MICHEL-Catalogues are valued by collectors around the world as a reliable, neutral and extremely detailed source of information. In Germany the philatelic market trades almost exclusively MICHEL. The "Collectors' Bible" has worked hard to earn this reputation since the first European catalog in 1910.
Here you can read everything about the exciting and eventful history of the famous stamp catalog and the innovative innovations that are shaping philately in the 21st century.
Here follows an excerpt from the book by Wolfgang Maassen (AIJP), published in 2010, on well-known German catalog publishers. Away P. 5 of this article you can find out about current events - have fun!
"From David to Goliath": From the first price lists to the world catalog
The biblical allusion may not seem immediately understandable to every reader, but it is explained by the situation more than 100 years ago. Hugo Michel was not a nameless stamp dealer at that time, but compared to the then almost world-leading trading house of the Senf brothers, he was more of a “dwarf”, just a small, insignificant “David”. Michel founded his stamp business on April 4, 1892 in tranquil Apolda, but was quite successful with his assortment, wholesale and commission business. So successful that at the end of 1906 he gave it to his brothers Max and Heinrich Michel in order to dedicate himself to new tasks, the retail trade for collectors and, from 1909, the first creation of a “European catalogue”. Over the years he had accumulated enough wealth that enabled him to buy a handsome house at what was then Elisabeth-Straße 1909 in Weimar in 1, where he has lived privately ever since. The brand store and its publishing house continued to operate in Apolda for a few years.
Hugo's house Michels father, Johann Heinrich Michel, where he and his family lived since 1872. It can still be seen today with the one-story extension that was made later on Dornburger Strasse in Apolda. Photo: World Cup Archive/WMWith price lists was Michel not inexperienced, as he had been publishing them for his mail-order business since the 1890s. But a catalog? That was something different, something new. Michel used models of the time, which he found in the price lists of Philipp Kosack, Berlin, but also in the catalogs of Gebr. Senf, Paul Kohl and others. He adopted the small, handy format and the brevity of the catalog descriptions from Kosack, and the numbering from Senf. Since Kosack understood his price lists as such, and these were generally available free of charge, Richard Senf and his successor Heinrich Neubauer - who had owned the company since April 1, 1910 - Michels catalog was probably classified as a price list rather than a catalog, there were no copyright problems at the time.
The first, now legendary, appeared in 1910 MICHEL-Europe catalog in the format 12,5 x 19 cm, with 108 pages and a purple cover, printed by Rosenthal & Co., Berlin SO, Rungestraße 20. The paperback cost 0,60 marks and 10 pfennigs postage, bound 1 mark. and 20 Pfennig postage (foreign postage 20 or 30 Pfennig). The catalog was cheap, especially Hugo Michel initially sent it to his customers free of charge. A nota (invoice) was included, but was usually not paid. Hardly anyone at the time classified this “price list” as a “catalogue”. A mistake, as it turned out.
Michel was right with his catalog approach. In doing so, he served the “small” collectors, those for whom the Senf Brothers’ extensive and therefore correspondingly complex world catalogs were too expensive, but also those who had long since only collected Europe instead of “all over the world”. Their number increased from year to year. Until the First World War, the Senf Brothers - at that time a company with well over 40 or even at times 50 employees and hugely pompous business premises in Leipzig - did not take this seriously. They were the undisputed number 1 in Germany.
The situation changed dramatically during the First World War. Michels European catalogs were continuously published annually, Senf's world catalog was last published in 1915, then there was radio silence. The staff of the mustard company, even the owner Heinrich Neubauer, had been drafted in, the company lay idle, Richard Senf - who had long since left the company - barely kept the company magazine, the “Illustrierte Briefmarken-Journal”, alive and, albeit to a very limited extent Brand store. The publishers in Leipzig, of which there were quite a few, were no longer able to obtain paper that was classified as an important resource for the war effort and was therefore not available in the quantities required. But Hugo does Michel in Apolda. Even though he himself was obliged to serve in the war, he managed to organize paper and continue to edit the catalog at night and in his free time, so that it - as the only one - continued to appear. Before the war, Senf's catalog works had editions of up to 40 copies per catalog and Michels catalogs initially contained perhaps just ten percent of this quantity, the situation has now changed. His catalogs were in such demand that the work involved took his breath away and every free minute he had. In 1918 he seemed to be at the end of his strength and possibilities, as can be seen from his words in the catalog supplement from July 1918: “If I repeatedly emphasized in earlier supplements that as a catalog editor I would have to struggle with ever greater and ever-increasing difficulties, I regret it me, the friends of Michelcatalogue, that the next (tenth) edition of the same will most likely be the last one published during the war, and that if the war lasts longer, I will be forced to wait for the cheaper peace laurels.
