COVER N. 430 - GERMANY

Postmark: Wriezen 16269 19.03.2024 

Posted on the 19th March; received on the 26th March 2024

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A registered cover from Germany, with a bunch of nice stamps on it. Danke Sehr, Siegward.

A I write these lines news are that an attack has been launched from Iran against Israel in retaliation for Israel's attack in Syria....mad people rule the world, these days, it seems....better stick to stamps, at least on one of them  there is the face of someone  who won his place in immortality for noble and completely opposite reasons to those that may reserve some sad paragraphs in future history books to some current day leaders....

Stamps, Left to right, Top to bottom

- The first long distance train service in Germany began operation in April 1839 with the completion of the Leipzig-Dresden railway, a route that also include Germany's first railway tunnel.

Commemorating the 175th anniversary of this fact, Deutsche Post issued on 03APR2014 the 1,45€ stamp on the cover, which bears an illustration of a train passing over the Dresden-Trachau viaduct with the caption "175 jahre deutsche Ferneisenbahn Leipzig - Dresden" (175 years of the German long distance railway Leipzig - Dresden).

- Ludwig van Beethoven lived between 1770 and 1827. One cannot help but wonder how many more sublime pieces would have been written if.... but  we, Humanity, are so lucky to have all he left that asking for more would be pure gluttony, and this, we all know, is a deadly sin...:-)

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of the  author of what has become the European Union hymn, several postal administrations (not only European) have issued commemorative stamp emissions (and I'm pleased to acknowledge that Portugal also joined the chorus).

On 02JAN2020 Deutsche Post issued its homage to Beethoven in the form of a single 0,80 € stamp, also issued in souvenir sheet form.

- Culture is what is left after all the rubble has been cleared, for culture is what makes civilisations. Culture prevails no matter what. Art, in its many guises, is a liquid contributor to the culture of a group, a nation, a state, the whole humanity.

Vincent van Gogh, was born in a different country than that of Ludwig van Beethoven. For that, they are exponents of different national cultures, but, as we all know, they are much more than that; they both are inescapable  entries in the great history of Man.

Field of Poppies (1889), one of the artist's latest paintings, completed about one year before his sad demise in 1890, is currently preserved at Kunsthalle Bremen.

On 01JAN2020 deutsche Post issued the 1,55€ stamp on the cover illustrated with Van Gogh's painting, as part of the series "Treasures of German Museums"

- The  Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the city's tallest inhabited building, built upon a former warehouse, and one of the world's most acoustically advanced concert halls, opened to the public on the 12th January 2017. Marking the occasion, Deutsche Post issued on 02JAN2017 the 1,45€ stamp on the cover.

- According to a definition on LIGO's (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) homepage "Gravitational waves are 'ripples' in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe", these having been predicted by the usual suspect, who goes by tye name of  Albert Einstein.

On 07DEC2017, Deutsche Post issued a two stamp set  (45 and 70 Euro cents) dedicated to Astrophysics. The companion to the Gravitational waves stamp on the cover is dedicated to the Gaia space observatory,  a spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency in 2013, tasked with the mission of completing the most extensive  space catalogue ever, comprising about 1 billion astronomical objects like stars, planets, comets, asteroids, quasars etc.

The postmark originated in the city of Wriezen, in the State of Brandenburg, near the border with Poland.