FREE: WWI Germany POW Camp stamp 1915-16, forgery or misuse of plates, MH, please read description

The listing, WWI Germany POW Camp stamp 1915-16, forgery or misuse of plates, MH, please read description has ended.

Up for auction is a mint hinged probable forgery or plate misuse (see website below for more info) of a 1915-1916 German British Internment stamp. Interesting bit of history. From a smoke free home. Thanks for bidding!

RUHLEBEN P.O.W. CAMP STAMPS
source: https://www.filatelia.fi/forgeries/ruhleben.html

On 4 August 1914 Britain declared war on Germany. At that time some 7000 civilian British subjects were either living in or visiting Germany, and in November all the males between the ages of 17 and 55 were interned as prisoners-of-war. They were from the beginning gathered in Ruhleben, then a village 10 km west of the center of Berlin, near Spandau. By spring 1915, 4400 men were kept at this former horse racecourse.

The monotony resulted in the invention of all kinds of organizations or enterprises, and on 19 July 1915 Albert Kamps started the Ruhleben Express Delivery, RXD, and issued the first postage stamp. Albert's brother was in charge of the production. A lot of different postal stationery was also made (also to private order of camp organizations). There were 25 letter boxes in the camp. Roughly 6000 pieces of mail of all kinds (much of it postal stationery) were handled each month. Postal rates for letters and cards up to 50 grams was 1/3 d and 1/2 d above 50 grams. The currency is English pence (d).

In October 1915 a Berlin stamp magazine published an article about this camp post. German philatelists then made complaints – of the use of postage stamps – to the authorities, who on 3 April 1916 closed the RXD. Kamps was sentenced to solitary confinement, although his post had been approved by the Commandant. The remaining stock of stamps and postal stationery was confiscated. (Billig's Vol. 18: most of the issue was destroyed.) RXD was replaced by a stamp-less postal service that never became very popular. Following the armistice of 11 November 1918 most of the restrictions on the movements of the prisoners were abolished and the release started.