After all: “David” Hugo Michel had triumphed for the first time over “Goliath”, the Senf Brothers, although also favored by luck. But Hugo Michel sought relief. He found this in 1919 at the “Verlag des Schwaneberger Album Schaufuss & Stolpe GmbH”, which had been run by the publishing bookseller Eugen Berlin since April of that year.
Sometimes you can read that Hugo Michel At that time I sold his catalog to Hugo Schwaneberger, who also worked for the publishing house of his name. But this is not the case. It is true that Hugo Schwaneberger was the editor and author of the first “Schwaneberger collective book”, which was first published in Leipzig by Grimme & Trömel in 1879 and at least until 1883. In 1884, the Leipzig publishing bookseller and print shop owner Ernst Heitmann took over the rights to the “Schwaneberger Collector's Book” and published it until 1904. The very successful album system then went to the JJ Arndt publishing bookstore in Leipzig, and five years later to the “Verlag”, which was newly founded on April 15, 1910 of the Schwaneberger Album Schaufuß & Stolpe GmbH", with which the album - and later also the publisher of the MICHELcatalog – received its world-famous name.
Hugo Schwaneberger. Photo: 1889. Template: WM archive/Renate Warnecke
Eugen Berlin himself was smart enough, Hugo Michel continues to be the externally determining publisher of the MICHEL-To have catalogs branded, i.e. to only list the publisher as the rights holder, whereby Michels position remained almost untouched. He himself would hardly have had the editorial competence at that time; He had to “buy” these and develop them over the next few years.
The company of Gebr. Senf became active again in 1919 and started publishing new catalogues, but the new publisher of the Schwaneberger Album was now clearly putting up a fight. The range of albums was significantly expanded and a new catalogue, “Hugo Michel's War Stamps Catalog 1920”, and even the first after the European Catalog 1920 towards the end of the year MICHEL-Overseas catalogue! The competition with the mustard company entered another round. Hugo Michel - as “editor” he was responsible for the catalogs until 1926 - had again adopted the Mustard catalog numbers, which he himself described at the time as “German standard numbering”. This basic system was changed and expanded over time in such a way that years later, collectors at philatelist days demanded that a uniform numbering system for catalog publishers should finally be achieved.
Early catalog supplements from the “Publisher of the Schwaneberger Album Schaufuss & Stolpe” in the early 1920s. Hugo Michel had sold his rights to the catalog in 1910 to this publisher, which was founded in 1919. Template: Munich Philatelic Library/Photo: WM
That didn't happen, but there were numerous others Michel-Catalogues. Was brilliant Michels idea of “Michel-Mark” at the time of inflation in 1922/23, which he saw as a stable currency based on gold marks and whose prices in the respective currency conversion proved to be a reliable quantity. Since the Mustard catalogs, which were published at the same time, required mathematical brain acrobatics of percentage discounts and separate surcharges, similar to the system of today's airline tickets with low-cost airlines, this round also went to Hugo Michel. He remained at the publishing house as an editorial consultant from 1926 to 1930, but from 1927 he increasingly devoted himself to his brand business and - new to him - his own auctions. From 1928 there was MICHEL'S MONTHLY BRAND MARKET, 36 pages of comprehensive rarity offers, from 1930 also some very extensive Germany price lists, from which the well-known ones were made at the end of the 1930s Michels-Netto price lists emerged, which in themselves looked more like a Germany catalog than a price list. At this time, the annual European and overseas catalogs, which Eugen Berlin himself was responsible for, had long since become strong competition for the Mustard catalogs.
MINETO Germany price list (MINETO = Michel-Netto) grabbed Hugo Michel In 1940, his original concern with the net catalog prices, indirectly a criticism of the mustard and Michel-Catalogues. Photo: World Cup Archive/WM
Even if Hugo Michel In 1930 he no longer worked as an editor at the respective MICHELcatalog himself, he sold them, as his postcard with advertising from March 12, 1931 shows. Image template: World Cup archive/Lothar Weißleder, Apolda
It was the “Publisher of the Schwaneberger Album” that first published one at the beginning of 1935 MICHEL-Germany special catalog published. The Senf company had nothing even remotely equivalent to counter the more than 400 pages of very specialized cataloging - their Greater Germany catalogs were little more than a decoupling of the cataloging in the European catalog. Eugen Berlin was able to publish four editions of this catalog by 1938, but the Second World War and the associated restrictions prevented a fifth edition. The complete ones appeared by 1942 MICHEL-Catalogues in the planned cycle, in 1943 there was another European catalog, after that only two partial catalogs, which could be printed thanks to the mediation of Hermann Ernst Sieger, the then head of the stamp department in the dealers' association in the Vienna State Printing Office. The Senf Brothers had nothing comparable to offer. The world of the well-known German catalog publishers in Leipzig had been in ruins since the British bombing raid on December 4, 1943.
