Postage Stamp: Opening of Berlin Wall 1989 – Treaty of Berlin 1889

This set of postage stamps relates to the history of the islands of Western Samoa in the lead up to their annexation as a German colony (1900-1914). The stamp on the left depicts Prince Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire between 1871 and 1890, and the one on the right shows the war ship SMS Adler, which engaged in “gunboat diplomacy” during the “Sāmoan crisis” and was destroyed by a cyclone while being anchored in Apia, Sāmoa, in 1899.

Both stamps are devoted to the Treaty of Berlin in 1899, which was supposed to solve the claims to control over Sāmoa between the imperial powers of Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA, but ultimately led to the Tripartite Convention of 1899 through which Sāmoa became partitioned into a German colony and a U.S. American territory.

Spanning both stamps is one picture of the Brandenburg Gate in Germany, the iconic site and architectural feature that has become the key symbol of both German separation (after the Second World War and during the Cold War) und the fall of the Berlin Wall and inner-German border in 1989, leading to German reunification in 1990.

Significance

The stamps were collected as part of the co-collecting project Materialising German-Samoan Colonial Legacies (2016). On Te Papa’s behalf, German researcher Philipp Scorch assembled a collection of objects representing the history of the German colonial period in Samoa (1900-1914) and its legacy.

According to Schorch, “These two stamps, far from being tiny items, materialize and re-enact complex histories, relationships and imaginations. On the one hand, they are dedicated – again from within (post)colonial Sāmoa – to 100 years of (post)colonial relations between Sāmoa and Germany. On the other hand, the stamps also refer to the shared destiny of division and (potential) reunification.(1) While this has been achieved on the German side, the Sāmoan side remains divided to this date into Sāmoa and American Sāmoa. Once both stamps are taken apart for their individual use, the Brandenburg Gate becomes torn apart, thereby not re-separating Germany but rather re-enacting the ongoing separation of the two Sāmoas.'

Acquisition History

These postage stamps were identified by Philipp Schorch and purchased by Te Papa as part of the co-collecting project Materialising German-Samoan Colonial Legacies (2016).

Notes

(1) Kathrin DiPaola, “Samoa, 'Perle' der deutschen Kolonien?:'Bilder'des Exotischen Anderen in Geschichte(n) des 20. Jahrhunderts” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2004), 324.

References

Schorch, Philipp, Sean Mallon and Nina Tonga Materialising German -Samoan Colonial Legacies in Schorch, Philipp et al. (2020) Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses. University of Hawaii Press pp.121-147