HEINRICH VON STEPHAN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10267, 26 November 1924, Page 3

HEINRICH VON STEPHAN

A GREAT POSTAL ADMINISTRATOR

In dew of the approaching jubilee of the Universal Postal Union, Germany has seized the occasion to introduce the portrait of Dr. Heinrich von Stephan on some new stamps, thus reminding the world of the claim made tor that celebrated Postmaster-General that he was the originator of the Universal Postal Union, writes Fred. J. Melville in the " Daily Telegraph." The claim does not appear to have been put forward by von Stephen himself; at the Vienna Congress, in speaking of the origin of the union, he said: ' Ideas are not originated by an individual; they float in the atmosphere for a whole epoch, at first vaguely, then 111 a more distinct form, until they condense and precipitate themselves in taking body and life." The idea of a universal postal arrangement was " in the air long before the union came into being, and the main propositions were outlined in a letter from the United States Post Office, dated August 14, 1862, and dealt with in part by the International Commission which met in Pans 111 1863. Nevertheless, the world owes much to Dr von Stephan as the prime mover in the actual establishment of the union, and in other notable achievements m postal progress/ His proposals, first set forth in a, " memorial" handed to Bismarck in 1868, were held up the Franco-German War, and when they took definite shape in the first Postal Union Congress at Berne in 1874, France and Russia were unable tor political reasons, to take part. The old State House in Berne now bears the inscription above the door: " The Universal Postal Union was founded herein, October" 9, 1874." France and 1 Russia joined the union, then styled I "General Postal Union," in 1875 In 1865 von Stephan proposed a postal development at an Austro-Ger-man Postal Conference at Carlsruhe which has been of world-wide benefit; it was the convenience of the It has not, I think, been contested that he was the original proposer of this postal commodity, of which Mr Gladstone made good use. and in praise of which the G.O.M. threatened to write an epic poem. Von Steohan's postcard proposal was not at first adopted by his own country; it fell to Austria to introduce postcards in 1869, and Great Britain (during Mr Gladstone's Ministry) and Germany followed in 1870. Von Stephan, who was born in 1831, started as a learner in the post offino in his native town of Stolph in 1848, and rose with astonishing rapiditv to the highest office in the Prussian Postal Administration, and war, the first Post-master-General of the German Emoire. He died in 1897. Philatelists are indebted to the great postal administrator on many grounds, notably for / .-■• authoritative history of the Prussian Post Office, published in 1859. and still consulted bv philatelic students as the standard work on the subject. Von Stephan, too. was the founder and inspirer of the wonderful Berlin Postal Museum the basis of which was formed in part from his own private collection of postal records and curios. But tor the defeat of Germany in the Great War, the museum collection would have been the greatest in the world, for the late Philipp von Ferrary, who died in 1917, bequeathed his vast collection to the Berlin Postal Museum..to which he had contributed many valuable items during his lifetime. The collection, however, was in Paris, and was sequestrated, and is being dispersed at auction in Paris, the large amounts realised going towards the payments due from' Gernianv for reparations.