June 24 through July 9, 1933
Official WIPA 1933 show emblem
According to a history of the event published for WIPA 2000, there have been five WIPA's - 1881, 1933, 1965, 1981, and 2000. Other international philatelic shows were held also in Vienna in 1885, 1890, 1894, 1911, and 1923, with various names. All have been landmark philatelic exhibitions, not just in Austria, but in the philatelic world as a whole.
For the Cinderella collector, WIPA 1933 is the most famous of these events, a show that generated an unequalled quantity and quality of Cinderella material, creating fascinating and rewarding opportunities for collectors ever since.
Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933
History of Mail Transport
block of all ten designs
FLASH - a visitor to this site has sent me an image of a full sheet of the transport stamps, a tremendous find! See image below.
I first encountered the WIPA 1933 Philatelic Exhibition Seals about 1996, in my pursuit of train cinderellas. I love sets with multiple designs and colors, so I was immediately intrigued by the set of ten seals created as advance publicity for WIPA 1933, designed by Ludwig Hesshaimer, and printed by Bruder Rosenbaum (renowned Viennese printers of books, posters and postage stamps). With their ten beautiful designs depicting the history of mail transport (one with a great train), and twenty different colors (two printings of ten colors each), these Cinderellas were irresistible. I was told there were other souvenir stamps from the event as well, but had no interest in pursuing them at that time - no trains.
Over the years since, I slowly acquired more of the colors, and blocks of 4, 6, and 10 of the history of mail transport designs. I also ran across the designs on postal stationery, and picked up such pieces as I could afford. Once I started buying on eBay, my collection grew faster, as I found WIPA 1933 items there regularly.
About a year ago, I hit the jackpot. My periodic search on eBay for "WIPA" turned up a large lot containing examples of all the different WIPA 1933 cinderellas, in most of the colors, and with multiples I had never seen before. The minimum bid for the lot was $99, and I put in a bid for several times that, expecting the lot would sell for even more. I was shocked and delighted when I won the lot at the opening bid. Most of the WIPA 1933 material I am displaying here came from that one purchase.
Acquiring so much has merely whetted my appetite for more, of course. I started looking at the postal stationery, and found that there are both postal cards (preprinted indicium) and simple post cards (no preprinted stamp) with the history of transport designs, and some have text in French, while others have it in German. I thought at first that all the designs might exist in both languages, but have seen enough examples now to be fairly sure that is not the case, and there are only ten designs. I have one envelope as well, and have seen enough others to be fairly sure they were produced with all ten designs, and with at least one pre-printed indicium, 24g, gray.
The folder for WIPA 2000 says the 1933 event was held in three venues - Secession Hall, Artists House, and Military Casino. The cancels (and Registration labels) I have seen say "Sezession", "Künstlerhaus", and "Kongresshaus", so either "Military Casino" is a mistake, or it was dubbed "Kongresshaus" for the event - perhaps that was the primary venue.
Below is a display of the WIPA 1933 material I have acquired thus far, plus a few related items.
 Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933 History of Mail Transport 5 of the colors, blocks of 2 |
 Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933 History of Mail Transport All 20 colors |
 Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933 History of Mail Transport Proofs in original colors (signed by Hesshaimer) |
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The History of Mail Transport seals were issued in advance of the show, as publicity. They were so popular that their initial printing was exhausted quickly, and they had to be reprinted. Probably because it was felt that collectors would enjoy having even more colors, the reprints were done with different colors from the originals. (This is not mere theory - the folder for WIPA 2000 confirms it.) As far as I can tell, the two printings are equally plentiful. The colors are quite distinct, once you have examples, but I don't think you could match a stamp to my scans, as the characteristics of my scanner combined with the idiosyncracies of your monitor or printer introduce too much distortion. |
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 Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933 History of Mail Transport Colors of 1st Printing |
 Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933 History of Mail Transport Colors of 2nd Printing |
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(Scans courtesy of Roger Riga) |
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Full sheet of Philatelic
Exhibition
Seals - WIPA 1933
History of Mail Transport
Below is an image from an eBay auction, showing a set of ten of the transport stamps with a 1933 WIPA glassine envelope, implying that this is how the sets were distributed to attendees.
Transport stamps with original envelope
The WIPA postal stationery was apparently PTPO (Printed to Private Order), a fairly common practice at the time - businesses and events had their designs added to official postal stationery. As is common with international philatelic shows, each day was connected with a specific theme or event, nine of which were commemorated with these cards. The tenth (the train) is actually dated the day before the show started. I have seen multiple examples of all ten of the History of Mail Transport designs on these cards, and the inscription with each design is always the same, so I do not think other combinations of language/image/theme/date exist. However, I have seen many different combinations of image and postal indicia on the postal cards, so there would seem to be many varieties of those. Envelopes are much scarcer than cards. I assume there were items of some other type issued for the other seven days of the show, but have not seen any, so I may be wrong.
