Catalogues

Design errors - GERMANY
	Georg Friedrich Händel died in 1685, not in 1585. When the error was discovered, a new stamp was immediately issued.

1875	Pfennige or Pfennig, undecided till finally Pfennig was agreed in 1880.

1875	Pfennige or Pfennig, undecided till finally Pfennig was agreed in 1880.

1900	Einig, in the middle of a sentence, has to be written with e instead of E

1902	Some of those Germania-stamps show DFUTSCHES REICH instead of DEUTSCHES REICH.

1919	This airplane, with a too long fuselage and without propellers, is unable to fly.

1919-20	Nude bricklayer at work.

1921	Deutsches was first written with a short S, and afterwards corrected with a long S on new stamps

1921	The horses are not attached to the plough, and the naked farmer has no way top steer them.

1922	Three men and a boy making an horse-shoe, with hammers wielded in a dangerous and impossible way.

1924	This stamp from 1924 featuring Cologne, includes a bridge which has been demolished before the First World War.

1933	Hans SACHS (1494-1576) with an oil light that will be invented ... in 1855.

1934	A wireless phone, more than 50 years before the GSM was invented

1935	Inverted portrait of J.S. BACH

1935	Due to an error in the printing plate the birthdate of Händel became 1585 instead of 1685.

1936	The runner holds the torch at eye level, and will certainly be burned by smoke and flame

1939	Stamp issued to commemorate the ‘Reichsparteitag des Friedens’ in 1939. But as the war had already started, the event was cancelled,

1940	Inverted image of the townhouse of Thorn.

1940	The young foal's hide has the same light colour as her mare - when it should in fact still have its first dark hide.

1940	The Hamburg Derby was for jockey's, not for riders in uniform, and is a flat race with no hedges or jumping.

1943	The designer wanted a rising sun, as symbol for the nazi-regime. But he put it in the west, prefiguring perhaps the fall of that regime.

1943	St George slaying the Dragon : perhaps a questionable illustration during World War II as St George is a well known symbol for Great Britain.

1944	Inverted German cross on the tail of this plane

1945	Instead of the coat of arms of the region of SAARLAND, the stamp shows the coat of arms of the city of SAARBRÜCKEN.

1947	The sunrays are broken by the handle of this shovel

1951	Witch with only four fingers at both hands.

1951	The mediaeval frescoes of this church had been vanished during centuries. During the restauration they were removed by accident. A local minor artist replaced them in time for the inauguration, but some time later the forgery was discovered (the artist included some portraits of his relatives, even from the filmstar Marlene Dietrich). The frescoes were cleaned off, only the stamps remain as witnesses of the fraud.

1951-53	Bell of Freedom with the tongue to the left, speedily corrected with the tongue to the right, and finally, to avoid further discussions, with the tongue in the middle.

1952	The stamp was soon withdrawn, as the postmark did not hold on the coated paper, and could easily be removed.

1952	The stamp shows postal traffic between New-Ulm and Glänsberg around 1846, and has nothihng to do with 'Letter post despatch Thurn & Taxis 1852'.

1953	A printed 7 never has a small horizontal line. See other stamp.

1954	The so called Gutenberg Bible was not completed before 1456, certainly not in 1454, and it is not sure that this bible was printed by Gutenberg.

1955	Wrong : Florentine Nightingale - Correct : Florence Nightingale

1957	Many errors even for a black and white representation : silver lion in first quarter, silver eagles on a red band in the third quarter, lion on a black field in the fourth quarter.

1957	The protection doors have to be closed first, before the lift is activated.

1958	This well known folk song starts with : Fox, you have stolen a geese. There is however nothing in the original text indicating that the geese should be provided with long ears.

1959	Free as a bird ! At least the yellow one that was drawn outside the cage !

1959	Stamp commemorating A. Riese who discovered the famous 'proof of nine' for multiplications. The figure 2 on the stamp, however, should have been 7 !

1959	The design of this stamp was based on an existing portrait of Jacob Fugger, but has wrongly been mirrored.

1959?	Stamp featuring a stamp from 1859 with error : facial value 2 shilling, but in letters zwei ein halb.

1960	Stamp showing the cross and other symbols of the Cruxifiction, but omits the highly significant Crown of Thorns.

1960	Turn the stamp upside down and hide the left side : with a little bit imagination, Stalin's head will appear

1961	The girl leaves and comes back home with a double red-lined apron, which on her way becomes single-lined. Furthermore her green dress suddenly becomes blue.

