© Dr. Artur Knoth

Brazilian Philately: The Pan Am Zeppelin Flight of 1930



Air Mail Stickers/Etiquettes/Labels



Brazil


Condor: This company was the partner for both the Zeppelin and Lufthansa. Even before the arrival of the Zeppelin, the company had an airmail label as shown below. For the zeppelin flight a special variation – the second graphic - was created for this mail. On the flight covers one finds the one or other version.


Only because I've already seen a case, is it worth mentioning that in later years other labels appeared.

In time for the 2nd South America Flight of 1933, as is mentioned in Sieger (22nd Ed.- p.187 at the bottom) a new condor-zeppelin label and also a new version of the standard Condor label appeared and are obviously based on the equivalent labels used in Germany at the time.

Beware of these appearing on 1930 covers as “enhancements”, or the cover made a time-trip? For the sake of completeness, it is worth mentioning that the following label appears on some covers of this flight. But it isn't a Condor nor even from Brazil, the missing “i” in correo tips it off as probably Spanish. Don't be fooled by the green color.



Germany


Although, in the mid-30's, there were a lot of specialized labels for the Zeppelin flights, on the 1930 one you basically see only two types. The black on yellow initial labels that hark back to the pioneer days and the white on blue label that use still used for most of the 20th Century



United States


As was the case in the US, many covers sent by US addressees used air mail envelopes, which will be dealt with in another section. The usual labels once sees, is the blue on issued by the Post Office and versions of the Red-White-Blue stripped air mail labels.

Then there seldom seen, more exotic themes on the labels one sees, arrows, airplanes, golden wings and an eagle: