Nowherelands: Lost Countries of the 19th and 20th Century

T.E. Lawrence (1922):

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
E.M. Dowson (1918):

A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Macca & King of the Hejaz
Mohammad Arif Kamal (2014)

The Morphology of Traditional Architecture of Jeddah:

Climate Design and Environmental Sustainability
Lawrence of Arabia (1962):

Script T.E. Lawrence, directed by David Lean.

Its winding, even streets were floored with damp

sand solidified by time

and as silent to the tread

as any carpet

THOMAS EDWARD LAWRENCE

PERIOD:
1920
COUNTRY:
ALLENSTEIN
POPULATION:	AREA:
568,024	11,547 km^2
THE BALTIC SEA MARIENWERDER MEMEL EAST PRUSSIA Allenstein ALLENSTEIN Lyck POLAND

A Summer of Independence

The heat of the day is alleviated by a cooling breeze through the maple trees that line the fields of ripening crops on the way into the town. Church bells chime in the distance. It is 11 July and less than two years since the end of the First World War. On the narrow gravel roads, people are on their way to the polling stations. They are walking in family groups, and some of them are singing to keep time. Their brown lunch sacks contain pretzels, smoked cheese and honey cakes, because today is a holiday.

Allenstein was never a country in the strictest sense of the word. In the summer of 1920, though, many people probably feel almost independent. They are going to choose whether they belong to East Prussia in Weimar Germany or Poland, and everybody over fifteen gets to vote.
The Allenstein region was generally referred to as Thousand Lakes, although, in fact, there were only two hundred of them. The area outside the densely populated districts otherwise consisted of forest and farmland, where the majority of the population of half a million lived in 1920, mostly in enclosed smallholdings, with steep roofs of straw or wood shingles. The main farmhouses were single-storey timber buildings facing outwards onto the country roads, with brightly coloured window frames and intricate carvings.

At regular intervals, the towns rose like fortresses from the gently rolling agricultural landscape. The buildings within the walls strutted in familiar North European style, with pointed church spires and blocks of brick buildings several storeys high lining the broad streets and spacious squares. And wherever you turned there were traces of disused military installations and fortifications. Because throughout its history Allenstein had rarely been left in peace, constantly ravaged by everybody from brutal Swedes to Teutonic knights – and Napoleon, of course. Throughout the First World War, the area had been a battlefield almost continuously following Russia’s fatal defeat in the Battle of Tannenberg during the heat wave of August 1914.¹³⁴

The borders that were drawn up for the electoral area of Allenstein in 1920 largely followed the area that the Masurs had inhabited since the Middle Ages. And the descendants of this ethnic group were now on their way to the polls along with a large group of Poles and ethnic Germans, who could also lay claim to centuries-long traditions in the area. Their coexistence had been anything but harmonious, often teetering on the edge of conflict. These were the problems the victors of the First World War wanted to clear up through the Treaty of Versailles, signed the year before.

The treaty had ended the four-year state of war between Germany and the Allies, and required Germany to take responsibility for the war. It must also pay out substantial war reparations and unconditionally relinquish all its colonies and disputed territories to the neighbouring countries. But in a few places, like Allenstein, the final choice was left to the inhabitants themselves.

Versailles Treaty Article 94: In the area between the southern frontier of East Prussia… and the line described below, and the line described below, the inhabitants will be called upon to indicate by a vote the State to which they wish to belong: The western and northern boundary of Regierungsbezirk Allenstein to its junction with the boundary between the Kreise of Oletsko and Angerburg; thence, the northern boundary of the Kreis of Oletsko to its junction with the old frontier of East Prussia.¹³⁵
In order to increase awareness of the plebiscite, a special stamp had been issued, admittedly in the form of an overprint on a German stamp. The stamps were valid from 3 April and would lose their face value once the result of the plebiscite was clear.

