Burmeister & Co of East London
The most important trove of mid-20th c. South African postal history material has come from Burmeister & Co., the East London hardware and general dealer who specialised in servicing the needs of farmers and others in the rural communties of the hinterland of South Africa, in particular the Cape and OFS but also widely elsewhere. Most postal history collectors have some item or other from them. I have started this post in order that those who feel so inclined can share their 'Burmeister covers' with us.
The top two covers below are not your everyday South African Burmeister item. However, they do bring the Burmeister story together. The last two covers are pretty much run-of-the-mill Burmeister fare redolent of their period.
The company had its origins on Market Square in Johannesburg in the ZAR in the 1890s. It was started by Paul Burmeister who came out from Germany to follow his brother Wilhelm who was working for Malcomess & Co, a company with a business model that Paul would later emulate. Wilhelm did not stay in South Africa but returmed to Hamburg, Germany, where he started an agency supplying German goods to the global market, among them his brother in SA. I often wondered what happened to Wilhelm during WW1 and WW2. These two covers show that he survived both and by WW2's end was living in Lubeck, possibly having been bombed out of Hamburg during the devastating firestorm of July 1943. The second cover of '18 3 49' is addressed to his brother Paul at his home address in EL
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