6th August 1941
JB: Moritzburg

MORITZBURG cancellation as featured in the Bochmann catalogues (1952)

Note: This is the only special cancellation of the 3rd Reich period.

This design was used between 1936-1950

Moritzburg Castle

Moritzburg Castle or Moritzburg Palace is a Baroque palace in Moritzburg, in the German state of Saxony, about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) northwest of the Saxon capital, Dresden. The castle has four round towers and lies on a symmetrical artificial island. It is named after Duke Moritz of Saxony, who had a hunting lodge built there between 1542 and 1546. The surrounding woodlands and lakes were a favourite hunting area of the electors and kings of Saxony.

Prince Ernst Heinrich of Saxony, who lived in the castle between 1933 and 1945, was the last resident of the House of Wettin. He was dispossessed in 1945 by the postwar Soviet administration.

Prince Ernst Heinrich of Saxony

Ernst Heinrich opposed the Nazis after they formed a government on 30th January 1933. However, he failed to read the political situation correctly. He believed that Hitler could be stopped by the conservative political opposition and, in the spring of 1933, he joined Der Stahlhelm, hoping he could escape the influence of the Nazis. On 1st July 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives, he was arrested. He was interned in the concentration camp in Hohnstein for five days.

After his release, Ernst Heinrich retired to Moritzburg Castle in Saxony. He was an avid hunter and had to keep in touch with Nazi leaders such as Hermann Göring, who, as Master of the Hunt, was interested in the forests owned by the Wettins, and Martin Mutschmann, the Nazi governor of Saxony. In 1938, he received King Carol II of Romania in his castle, and in 1939 he had extensive political discussions with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, who had been mayor of Leipzig and was later active in the German resistance. A few weeks before the outbreak of World War II, Ernst Heinrich was drafted into the Abwehr group IV in Dresden.

In 1943, he openly expressed doubts that the death of his brother Georg, Crown Prince of Saxony had been an accident. The Gestapo then arrested and questioned him. However, there were no further personal consequences, as the Nazis were still reluctant to confront a member of a former royal family.

Ernst Heinrich was an admirer of the art of Käthe Kollwitz. After she lost her home when Berlin was bombed in 1943, he invited her to move to Moritzburg, where she lived and worked at the Rudenhof, a mansion in the immediate vicinity of the castle, until she died in April 1945.

In February 1945, nearby Dresden was bombed. In March 1945, Ernst Heinrich fled to Sigmaringen to escape the advancing Red Army. Before he left, Ernst Heinrich and his sons buried most of their valuables in 40 crates in the Königswald forest. Most of this treasure was found by the Red Army and carried off to the Soviet Union. However, three crates full of treasure were rediscovered in 1995.

Source: Wikipedia

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