GPS June 2020

primarily from the fact that physical and biological possibilities are taken
to the point of absurdity and that they are obviously hair-raising but
good-natured made-up stories.
Historic Postal Routes
Design: Michael Kunter, Berlin
Theme: Postal rider at a gallop bound toward a cityscape
Value: 0,80 EUR
Size: Width 44.2 mm; Height 26.2 mm
Issue Date: 07 May 2020
Leading in the gradual establishment of a regulated European postal
system was the de Tasso courier family, who came from Lombardy and
became called Thurn and Taxis in 1650. In 1490, the Roman-German
king and later emperor Maximilian I commissioned the brothers Janetto
and Francesco de Tasso to set up regular postal connections. This postal
route, by which letters from Innsbruck (the site of Maximilian I’s main
residence) to the Netherlands and to Italy could be sent, is considered the
first permanently operating, centrally organized postal route in the Holy
Roman Empire, making the year 1490 the founding year of the modern
European postal system. The Imperial Post Office was founded in the
16th century and was also run by the de Tasso family. Around 1800, all
Central European cities were connected by regular postal routes, but no
longer only by the Imperial Post Office, which repeatedly had to cede
routes to imperial post and regional post offices.
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