Run In With A German "Postie" (22 July 1978)

The report that the postal service had made £40 million profit reminded me of an incident that happened during my stay in Germany a couple of months ago.  German postmen don’t just push a letter through the letter box; they knock and call out while they are doing it.  At least, that is what they do around the British colony there.

One morning I was the only one downstairs when there was a knock and call at the door, but nothing on the mat.  Opening the door, I was confronted by a young man.  He held out an envelope which bore a British stamp, and said something in German and waited. I noticed that there was no name on the envelope and that what might have been the house number was obscured by a large 57 in blue crayon.  I shook my head, pointed to our house number, which was 37, and then pointed along the street to where in Britain No 57 would have been.

Now it was his turn to shake his head, which he did vigorously, extending his palm upwards at the same time.

I looked at his clothing, but could see nothing which told me he was a postman, apart from a large satchel which hung from his shoulder.

“Oh, no, my friend,” I thought, “you are not getting anything from me until I am sure what its about.”  So some of their little coins I had in my pocket stayed there.

The young man looked perplexed, muttered something which, on being interpreted, might have meant “We’ve got a right one here.”

Suddenly, he looked like he had a bright idea.  He took some coins from his own pocket, placed them on his palm, held then under my nose and seemed to be counting them carefully with his other hand.

At this I, too, brightened.  I thought it might be that he intended giving me some money instead of taking some.  After all, it could be that the German Post Office was fairer than ours and that if somebody had paid too much to send a letter they refunded the difference to the addressee.  I held out my hand.

Vexation was now spreading across his face, but at that moment of impasse, my daughter-in-law- trotted downstairs, recognised some of the handwriting on the envelope, and solved the situation by paying the required surcharge – for that, of course, was what the young man had wanted all the time.  I am pleased to report that the incident ended in a good laugh all round, though I expect the young man still thinks he had a right one there.

That might not have been an outstanding example of international co-operation.  Nevertheless, the world-wide postal service undoubtedly is so, for it has stood the test of time, of wars and of natural disasters alike.

Actually there was a comparable service centuries before Sir Rowland Hill introduced the uniform penny post and adhesive stamps in 1840.  Much greater names in postal history are Thurn and Taxis.

Operationally speaking, the foremost were the Taxis, and thereby hangs a strange tale, for that was not the name they were first known by.  They were a horsey people inhabiting the Bergamo Valley in the Italian Alps.  They protected their horses’ heads with the skins of badgers, of which were was no shortage thereabouts.  In Italian the word badgers is tassi and these people came to be known so widely as the tassi-men that they adopted that name as their surname.  In 1305 the Couriers of the Most Illustrious Signoria were formed at Venice largely from the Tassi.

Be it noted that a courier is not a postman.  A courier takes things directly from addressor to addressee.  A postman takes them from post to post along a relay system.

For two centuries his family remained Italian and in the same occupation, gaining in prestige all the time.  In 1450 one of them was knighted by Frederick III, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and ordered to establish communications in the Tyrol.  And by 1490 the Tassi name appeared in the ledgers of Innsbruck where Emperor Maximilian I held his court.  One of them became what we might call “court postmaster,” although it was still a courier service.  He was succeeded by a nephew, Baptista, who was ennobled by the Emperor six years later and thus became a Von.  But a Von followed by an Italian surname did not quite fit, so in due course the Tassi was changed to Taxis, which was German for the same humble creature.

At about that time another member of the family, named Franz, was employed by the Hapsburg Emperor’s son Philip.  Philip obtained part of Spain by marriage to add to his own inherited territory of the Netherlands and Burgundy and asked Franz to set up a courier service all the way.

Here Franz pulled off a master stroke.  Phillip gave him permission to set up the system as his own private enterprise and to carry not only the royal despatches, but other letters for other people.  He built his system on relays, with horses and messengers changed at stations at about equal distances.  Some of the stations were at inns, but others were mere posts to which the horses were tethered and beside which the messengers waited for the arrival of their colleagues.  Thus a true postal service was begun in the early 1500’s and because to be known as the Post.

A 17^th century Taxis aimed higher socially and discovered a link with an ancient princely family called Thurn who had formerly lived in Bergamo.  They were now fallen on hard times and only too pleased to accept his offer of “a share in my prosperity for a share in your armorial bearings and pedigree.”  Thenceforth the badger was included in the bearings.

The gradual break-up of the Holy Roman and Spanish empires spelled the eventual decline of the Thurn and Taxi international post and mail (a word derived from the Old High German word for a sack) but there was nothing quite like it from then up to the formation of the International Postal Union in 1875.