The private decorative postmarks represent a special chapter of the "Africa field post". Contrary to the original opinion, however, these are not official formation-oriented postmarks from the field post.
Even many old "Africans" were not familiar with this type of postmark. Yes even them.
Field post senders were sometimes unable to explain the origin on their letters
themselves. In fact, it seems to be the case that clerks or field post employees often affix these stamps later for propaganda reasons.
But "normal" soldiers also made such stamps out of rubber etc. and decorated theirs in this way.
Field post letters or cards. (They are also rarely found on the contents of
letters.) One of the reasons seems to be that from April 1, 1941, the DAK officially used the palm tree with a swastika as a tactical sign. This probably encouraged mainly soldiers of the Rear Services (90% of the stamps come from these troops) to let their imagination run wild.
Even the censorship office had no objection to this arbitrariness, although a clear one here.
There was a violation of the strict regulation: No indication of the place of use!!
So far about 80 different types and motifs have become known, of which the earliest by Date early 07.1941 and the latest early 05.1943.
Due to their relative rarity and popularity, these palm temples are becoming more or less cleverly faked.
The following document shows how clever some counterfeiters are.
We deliberately refrain from specifying the characteristics between "REAL" or "FALSE". Write, as this is not intended to become a guide for potential counterfeiters.