1961	Inverted portrait of J.S. Bach, comparing to the original painting of Hausmann.

1961	Inverted picture

1962	View of 1783 from the Waisenbrücke, showing a tower that was distroyed the year before, in 1782.

1962	Snow White and the seven Dwarfs : when poisoned, she wears a short-sleeved blouse, an apron and a skirt with green dots. But in her coffin, she is wearing a long-sleeved blouse, no apron and a skirt with short blue lines.

1962	View of the Berliner castel from 1703. The statue in from of the castel, however, was built in 1709.

1963	Story of the Wolf and the seven Kids. The mother leaves the house wearing a green-striped blouse and a skirt with red crosses and a green pattern. On her return all these colors have changed, and the collar of the youngest Kid has moved from green to blue.

1963	The image in the mirror looks to the wrong direction

1964	Some people saw a Hitler face, hidden somewhere in the trees. To avoid further speculations, the stamp was redesigned a little bit later, but this time the top of the trees was carefully removed !

1964	The story of Sleeping Beauty : when the princess was waken by the prince, she wears a yellow instead of a red dress.

1964	Stamp issued in 1964 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication by Kekulé of the formule of benzole. Kekulé's theory was in fact formulated and published in 1865.

1965	Look carefully at the yellow bus. It is obvious that the front side of the bus is left. Which means that the doors have been drawn on the left side of the bus. In that way, people have to enter and leave the bus in the middle of the road !

1965	Flags and sails are blown by the wind in different directions.

1965	Noisy restaurant as the radiowaves seem to issue from the restaurant, not from the antenna located above.

1965	Cinderella weares another dress between the first and second stamp, another belt between the second and third stamp. And the Price another crown between stamp 3 and 4.

1965	Thurn UUD Taxis instead of UND.

1965	Tegel castle has pointed ornaments on top, omitted perhaps to leave room for the inscription ?

1966	This dynamo is wrongly poled.

1967	Centenary of the Bethel Institution, founded in 1867 and taken over by Friedrich von Bodelschwingh in 1872. The portrait on the stamp however is of his son.

1967	According to the fairy tale Frau Holle, the golden rain and the pitch rain stick firmly to the clothes of the two sisters, and is not falling behind them.

1968	Rudolf HARBIG never participated to the Olympic games. He was a world record holder.

1969	This map was pictured upside down, with the nord at the bottom of the design.

1969	The characteristic wrinckled, plastic formed roof on the Cultural Palace in Dresden has been coimpletely levelled on the stamp.

1969	The horse with rider does not have neither swipe nor harness, and the rider must sit on the left horse as the right horse is the 'hand-horse'.

1969	50th anniversary of airmail : by mistake the personal plane of Hitler was pictured on this stamp.

1969	Horselegs touch the ground crossed, and not two legs from the same side at the same time.

1970	In this 'flaming sun' the number of threads are supposed to match the number of coutries in CEPT, 24 at the time the common issue of this stamp was conceived, but before the stamp was issued Jugoslavia and Malta also joined, so there should have been 26 threads (France and Andorra got it right).

1971	The old town of Nürnberg is hardly to be recognized on this stamp.

1971	The stamp shows a drawing from the astronomer J. Kepler. But soms signs or letters were changed or omitted.

1972	Missing abbreviation dot after the A.

1973	The planet Venus has disappeared, while an unknown planet is circling around the sun on the same lane as the earth.

1973	Missing left frontwheel of this coach, that should have been visible like the rear one.

1973	One platform of this tower has disappeared : there are six platforms, not five.

1973	The anti-pollution logo is shown inverted. The olive branch which reaches the center of the stamp is shown right instead of left.

1974	The design of this stamp was based on an existing protrait of Immanuel Kant, but has wrongly been mirrored.

1974	The left letterbox shows that it will be lifted between 17 and 20 h. These hours do not correspond to the lifting hours in 1896, when these letterboxes were in use.

1974	The colours of this rainbow were inverted.

1974	In 1948, the american flag had only 48 stars (6rows of 8 stars), not 50.

1975	The stick of the number-6 player is missing.

1975	Stamp honouring the authoress Annette KOLB (1870-1967), giving her birth date as 1875. In this case, nobody is to blame, as she had assumed her sister's date of birth, and never admitted her own real age.

