The ‘Paderborn Puzzler’

 

Paderborn
in East Westphalia, Germany

Although I’ve collected Luxembourg postal stationery for more than a half century, I’m amazed at how frequently I still find new material that belies easy explanation.  Consider this card:

Yes, it’s the August 1879 10-centime German treaty rate and UPU-rate card from the 10th Arms Issue, which appeared in August 1879 and is easily identified by the elongated ‘P’ of POSTALE and POSTKARTE in the third text line[Prifix & FSPL Handbook No. 35] .  But here it has been commercially used from  Paderborn, a university town in East Westphalia, Germany.  The Paderborn cds is dated September 11, 1882.  The card is addressed to the Breisdoff bookstore in Luxembourg-Ville (a business that saved many fine incoming postal stationery cards!), and backstamped at Luxembourg, 
September 13, 1882.

I suppose I should attribute this unusual use simply to postal clerk compliance and be done with it.  But the German postal clerks of this era seldom failed to tax improper uses of stamps or stationery. 

Therefore, an alternate explanation might be that the postal clerk mistook this card for the reply card of the double card from this issue [Prifix & FSPL Handbook No. 36].  The design is similar, featuring the distinctive elongated P’s, as seen in the example below.

 

 

Le Havre, France, November 24, 1886,
to Luxembourg-Ville the next day