 Postal Card WIPA 1933 Train - June 23 French text 2nd Congress of European Stamp Dealers |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Mail Carrier - June 25 French text 2nd International Congress of Philatelic Workers (?) |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Airplane - June 26 French text 2nd International Congress of Aero-Philatelists |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Rocket - June 29 German text Austrian Philatelists Day |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Post Rider - July 1 German text Alliance Day of German Philatelists Union |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Zeppelin - July 2 German text German Philatelists Day |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Sailing ship - July 3 French text 4th International Congress of the Philatelic Press |
 Postal Card WIPA 1933 Modern ship - July 4 French text International Congress of Collectors of Postal Entires |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Auto - July 6 French text 8th Congress of the FIP (International Philatelic Federation) |
 Post Card WIPA 1933 Mail Coach - undated text in all three languages |
I have accumulated images of WIPA postal cards with NINETEEN DIFFERENT combinations of preprinted postal indicia (below). This is an astonishing number, and strange as it seems today, suggests to me that the indicia were printed on the cards, on demand, at the show. Further supporting this theory is the irregular placement of the indicia - some are even crooked.
Post Cards
WIPA 1933
Nineteen different postal indicia!
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Special cancels on back of Merkure sheet There were three special cancels per day of the show, one for each of the three venues. |
 Envelope WIPA 1933 Rocket design plus HOMT label overprinted for later show |
 Envelope WIPA 1933 show emblem |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Miscellaneous souvenirs and cancels |
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 Registration Label WIPA 1933 Sezession |
 Registration Label WIPA 1933 Künstlerhaus |
 Registration Label WIPA 1933 Kongresshaus |
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The WIPA 2000 folder I own says there were three special Registration labels created for WIPA 1933, a great honor at the time. These etiquettes were a popular collecting specialty then, since they were carefully controlled by the postal authorities, and were printed specifically for each town. This may have been the first time any had been created for a philatelic event. |
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 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Half-sheets of Mercury labels |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Half-sheets of Mercury labels |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Half-sheets of Mercury labels |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Full sheet of Mercury labels |
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| These labels are reprints of the first Austrian newspaper stamps, issued in 1851. The original dies were used to create new dies with "WIPA 1933" in place of "K.K. Zeitungs Post Stampel", from which plates of 16 entries were produced. The plates were used on presses installed at the show to print these sheets for distribution to attendees. Nine different colors were used, all of which are shown above. | ||
St. Stephens Cathedral Labels |
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 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Vienna labels - English text |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Vienna labels - German text |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933 Vienna labels - French text |
These labels are the WIPA 1933 items I know least about. The building depicted is St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna (Stephansdom). As far as I know, this is a complete collection, ten colors in three languages - German, French, and English. But I do not know where or when they were distributed, i.e. before or during the show. Their design was created by Ludwig Hesshaimer, who designed the transport labels as well. But these were printed by A. Schuricht, about whom I have been unable to learn anything.
October 16, 2006 - Peter Sanders, a collector from Schijndel, Netherlands, sent the scan below, of a large multiple of the Stephansdom labels, demonstrating that all three languages were printed on the same sheet! Since there is no selvedge, it is impossible to say from this example what a full sheet looked like, but my guess is that is was 12 wide by ten high, so what we see here is a half sheet.
St. Stephens Cathedral Seals
WIPA 1933
And here's an image I found on eBay, of a set of singles (English text) with the envelope apparently used to distribute them.
St. Stephens Cathedral Seals
WIPA 1933
Advance publicity postcards in French, German and English, and many colors
Also from eBay, a ticket booklet.
Philatelic Exhibition Seals - WIPA 1933 History of Mail Transport Overprint for Fund-raising drive Verband Österreichischer Philatelisten Vereine Verbandsheimspende |
 Transport seals overprinted for later events |
 Souvenir Sheet Reprints of transport seals (Perf and Imperf) |
 Cinderellas WIPA 1933
I bought these on eBay, described as "Reproductions". |
Ludwig Hesshaimer (1872-1956) prolific Romanian commerical artist who specialized in woodblock prints and engravings, produced paintings, drawings, and book illustrations, but always preferred to design postage stamps, for which he developed early in his youth a lifelong passion. During his long career he designed stamps for Liechtenstein, Iceland, Austria, Hungary and Colombia, as well as many related items such as the labels he created for the WIPA shows.
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Revised -- 05/11/2008
