The “Hidden Hitler Head” on the 1964 Ellwangen Stamp

On 15 December 1964 the Deutsche Bundespost and the West Berlin postal administration each issued a 50 Pfennig stamp in the long-running definitive series “Deutsche Bauwerke aus zwölf Jahrhunderten”. The value shows Ellwangen, with the castle gate filling the center of the design and a stylized tree growing alongside the building. For most postal customers it was just another new building stamp, slightly rustic in its woodcut style but otherwise unremarkable.

With a little imagination, however, the tree on the right-hand side can be read quite differently. Some observers saw in the branches a small “head with hat”, and those inclined to see politics everywhere quickly interpreted this as a “Hitler head” hidden in the foliage. On its own this would probably have remained a collector’s curiosity, the sort of pattern our brains like to discover in clouds and wallpaper.

In East Germany, though, this perceived image did not remain a harmless joke. Postal-war literature reports that the East German postal authorities “discovered” on this 50 Pfennig Ellwangen stamp a Hitler head with bowler hat concealed in the treetops and used the story for propaganda purposes. It suited the official narrative of latent fascism in the Federal Republic and provided a convenient example that could be shown in philatelic circles and internal briefings.

Interestingly, this interpretation did not lead to a general ban on the stamp. Mail franked with the Ellwangen/Jagst value was, as a rule, accepted in the GDR, even when it appeared on the same cover as the politically sensitive “20 Jahre Vertreibung” stamp of 1965, which was routinely blacked out by the East German post. In most districts the supposed Hitler head remained untouched, which makes the surviving covers all the more instructive.

The notable exception was the Oberpostdirektion Potsdam. In its area the postal staff sometimes took the accusation literally and blacked out only the alleged head in the tree, while leaving the rest of the stamp perfectly readable. On some covers, where the Expulsion stamp had already been obliterated, the “Hitler head” in the Ellwangen tree was also covered. This treatment is recorded in postal-war catalogues under the entry “1964.3‑E Hitler Kopf geschwärzt”.

 

No official order has yet come to light that would explain this practice. It is therefore unclear whether the blackening was an unofficial initiative by over-zealous postal workers, or whether there was an internal directive that never reached the public record. What we can say is that the measure appears to have been restricted to this one regional administration; elsewhere in the GDR the Ellwangen stamp, Hitler head or not, passed unmolested through the postal system.

From a postal-historical point of view this turns an otherwise ordinary building definitive into a neat little Cold War document. The stamp itself was not withdrawn or surcharged, yet a tiny detail in its design was enough to provoke localised censorship in one East German district. Covers showing the carefully placed black or grey patch in the treetop – especially when they also bear an obliterated Vertreibung stamp – nicely illustrate how political interpretation, propaganda and day‑to‑day postal practice could intersect in the divided Germany of the 1960s.