History
The German colonies were all acquired between 1884 and 1899. They belonged to the Universal Postal Union and used the same postage rates as the mainland German Empire. Initially, regular Imperial stamps from the mainland were used, and only their cancellation marks would reveal their colonial usage; later, the names of the individual colonies were printed over the regular stamps before sale. In 1900, a new stamp design was released for universal use in all the colonies.
Redolent of the imperial grandeur of the Kaiser, the yacht was used as a symbol of German power and prestige. The seafaring nature of the design also underscored the new hopes of the German Empire under Wilhelm II. The Kaiser had embarked on a quest to expand worldwide and by 1898 was rapidly building his navy to compete with other world powers, particularly Great Britain.
The "Yachts" were first released in 1900 and remained the standard postal design for all German colonial mail until shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. By mid-1915 all the German colonies had surrendered to Allied forces, and with them came their postal administrations. The confiscated German stamps, virtually all of them Yachts, were stamped with new names and prices for Allied wartime use. The Yachts thus continued in service throughout the war years, unlike the Kaiser's yacht itself which was decommissioned in June 1914.
Read more about this topic: Yacht Issue
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)