1975	On modern resistors, numbers have been substitued by colors. Gold and silver are always on the right side (tolerance of 5 or 10%), thus the third band can never been gold and the fourth one never green.

1975	The stamp claims to illustrate the year 1475, the armours however are from the 16th century which can be seen at the knee protection and the types of lances.

1976	Missing dot after the C in H.J.C. von Grimmelshausen.

1976	Instead of the Southern Golden Plover (Pluvialis apricaria) which is highly endangered and has the be protected, the stamp shows the very common Northern Golden Plover (Pluvialis apricaria altifrons) with black throat and breast.

1976	This stamp illustrates a rowing event not, as might be expected, with the rowing four which had won a gold medal for the Federal Republic at Munich, but with the rowing four of the D.D.R.

1976	By shot-put, long hair his not allowed, or has to be kept together.

1977	STRASSBURG do not match neither with the French nor the German name of the city.

1977	The owner's flag was not triangular but had a square shape. And a white line was painted all along the ship.

1977	Sails and flags are not flying in the same direction. Correct on ohter stamp od this series.

1977	Ship in open sea without crew.

1978	Townhall of Bamberg with only seven windows on the fist floor, and eight on the second floor. In fact each floor has nine windows.

1978	The photo shows a walking bridge running all the way under the ship, on the stamp it is divided in several sections.

1980	The flags are pointing in different directions

1981	Misquotation from the German Federal Republic Charter. Wrong : Die Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus - Correct : Alle Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus.

1981	The designer of the stamp moved arbitrarily the notes on the background to fill the space, so that, for instance, measure 1 of the second trumpet became mesure 3 of the timpani.

1981	The location of the Von Neumayer Polar Research Station was modified. The stamp still shows the original location, the red arrow the real location.

1982	This car is not a Tourenwagen 1913 from Daimler Benz but rather the equivalent from 1924.

1982	The flags from The Netherlands and Luxemburg are identical, except for the blue colour : on the Dutch flag, the blue color is a little bit darker.

1982	Flags in different directions.

1985	The left horse is pulling on a chain, the right horse on nothing. and the draught-horse is connected with the pole in an impossible way.

1986	A music score with six lines ?

1986	The red right car has been equipped with red break lampps in front…

1986	No runners in lane 1 and 2, but 2 runners in lane 3.

1986	'Stamp Day' but one ot these stamps, the third from left, had nothing to do with Stamp Days, it was issued to copmmemorate 125 years of stamps in 1965.

1987	The trigger of one of the rifles was designed in an inverted position.

1987	The blason of East Berlin instead of West Berlin was pictured on this stamp : the coat of arms with the bear should be pointed, not rounded.

1987	The design of the castle of Charlottenburg was ovver-simplified : the characteristic weather-clock in the shape of a woman has disappeared, as have the stautes on the roof.

1987	Bicycles without brakes, and horses without reins.

1989	The violin in the postmark has no sound aperture behind the strings.

1989	Instead of the data from 1989, the data of 1995 were shown.

1989	The reins and chains of the left horse are interrupted.

1990	One hundred year 1 May is not a strong message. Better would have been : One hundred year Labor Day.

1991	The island of Madagascar was forgotten on this map. See correct map on other stamp.

1992	Stamp commemorating A. Riese who discovered the famous 'proof of nine' for multiplications. The figure 3 on the stamp, however, should have been 9 !

1995	Inverted colours in the rainbow

1997	When the Marshall-plan was started, there were only 48 stars on the american flag (6 rows of eight stars).

1998	No printed value on the Automat stamp in the middle of the cover.

1998	The sails and the flags are driven by contrary winds.

1999	The claws of upside down sleeping bats are directed forwards, not backwards

1999	The shadow of the different objects has to bee parallel as the sun is far away.

2001	Greenland and Iceland are missing on this stamp.

2001	Wrong representation of the small middle tower.

2003	Inverted FA-key and the two first sharps are FA and DO, not LA and MI

2008	Flying plane with stopped engine

2009	The size and the distance between sun and planets is completely wrong.

2010	Wrong representation of the frag of the Oktoberfest in München.

2010	Only 3 players, but pawns of 4 different colours are flying around.

2014	The two front horses are not connected

Design errors - GERMANY