The most common motif was ‘Mother Germania’, for which the actress and silent movie star Anna Führing had modelled. She is presented as a romantic personification of the German nation, a crowned, blonde woman in armour with a striking breastplate. We can also just about see an olive branch, a symbol of peace, and a sword, unambiguously representing the opposite. The overprint bears the text Traité de Versailles.

My stamp is postmarked Lyck (now Ełk), a town in the far east of Allenstein with thirteen thousand inhabitants. Often referred to as ‘the Pearl of Masuria’, it stood on the shore of the Ełk Lake entirely surrounded by forest.

The Englishman Ernest Rennie is appointed president of the plebiscite commission and he aims for a quick and efficient conclusion. In order to ensure a peaceful process, he has posted troops from an Irish and an Italian regiment at the different polling stations.

But this soon proves to have little effect. Observers report large-scale fraud, especially on the German side. Among others, Polish polling cards have been removed, while the electoral rolls have been falsified and filled with dead people. And transport between the polling stations is arranged so that people can vote several times.

The legitimacy of the vote is further weakened by the fact that many Poles opt to stay at home after being threatened by the Heimatsdienst, a patriotic German organization that has been making its presence felt throughout the electoral region for some months. Another factor is the ongoing conflict between Poland and Soviet Russia, and Lenin’s clear ambitions of pushing communism further west. It is feared that Poland will fall, and many Masurs vote for Germany out of sheer fear.

All this meant that the outcome of the plebiscite was pretty much a foregone conclusion, although the German victory was more decisive than anybody had thought, at 97.8 per cent. The electoral commission nonetheless concluded that the plebiscite must be recognized as valid, and Allenstein must be incorporated into East Prussia from 16 August. Four days later, the provisional stamps were declared invalid.
There were many Jewish people in Allenstein, and they had probably voted for Germany, too. Reha Sokolow, who later emigrated to the USA, tells of her childhood memories of arriving with her family as an eight-year-old in the middle the 1920 plebiscite. They had travelled from Löbau¹³⁶ in Poland, where they were increasingly subject to harassment. ‘Everything was left behind – our house, our property, and my father’s businesses.’¹³⁷ In Allenstein they feel safe. The family is as German as anybody else. Reha has grown up singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’, and felt it in the very depths of her heart. And her mother loves the Kaiser. She knows he will look after the Jews. Reha quickly makes a lot of non-Jewish friends, and goes on cycling adventures with them in the forest and along the lake.
[1920: Mother Germania on a German stamp from 1916. Overprint for the occasion of the plebiscite.]

But it doesn’t last long. Gradually, the friends disappear. And after 1933 come laws restricting the activities permissible to Jews. The family flees again, to Berlin, not realising that this will bring them even closer to the fire.

In January 1945, Allenstein is occupied by Soviet forces and is eventually incorporated into Poland as part of Olsztyn Province,¹³⁸ this time without a plebiscite.
David A. Andelman (2014):

A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today
Reha Sokolow, Al Sokolow & Debra Galant (2003):

Defying the Tide: An Account of Authentic Compassion During the Holocaust.
In the area between the southern frontier

of East Prussia… and the line described

below, the inhabitants will be called upon

to indicate by a vote the State

to which they wish to belong

TREATY OF VERSAILLES, ARTICLE 94

PERIOD:
1916-1956
COUNTRY:
CAPE JUBY
POPULATION:	AREA:
9,836 (1916)	33,000 km^2
ATLANTIC OCEAN CANARY ISLANDS (SP) IFNI (SP) Tarfaya SPANISH SAHARA CAPE JUBY MOROCCO FRENCH ALGERIA

Mail Planes in the Desert

Originally, Cape Juby is just the name of a headland in the far south of modern-day Morocco. It lies on the border of the Western Sahara and has been sporadically inhabited by nomads throughout its history. The adventurer Thor Heyerdahl was almost shipwrecked on the headland during his first Ra expedition in 1969: ‘a treacherous low sandbank like a licking tongue that sticks out into the dangerous ocean current just where the coast of Africa curves off to the south’.¹³⁹ He manages to save himself by the skin of his teeth.

