The New Germany

No 34 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

January 1934   From Louis Landsberg in Aachen: Thank you for your kind Christmas wishes. I read in the newspaper that these postcards are being exhibited today and tomorrow in relation to the past years work of new structure of Germany. I hope it will be of some use to your collection - there is only a small amount being issued so I think it will be a rare specimen... It was pretty hard to paste up these two stamps neatly. The one pfennig stamp was issued in December. How are you? Your girl? Everybody?
This anniversary card of Hitler's  year-old chancellorship was hot off the press and Hitler makes his first appearance on a stamp. The control exercised over all the semiotics of power, masterminded by Goebbels, already marked Hitler out as in a different league of dictatorship from Mussolini who only made one philatelic appearance in Italy (and then on a stamp which also features Adolf Hitler). The Brandenburg gate in Berlin retains its symbolic appearance at the end of the century.