The Zeppelin Drop Bag
1929 · Airship Mail Drop Pouch · Work 737 of 1,871
A mail drop bag of 1929 lying in the stubble of a mown meadow near a small town in the Palatinate, a flat oblong envelope of strong orange oiled paper, twenty-one centimetres long and fourteen wide, crinkled, lying plain back side up, a small metal eyelet at its left end, from the eyelet a cloth streamer about two metres long of alternating red and white fabric sections trailing in loose curves through the short grass, a boy in short trousers and a white shirt seen from behind bending towards it, poplars, a church tower and tiled roofs in the haze beyond, soft warm sunlight from the right.
- What it was used for
- A drop bag for airship mail: an envelope of waxy oiled paper, 14 x 21.5 cm, with a streamer about 2 m long sewn from red and white cloth; at its end is a ribbon in the imperial colours with a gold post horn mounted on it. The museum gives the total length as 221.5 cm. The conspicuous streamer was meant to make the bag findable after the drop. The Historisches Museum der Pfalz in Speyer records an example dropped over Speyer on 28 July 1929 by the airship "Graf Zeppelin" (LZ 127), on the ship's 26th flight from Friedrichshafen by way of places including Stuttgart, Koblenz, Trier, Speyer, Kaiserslautern and Landau back to Friedrichshafen.
- What was new
- What stands out is the equipment: a mail container built like a trophy. Waterproof oiled paper against the wet, 2 m of signal streamer against vanishing in the fields, imperial colours and a post horn as authentication. The barb stands in the museum's own description: the bag held several items of mail, and "Häufig handelte es sich bei diesen Poststücken um Sammlerpost, aber auch reguläre Poststücke wurden so versandt" - frequently collectors' mail, though regular mail was sent this way too. Often, then, the point was the item's value to collectors rather than the message. The same source names the flight of 28 July 1929 as the one that became known as the "Fahrt in das besetzte Rheinland", the flight into the occupied Rhineland.