200 years of the k.k. Briefsammelstelle Balzers - Post horn - Liechtenstein 2017 - 220 Rappen

Liechtenstein’s postal history begins when the mail collection station was opened in Balzers on 1 September 1817 by the Austrian postal administration. Before that, the Lindauer Bote (Lindau messenger), a transport service operating between Lindau at Lake Constance and Milan, supplied letters, money and goods to the region. The new post office was integrated into the rest of the Austrian postal network so Liechtenstein was treated as a part of Austria. This is why the first Liechtenstein stamp that appeared in 1912 bore the inscription “K.K. Österr. Post im Fürstentum Liechtenstein”, i.e. Imperial and Royal Austrian Post in the Principality of Liechtenstein. Although eight years later the postal service became independent and was named “Fürstlich Liechtensteinische Post”, it remained under Austrian administration until 1921 when the treaty on the handling of the postal, telephone and telegraph services in Liechtenstein by Switzerland entered into force. The souvenir sheet to commemorate the foundation of Balzers’ mail collection station 200 years ago includes three motifs from postal history: “Postman” (face value: CHF 1.30), “Post horn” (face value: CHF 2.20) and “Stagecoach” (face value: CHF 2.80), which were produced using steel engraving and jointly equal the value of a registered letter.