Old Austria - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2005 - 100 Euro Cent

The building, which housed the post office from 1903 until its abolition on 1 October 1914, is located in the Old City of Jerusalem opposite the Jaffa Gate. The k.k. was set up in 1849 in Jerusalem, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. (Deputy) Consulate maintained its postal service with the home by the steamer of the Austrian Lloyd, which started the port of Beirut. When Lloyd expanded its route to Jaffa, an Austrian postal service was set up between the two cities. Due to an agreement of k.k. Foreign Ministry with the Sublime Porte was founded in 1859 in Jerusalem, the Austrian Post Office. The transport of the consignments on the 70 km long route was provided by mounted kawassen of the consulate with packhorses, later with wagons. Since there were also value shipments, it came to robberies by Bedouins, which not only postal couriers but also Turkish gendarmes fell victim. This explains why the postage was very expensive. At the beginning of the seventies of the 19th century, a letter to Central Europe cost about one gold franc. Although France, Russia and later also the German Reich and Italy had post offices in Jerusalem, pilgrims and locals had the most confidence in the Austrian Post. Not even a Turkish branch post office in the Israelite quarter, which was headed by a member of the Mosaic religion, used a stamp with Hebrew letters and granted considerable discounts on the sale of stamps. The end for the Austrian post office in Palestine and in the rest of the Ottoman Empire came abruptly, as for all other foreign postal facilities, when the Turkish government took advantage of the outbreak of the First World War to lift the special rights for foreigners and all foreign post offices operating on their territory ,