GERMAN POSTAL HISTORY

This page was last updated
23-Mar-2025 01:34

FELDPOST - FIELD POST
"Soldatenblätter für feier und Freizeit"
"Soldier's sheets for celebrations and leisure"

In April 1940 a series of booklets titled "Soldatenblätter für feier und Freizeit" - "Soldier's sheets for celebrations and leisure" was published by the OKW (OberKommando der Wehrmacht), or Wehrmacht High Command. The booklets were printed every month from Apr 1940 until Nov/Dec 1944.



The stories and other features in these booklets were written by soldiers and were intended to be read by other soldiers and their families to provide a different perspective on wartime life. The booklets consisted of a series of stories, images, puzzles, first person accounts of life in the army, and included postcards (varying in number) that could be cut/torn out and posted. The postcards exist in three formats dependng on the number of vertical lines of text used for the central divider: either one, two or no lines of text.

1940: 9 Issues, one per month, from April to Dec
1941: 11 issues, one per month, from Jan to Nov/Dec (the last issue of the year was a double issue)
1942: 11 Issues, one per month now catalogued as heft 1, heft 2, heft 3, ... heft 11/12.
1943: 11 issues, one per month catalogued as heft 1, heft 2, heft 3, ... heft 11/12.
1944: 11 issues, one per month catalogued as heft 1, heft 2, heft 3, ... heft 11/12.

The cards can be sorted by the number of lines of publisher's text running aloong the vertical dividing line.

Type A: One line of text
Type B: Two lines of text
Type C: No text along the vertical divider.

Each card has either a hand drawn image which either covers one complete side of the card, just the sender's destination section or a small image along the top of the sender's section. The images are either in colour or black / grey