East Germany 300 Stamps, Used

Forty-One Years Behind the Iron Curtain
300 Different Used Stamps from East Germany

The German Democratic Republic issued its first stamp on October 9, 1949, and its last on October 2, 1990 — the day before German reunification. In those 41 years, the Deutsche Post der DDR produced 2,802 different stamps, more than any other German postal authority in history. The catalog is one of the most varied in European philately: socialist ideology and genuine cultural pride sit side by side with nature studies, historical portraits, industrial subjects, and international commemoratives that could have come from any postal service on the continent.

These 300 used stamps — inscribed DDR and denominated in Pfennig and Mark — span the full range of what East Germany produced across four decades of the Cold War.

What's inside will vary, but here's a sample of what you can expect across 300 issues:

• Frédéric Joliot-Curie portrait — the French physicist, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, and prominent anti-nuclear activist appears among the DDR's portrait commemoratives. The GDR honored international scientists and peace advocates whose politics aligned with its own, and Joliot-Curie — a committed Communist who led the World Peace Council — was exactly the kind of figure the DDR celebrated on its stamps.
• Landschaftsparks in der DDR — landscape parks — a scenic stamp depicting one of East Germany's historic landscape gardens. The GDR maintained an extensive series documenting its natural and cultural landscapes, and these stamps provide a quieter counterpoint to the political commemoratives.
• Deutschen Staatsbibliothek Berlin — medieval manuscript (Codex 1294) — a beautifully detailed stamp reproducing a page from a medieval illuminated manuscript held in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, from the DDR's long-running series honoring the holdings of East German cultural institutions. Library, archive, and art collections generated stamps throughout the GDR era.
• Historical postal coach (Postwagen 1850) — a finely engraved stamp depicting a 19th-century mail coach, from the DDR's postal history series. East Germany took genuine pride in the history of the German postal service and documented it across multiple stamp issues.
• Internationale Leipziger Rauchwarenauktion (20 DDR) — the International Leipzig Fur Auction, featuring a mink or sable illustration. Leipzig's trade fairs were among the most important in the Eastern Bloc, and the DDR documented them regularly on its stamps.
• Historische Flugmodelle — historical flying machines — a stamp depicting early aircraft designs, from a series on the history of aviation. The DDR produced numerous aviation history stamps over the decades, popular with aeronautical topical collectors.
• 40. Internationaler Kongress für Pferdezucht der sozialistischen Staaten, DDR 1989 (70 Pfennig) — the 40th International Horse Breeding Congress of Socialist States, with detailed portraits of Kaltblut (cold-blooded/draft) horses. Agricultural science stamps like this one reflect the GDR's identity as a "workers' and peasants' state" — and its genuine investment in animal husbandry and agricultural research.

Three hundred stamps from a country that ceased to exist on October 3, 1990, making every DDR stamp a permanent artifact of a vanished state. Order today.