Austria - First issue used in Hungary – The Rolf Rohlfs Collection

Rolf Rohlfs (* 1940, † 2020) was an internationally known renowned collector who particularly valued the unusual. He became known decades ago with monographs on the famous Syke bisects as well as the Hanover and Hungary bisects. In the last decades, besides his collections on the "Kingdom of Hanover" and on "Alsace-Lorraine 1870-1872", he increasingly devoted himself to other special postal history topics, e.g. the international postal connections from Europe to the Far East via the Trieste routing, which was published in another very extensive book in this series (See EDITION SPÉCIALE 455).

Rohlfs always had a special relationship with Hungary, if only because of his wife Csilla, who came from that country. Like so many other renowned collectors, he had always been fascinated by the first issue of Austria's stamps, which appeared on July 1, 1850, and their use in Hungary. This gave rise to the collection reproduced in this EDITION SPÉCIALE on 110 pages. Rohlf's fascination is especially due to the rarity of certain uses, cancellations, separations, the covers of which are today among the well-known world rarities of philately and many of which are illustrated in this book.

He documented this with a letter from the second day of validity, with halves, the legendary Tokay piercing, with ornamental letters, stamps on ribbed hand paper, with local letters, printed matter and Retour Recipissen, registered mail and other frankings. Equally impressive are letters to Lombardy-Venetia, the German-Austrian Postal Union (DÖPV) and abroad. Special sections of these collections are reserved for fiscal stamps, cancellations and Austrian field mail 1848/49 (the Neipperg correspondence).

Rohlfs succeeded in collecting excellently preserved and in many cases extremely rare letter material matching all these aspects, and this in an abundance of variants that has probably rarely been seen before. The hardcover book with dust jacket is exquisitely designed and executed in best quality.

- Wolfgang Maassen (AIJP)

In German language, size 25,5 x 34 cm, 110 pages, numerous color illustrations, hardcover with dust jacket, bilingual English/German, collection pages in English only.