On May 26th, 1938, the corner of the Volkswagen factory was laid. Adolf Hitler referred to the car as the KDF-Wagen (kraft durch Freunde) or "Strength Through Joy" car. He started a program to allow the German workers to buy stamps every week and place them in a savings card or "Sparkarte."
"Sparen für den KdF-Wagen" - Save for the KdF Wagen - reads the slogan on the two Berlin meter imprints on the 9 December 1943 cover from the German Labor Front (of which Kraft durch Freude, the makers of the car, was one part). But saving the stamps in the cards shown in Figures 20-21 only made the saver eligible to buy a car if a car was available. In fact - although 336,668 Germans signed up, and paid the equivalent of $67 million into the savings scheme - not one saver ever received an automobile. Only 230 KdF-Wagens were built through World War II, and every one of them went to Nazi Party officials. In September of 1939 World War II broke out.
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A correctly franked 1936 registered cover from Daimler-
Benz in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim to Frankfurt, with seven copies
of the 6-pfennig Gottlieb Daimler stamp paying the 12pf letter
rate and 30pf registration fee. Daimler invented one of the first
successful high-speed internal-combustion engines to use gas,
and used it to power a four-wheeled vehicle in 1886 |
| Germany's
first Volkswagen stamp was a 25pf + 10pf high value in a set of
three semipostals released in February in conjunction with the
1939 Berlin Auto Show.
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| For the auto
races later that year, the stamps were reissued on 18 May with
a "Nürnburgring-Rennen" overprint, including the top corner
block of four shown here on a registered cover to New York City.
|
| This pre-
printed and pre-addressed envelope mailed 10 August 1939 from a
sender in Italy (Stamps on back) to one of the 3,000 unemployed
Italian workers who had been sent by Mussolini to the camp to
build the Volkswagen Factory. The Hanover Anzeiger wrote:
"A world is being built. . . .The German Reich shall bed down
the most modern and beautiful workers' city . . . of happy
people, who will find their homes here." Italian construction
workers were quartered in wooden barracks clustered about an A-
frame community building, popularly called "Chianti Hall."
|
| "Sparen für
den KdF-Wagen" - Save for the KdF Wagen - reads the slogan on
the two Berlin meter imprints on this 9 December 1943 cover from
the German Labor Front (of which Kraft durch Freude, the makers
of the car, was one part). But saving the stamps in the cards
shown in Figures 20-21 only made the saver eligible to buy a
car if a car was available. In fact - although 336,668 Germans
signed up, and paid the equivalent of $67 million into the saving
s scheme - not one saver ever received an automobile. Only 230
KdF-Wagens were built through World War II, and every one of them
went to Nazi Party officials.
|
| The Volkswagen
logo - framed by the cogwheel of the German Labor Front and a
stylized speeding wheel - appears in the 12pf meter imprint on
this censored 1943 cover from Stadt des KdF-Wagens to the Red
Cross in the Hague.
|
| The message
side(left) and the address side (next to it) of one of the
only two recorded examples of a Konzentrationslager Arbeitsdorf
formular lettersheet created specifically for use by
concentration camp inmates of Stadt des KdF-Wagens during WWII.
The one above was sent to Moravia on 9 July 1941
|
| At the
Volkswagen factory, swollen by war production, the labor force
increased more than sixfold - from 2,732 in 1939 to 17,365 in
1944. The original Italian builders were joined by forced
laborers from Belgium, France and Netherlands (including the one
who sent this censored, chemically tested letter below to
Gravenhage 1 August 1944), joined by Polish and Russian P.O.W.s,
courtmartialed German soldiers and finally concentration camp
inmates.
|
| Mailed a
little more than two months after Germany surrendered was this
12 July 1945 Feldpost postcard (with "Feld" crossed out, above)
and the Nazi-era "Stadt des KdF-Wagens" circular datestamp used
to hand-cancel a 6pf yellow Allied Military Government postage
stamp that was issued for use within the British and the
American Zones of Occupation. The sender of the postwar card now
identified her city as "(20) Groß-Wolfsburg," which was in the
British zone. On a printed matter cover mailed to a doctor in
Kronach (below), an undated double-ring "(20) Wolfsburg 1."
handstamp was used in combination with a standard commercial "17.
AUG.1946" datestamp to cancel the 6pf Numeral. This short-lived
canceler was in service at Wolfsburg from 15 July 1946 until 17
November 1946.
|
| A 18 January
1948 cover to Schönebeck (above) has 2pf and 84pf Numerals and a
special registration label from Wolfsburg's first postwar stamp
show.
|
| A special red and blue postcard from the same show to
Sweden (below), with stamps from the Second Control issue
correctly paying the 30pf postcard rate, has a British censor's
handstamp. Both the card and cancels picture a VW.
|
| A cropped and
enlarged 6 June 1951 Raffay & Co. meter imprint from Hamburg-
Altona 1 displaying an early version of the postwar Volkswagen
logo.
|
| A speeding
Beetle is pictured on a 3 July 1952 "VOLKSWAGENSTADT" handstamp
from Wolfsburg tying the 30pf Post Horn to this cover to
Strassburg.
|
| Cropped and
enlarged above from an incomplete registered commercial window
envelope is this pictorial 9 February 1959 "STADT WOLFSBURG /
VOLKSWAGENSTADT" meter imprint picturing the car and the civic
coat of arms.
|
| The German
post office in Wolfsburg has depicted buildings from the modern
industrial city for some time, and in 1990 briefly used a meter
imprint (above) showing the familiar VW logo at left atop a
corporate office tower.
|
| A similar 1991 post office imprint for
"Wolfsburg / The Volkswagen City" shows the tower and
the sign, but removed the VW logotype.
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The following color images and captions are from the 40-page feature, well worth reading..
"The People's Car: A Volkswagen Chronicle," by Daniel C. Olsen
It's found in the 96-page April-May 2003 issue of The German Postal Specialist, which is published 10 times each year by the Germany Philatelic Society. If you'd like your own copy of this special issue of the Specialist, send $3 in cash or a check in U.S.funds made out to "Germany Philatelic Society" ($4 in Canada and $6 overseas) to "VW Issue, Box 315, Iola WI 54945-0315."
