Wolfratshausen: Stamp Association is 100 years old – Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen

A blue lighthouse, finely drawn, adorns a tiny piece of paper. Dieter Langnickel runs his fingers over it. The stamp shows the lighthouse on a small island in the Bay of Kiel, he says. He found that out himself. In the same way, with Atlas. Langnickel is a passionate stamp collector. His association, the “Stamp Collectors’ Association Isaria” in Wolfratshausen, is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this Saturday.

How do you get into such a hobby? In 1946, in a small village in the Harz Mountains in Lower Saxony, Langnickel, who was eleven at the time, saw a classmate rummaging through a shoe box on the windowsill of the house across the street. The boy becomes curious and decides to explore the contents of the box. As it turns out, the girl is looking at old grandma’s stamps. The eleven-year-old is immediately enthusiastic about the different motifs that are shown on it – “Plants, animals, buildings, vintage cars and and and,” recalls the now 87-year-old. “The spark jumped over there.” That day began his passion for stamps, which has not let go of him to this day.

So Langnickel has been a passionate philatelist, the technical term for stamp collectors, for 76 years now. However, he only became a member of “Isaria” 28 years ago. The “founding fathers” of the club, as he calls them with a wink, wanted to turn to beautiful things in the difficult times after the First World War and therefore joined together in 1922 to form a collective association.

But not only is the club getting on in years, the average age of its members is also quite high. According to Langnickel, only two of the 18 participants are “around 30”, the rest are 70 plus. “It’s a dying hobby,” says the 87-year-old. As a result of digitization, hardly anyone communicates by post anymore, which makes letters and the associated stamps obsolete. It could soon be the case that only the rarest, most valuable stamps would be traded, in which case it would only be about money – and the actual purpose of collecting would be lost, says Langnickel. “It’s a passion,” he explains. For him and his collector friends, it’s not just about the stamps themselves or even their economic value, but about the stories behind the motifs. Every brand appears for a specific occasion – dealing with it gives him pleasure. Younger people with an interest in history could therefore also benefit from philately, he says. “We are hunters and gatherers. That is what we have inherited from our ancestors.”

Langnickel was a professional soldier. He was even able to get his wife interested in his hobby at times. “She also collected motifs from the flower and fairy tale editions for a short time,” he recalls. But then, as a trained women’s and men’s tailor, she preferred to turn her attention back to dressing the family. “I was the only one of my acquaintances who walked around in a tailored suit,” he says, laughing.

The enthusiasm and perseverance with which Langnickel and his club colleagues pursue their leisure activities is documented in countless albums. Most of the members have achieved their goal and collected all stamps issued in Germany, he says. His own collection, which he built up through exchange and purchase, consists of more than 3000 specimens.

In Waldram there are also so-called Kiloware for five cents per stamp.

(Photo: Hartmut Pöstges)

Wolfratshausen’s stamp collectors hope to attract new people to their hobby. “It would be nice if someone came along again,” says Langnickel. They definitely have room for new acquisitions in their philatelic collection.

“Isaria” celebrates the association’s anniversary on Saturday, September 17th, with a stamp exhibition in the Catholic parish hall in Waldram. The event begins at 9 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m. Admission is free.

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