GPS June 2020

brief flyover sweep on half power, an officer dropped the mailbag, which
contained three cards, from the control car. The handwritten notation
indicates that it was picked up as soon as the zeppelin arrived over the
city. Franked with the regular inland postcard rate, the postmark indicates
that it was immediately taken to the post office.
Sand weighted the mailbag and a streamer in the colors of the
German flag fluttered from the top. On one side was printed [translated
from German] Airship Post from the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau
Zeppelin G.m.b.H.) of Friedrichshafen, plus a handwritten notation
of city, date, and time of the drop. On the reverse, the text states, “The
finder of this airship mail is politely requested to deliver the contents of
this bag to the nearest post office as soon as possible.”
Image 3. Anton Wittemann, an officer on many
zeppelin flights, drops a mail bag from a zeppelin
gondola window.
Hugo Eckener, the
LZ-126 commander, had
been born and raised in
Flensburg. One of the
cards was to his relatives,
but it has not yet
been documented in the
philatelic literature. The
second card was to the
citizens of Flensburg
to be published in the
local newspaper. It also
has never surfaced.
The third card was to
friends. When Manfred
Lösemann and Werner Rau published a census of all known trial flight
mail in 1998, the third card had not yet been seen. However, since then,
it came to auction, and I was able to reunite it with the mailbag that had
dropped it.
The only known surviving
card from the fifth trial
flight is a picture postcard
with a portrait of Count
Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
It is one of 118 zeppelin
Image 4. Only known surviving
postcard dropped over
Flensburg on the LZ-126 5th
trial flight.
June 2020 229