Wien Combined Town and Registration Cancellers

Part 2

Klein records many variants of the plain ovals, followed by CDS types which gradually incorporate the full day, month and year. A plain RECOMMANDIRT [K6264q] used in Vienna in 1876 is shown here; these were followed by CDS types which gradually incorporate the full day, month and year. One such example is on the back of this letter from DOBRA b. LIMANOV via SKOMIELNA-BIAŁA to MAHR. OSTRAU, redirected via Krakow station to WIEN, arriving 12/1/77 with Klein 6242j arrival mark.

The final type of marking [K6256c] was a half-framed RCMDT below which the serial number of the letter was hand-written.

There are many variations of this... ...which are spread over many of the Viennese sub-offices, and are also found from other cities.

In the late 1840s of the pre-stamp period, the Combined Town and Registration Marks in Vienna seem to be confined to the Head Post Office. Whereas ordinary mail handed in at the City Post Letter Collecting Agencies received the appropriate LCA cancel (often the attractive boxed ribbon type with the LCA name or number in the ribbon) on the BACK of the letter, the Head Office cancel was struck on the FRONT, especially if it was a distant letter. (A 'distant letter' is one with a destination well outside Vienna, as opposed to a local letter which may not even have gone through Head Office, thus by intent or idleness missing its front cancel.) I have not seen a registered letter handed in at a Letter Collecting Agency which then received the Head Office 3-line type then in use on the FRONT. See for example the 1849 letter illustrated below, addressed to GLOGGNITZ and handed in at a Letter Collecting Agency H BRIEFS No. 54 (ie Wieden) which is correctly back stamped but has only a single-boxed FRANCO and double-boxed RECOM on the front, which Müller states were used only by the City posts (Mü 1949b and 1949c).

Similarly, this registered letter to BUDAPEST was posted in 1874 at the sub-office of Franz Josef Quai with the ordinary CDS cancel and double-boxed RECOM: (with blue handwritten number underneath) exactly as in 1849.

Only after 1860 in the post-stamp era did six of the main sub-offices in Vienna receive the Combined Town and Registration Marks, mainly ovals. These included the well-known large oval K.K.BRIEF-FILIALAMT.

Even in Klein's post-1867 listing only seven offices are included, and then only on the 1867 issue since their usage was curtailed by the introduction of the U.P.U. labels in the 1880s (black type on yellow was chosen by Austria) which saw the end of the need for specific hand stamps for registration.

©Andy Taylor. Last updated 2 Mar 2000.