CANCELLATIONS
German, Austrian and Russian stamps were used in Poland before 1918.
Stamps of these countries with cancellations of Polish cities can be an
interesting addition to a Polish collection. German and Polish names
for cities are different. With Austrian stamps, the cancellations
are generally (but not always) in both German and Polish. The reverse
is true for cancellations on German stamps, which tend to have German city
names only. Russian stamps are usually cancelled with the city name
in Russian (Cyrillic alphabet) only, but sometimes Polish was included.
ATS Notes maintains an excellent
cross reference
of Polish/German city names.
They also carry an extensive selection of paper money from Poland and
related areas.
GERMANY AND RUSSIA
WRESCHEN (December 30, 1870), is now WRZESNIA Poland.
This stamp, issued by the North German Confederation Postal Authority
pre-dates the establishment of the Deutsches Reich in 1871. Until
1871, individual German states issued their own stamps.
POSEN (POZNAN), 1913 on a pair of 10 pfenig. Note German only
cancellation.
Left: ELBING (ELBLAG), also in German only on 20 pfenig.
Right: BAPWABA (WARSAW) in Russian only, on 7 kopeck, 1914.
AUSTRIA
Austrian Poland was known as Galicia.
JAROSLAU (JAROSLAW) April 24, 1892.
Note that both German and Polish appear on the cancellation.
The stamp on the right is cancelled LEMBERG (LWOW) July 21, 1897.
LWOW can not be seen on this example, but Polish names
appeared at the bottom of the cancellations. The other 2 stamps
shown were cancelled in Austria.
Lemberg, in Galicia is known as Lwow in Polish. It was a Polish
city 1918-1939, but is now Lviv, Ukraine.
KRAKAU (KRAKOW) 1910. Cancellations like these are easily
identified as Polish.
The stamp on the left is cancelled JAROSLAW.
The German name, JAROSLAU is not visible on this example.
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