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As stated above, it was not immediately possible to deliver the first Austrian provisional issue on time, and the post offices had to cope as best they could. The design of the new Registration Labels reached back to one which had already been used in the monarchy and the First Republic for the Railway Post, and as a provisional design for Burgenland before the appearance of the final Registration Labels. It used rectangular slips of paper in the format 54x18 mm, with crude perforations or bad rouletting, which show only the R and a two- or three-digit item number. The left part is left empty for the addition of the post office name. At the point of use the missing hundreds digit and counter letter were sometimes added. There are seven main types of these labels. See Reference 1 for fuller details.
This label is a pale yellow-buff, about 54x19mm, perforated all round (the top and bottom are particularly ragged!). It is pre-printed R98 and cancelled with the same canceller as the stamps, on 6.7.1945.
The next is similar, & dated 5.7.1945, but the name has been added by using a "WIEN 62" rectangular canceller with slightly rounded corners (on the original it is fainter). The name on the stamp's cancel is unreadable.
This is a thick grey postcard, sent from Gmünden to Vienna on 22 Mar 1946. Although the rightmost stamp (ANK716, face value 5 pfennig) was invalidated on 21.12.1945, it continued in use as an imprint on postcards at a value of 5 groschen. The franking is thus correct for the postage date, ie 6gr for an inland postcard and 30gr for inland registration.
This same style of label is still in use on the diminishing number of Austrian TPOs - this example was cancelled on the Wels-Schärding run, TPO 470, on 11 October 1966.
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©Andy Taylor. Last updated 6 July 2001