their early history is bound
up with the records of the princely house of Thurn and Taxis, of which
house Count Roger set up in 1460 the first horse post between the
Tyrol and Italy. About 1535 Johann Baptista von Taxis created the
first field post offices operating with the armies of the Emperor
Charles V. against the Turks and in Italy. The hereditary monopoly
which the Thurn and Taxis family enjoyed from the fifteenth century
continued well into the nineteenth, the last remnant of it being
purchased from the family by Prussia in 1867 for three million
thalers.

The growth of Prussian dominion and the fusion of the German States
into one vast empire is well demonstrated in the stamp album by the
joint Austro-Prussian issues for the conquered Danish duchies, by the
disappearance of the States from the list of separate stamp
issuing countries, replaced at first by stamps of the North German
Confederation, and later by stamps of the German Empire.

The stamp collection plainly shows the modern progress of military
Prussia to the lead in the Germanic countries. Collectors have many
interesting postal relics of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 in the
form of Feldpost Brief, and the Franco-Prussian War brought about the
first special war stamps issued by Germany for the use of their armies
of occupation in Alsace and Lorraine, and in the invaded parts of
France (_Fig._ 233). Of this campaign there are also the "Feldpost
Brief," and the then novel form of communication by postcard was also
adopted for military purposes in the "Feldpost correspondenz karte."
From the foundation of the Empire the stamps show little change.
Being a collection of sovereign states it has never been regarded as
appropriate for the Kaiser's portrait to figure on the stamps as King
George's does on most of the stamps of the British Empire. The German
stamps to-day bear a female head (_Fig._ 234) drawn by Paul Waldroff
after a representation of "Germania" by an actress Fr[:a]ulein Anna
F[:u]hring, which so impressed the Kaiser that he adopted this as the
symbol of Germany on its stamps. On modern high value German stamps
there are pictures of more war-like interest. The 2 marks stamp shows
an allegory of the Union of North and South Germany from a painting by
Anton von Werner, with the motto "SEID EINIG, SEID EINIG" (be united,
be united!); the 3 marks (_Fig._ 235) shows a group of German princes
with the Kaiser on horseback at their head, a scene d