grenko bearing the the return address of Waldeckstrasse 50, München 9, Deutschland. Hence, the cover offered here is that identified in the third paragraph of the letter (the second Niedermann position) and is a new find!
|
| |
| Realized $7,750 |
