COVER N.126 - GERMANY

Postmark: Brifzentrum 28 BREMEN 15.06.22
Posted on the 15th June; received on the 201st June 2022

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Totaly unexpected  and as such even more appreciated was this rather nice cover from Germany I got from a fellow Postcrosser who not only went that extra mile to send me a terrific postcard (#79) inside an envelope, but,  being a stamp lover himself, he kindly used a full stamp set to create a nice cover to my collection. Thank you so much Andreas, provocations shall not go unheeded....

 

The Grimm Brothers wrote some of the most famous fables in western literature. Maybe it's the consonnance between names, but their plots were usually rather.... grim  to say the least and by today's standards surely not the type of  bedtime tale that parents would tell their little children ... still, generations of young children across Europe have been put to sleep while the entrails of bad wolves were dissected so that granny or the seven little kids could once again see the light of day. ...

It is precisely this last tale - the wolf and the seven little kids - that is central to the set of stamps Andreas so kindly used to mail his postcrossing postcard to me.

the plot is simple: mother doe leaves the 7 little kids at home and goes to work; the wolf tries to grab hold of the kids by mimmicking their mother; 1st and 2nd try unlucky, 3rd try he succeeds, but one of the kids hides and is not eaten, so when mother doe returns he tells her of the fate of his brothers and mother quickly opens the belly of the sleeping wolf  to liberate the poor kids, replacing them with stones, when the wolf awakens he's dying of thirst and goes to the well to drink, but he was so heavy from the stones that he tipped over and so long cruel wolf.....

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Issued on 06FEB20202 the set comprises three stamps (80 + 40 Euro cents; 95 + 45 Euro cents and 155 + 55 Euro cents) all illustrated with scenes from the famous tale.

Of note is the fact that this is a welfare issue, a practice that has been carried out by German Post since 1949, with the value of the surcharge that is printed next to the stamp denomination being directed to social welfare institutions.

The machine applied cancelation tells us that the cover was processed in the post centre 28 of Bremen.