KLEIN POPO - AN EARLY COVER
We are delighted to have Peter Vogenbeck contribute to the South African Philately Club. Peter has been a professional philatelist since 1976. He has written many articles in specialist magazines and published several books on postal history aspects of the German Colonies. He is a member of numerous Philatelic Societies such as the ArGe Kolonien, APS, GCCG, GCPS, SWASG etc.
Peter also runs Peter Vogenbeck Specialised Auction which caters for the collector of postal history, stamps, literature and other ephemera of the former German Colonies and German Post Offices Abroad. For more than 27 years he has specialised in colonial philately and has offered more than 90.000 auction lots of the German PO's in China, Turkey, Marocco, Lamu, Zanzibar, New Guinea, German East Africa, South West Africa, Cameroons, Togo, Caroline Islands, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Kiautschou as well as Naval and Seapost Offices in colonial waters.
For the first of what we hope will be many new posts about the German colonial experience in Africa, Peter has sent us this piece on Klein Popo. If you have not heard of Klein Popo before - I hold my hand up to that - pretty much all you need to know is in his post.
Vielen Dank Peter.
Uploaded files:I would just like to say thank you to Peter for the article - may there be many more! Peter and myself go back a long time, maybe even to 1976, I remember in those days he always seemed to be upstairs! even when he was at the Carlton, I parked in the carpark underneath the centre so I still had to climb stairs. Later we held the German Colonial Society meetings in a very large room attached to his house in Northcliff where he provided the wine and his wife Ingrid catered to a five star standard. Mind you to get there one still had to climb, first of all in the car up to a carpark shelf on the cliff face and from there one climbed about 50 winding steps through the beautiful garden to a philatelic heaven. You only find a friend like Peter once in your lifetime,
Postcard sent from Klein-Popo to Weinröhla near Dresden in Germany.
Klein-Popo is in Togo. On 5 September 1884 an agreement was reached with the King of Porto Seguro, who made it a protectorate. In 1885 France cedes Anecho (also called Klein-Popo until 1905) to Germany. This port city was located on the Slave Coast, as this part of the coastline was called. I don't tell the whole story because you can find it on the Internet. A nice link in German:
http://www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/togoland.htm
The stamps are very popular and so are the cards from this place, although they are not extreme rarities!
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Harald. I think you missed the point. The cover that was shown was not from German Togo but from French Togo at that time. And as it is the only known German item from that area during that period I think that makes it pretty rare. Your card is from a later period when the area was German and as such 'Missed the boat'! ref Klein Popo.