About us
The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Generalgouvernement (ArGe GG) was founded in Hannover in 1978 and has over a hundred members spread over all continents.
In nearly 35 years 65 revues and 68 handbooks have been published. Several of our members have been awarded high distinctions during national and international exhibitions.
The goal of the ArGe GG is the study of the postal history and its inevitable historic links with the German occupation of Poland in the years 1939 to 1945. More than 65 years after the end of WWII, many dark spots concerning postal traffic, still remain.
Through close work with other study groups (ArGe), (E.g. ArGe Field-Post, ArGe Poland, ArGe Censored Mail, ArGe Fiscal stamps, ArGe machine cancels, etc), and through corresponding with collectors mainly, also in Poland, we manage to complete more and more the mosaic of the postal history of the General Government. The postal regulations of the Reich Post Ministry (RPM), the official gazettes from the RPM as well as from the Deutsche Post Osten, the field-post and other official regulations, are of course of great help in this endeavour.
On the one hand Post-Historians endeavour collecting different franking rates within the different postal rate periods, not only for standard mail, but for field-post, censored mail, official mail, P.O.W. mail, interned personnel mail, camp mail, international mail, and the different forms used by the Deutsche Post Osten.
Stamp collectors on the other hand concentrate on the sheet-features and characteristics, the perforation, plate flaws, errors, freaks and oddities.
Publications of the ArGe and the benevolent support of experts as Mr Hans-Hermann Paetow (AIEP), Mr Detlef Pfeiffer (BPP) and Mr Michael Schweizer BPP (German Association of Philatelic Experts), have made it possible to track and fight the increasing number of forgeries on the market, and thus avert great damage to collectors.
The Board
| President: | Michael Schweizer |
| Vice-President: | Gottfried Schoch |
| Treasurer: | Manfred Teckert |