Coffee Hag Albums

The Coffee Hag albums were published in the early 20th century by the Kaffee Handelsgesellschaft AG (Kaffee HAG, Coffee Hag) in Bremen, Germany, starting with heraldic stamps and collector's albums.

The stamps and books were the initiative of the Die Brücke association. This was an initiative of Emperor Wilhelm II to make an archive of published material. At the same time the association developed standard sizes for publishing material. To promote their activities and their new standards, they encouraged companies to publish material in their standards. The Kaffee Hag company was one of the companies that agreed to do so. Hence the stamps are published in the so-called Weltformat V der Brücke (or 4 × 5.66 cm), which is also printed on the back of the stamps. The albums were published in the Weltformat IX (16 × 22.6 cm). Only on the German and Swiss stamps was there the reference to the Weltformat.

The association went bankrupt in 1913 and was abolished in 1914, but the size of the stamps remained the same for all the albums.

The company hired the famous artist Otto Hupp to design the stamps. Otto Hupp already had published several well-known volumes on German civic heraldry since the 1890s.

The albums became a success in Germany and the company exported the idea to the other European countries in which the company operated.