The Romans also spoke of this as a fearful place. Anyone who rounded this cape faced the risk of violent confrontations with all sorts of sea monsters, and they also thought a white sailor’s skin would turn black. This was why, according to Pliny the Elder (ad 13-79), Cape Juby marked the absolute limit of all responsible navigation.

In spite of that, the Spanish, British and French all showed a certain interest in this desolate collection of sandstone cliffs around 100 km east of the Canary Islands. As early as the 1600s, the Spanish conquistador Don Diego de Herrera had already built the fort of Santa Cruz de Mar Pequeña on a little island 100 m offshore, to protect Spanish sardine fishermen from hostile nomadic tribes.

These nomads belonged to the Sahrawi people, descended from a mixture of Berbers in the north and Tuaregs from the desert areas of the interior in the east. In summer, they lived by the coast, where they fished while their herds of camels, sheep and goats grazed on the sparse tufts of grass between the sandstone cliffs. Here, the families camped in pale-brown tents made of wool and goat-hair, which were tethered to the ground with hemp rope or dried dromedary gut. The Sahrawis had nothing but scorn for settled populations, and no respect for either land ownership or borders. And they were absolutely unaccustomed to acknowledging superiority or monarchs of any kind. They themselves had a long tradition of making decisions through representative councils, in a form of anarchism where even the chief had to behave properly if he wanted to remain in power.
At the end of the 1800s, the fearless Scot Donald Mackenzie investigated the Cape Juby area. ‘I carefully examined a coast-line of about 200 miles in extent, and came to the conclusion that Cape Juby was the only safe harbour that could be found on the whole coast.’¹⁴⁰

In 1876, he established the Port Victoria trading post on behalf of the London-based North West Africa Company. It was secured with high fences, and was to establish trade with the interior of the Sahara.

During his travels in the desert to the east, he discovered a depression that seemed to continue as far as Timbuktu. This prompted him to launch the ‘Flooding the Sahara’ project, which aimed to open up shipping right into the heart of the Sahara. But the idea failed to spark any interest back home in England. At the same time, conflicts were becoming increasingly frequent with the Sahrawis, and eventually with the Sultan of Morocco, too, who sent an army of twenty thousand men to wipe out the trading station in 1888. And he won, although almost one-third of his forces died of hunger and thirst.

You really have to ask whether it was worth it. There was absolutely nothing of value here: no raw materials, no women, no glory. Spain must also have realized this when it, in turn, occupied Cape Juby in 1916. Nevertheless, it marked the occasion by issuing the first local stamps: overprinted stamps from the Spanish colony of Rio Oro to the south. My stamp, from 1919, is a simple overprint on long out-dated unsold stock of Spanish stamps from 1872, bearing a royal crown. But it still incorporates the important feature of the stamp’s history: the printing ink. The red overprint was almost certainly done using synthetic aniline dye, which came onto the market just around the turn of the century. It was first made from coal, then oil, and was soon used in all printing ink. The original stamp used mineral pigment thinned out with linseed oil. It appears to be green earth, a cheap earth pigment that was extracted in large quantities in Italy. But it’s a mystery why it was used on the stamps, since it was known to be especially hard on the printing plates.

Later, Cape Juby used stamps from Morocco, which was a Spanish protectorate until 1956. The protectorate was divided in two: the northern section encompassed a little strip towards the Strait of Gibraltar, while the southern section, including Cape Juby, was generally referred to as the Spanish Sahara.
With Spanish permission, the French established a little landing strip just north of the headland in the 1920s. It served as a staging post for mail planes on their way to South America and Dakar. Their usual cargo was 30,000 letters and the occasional passenger. The author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was station manager at the base from 1927 to 1928.
In Cape Juby, day lifted the curtain on what seemed to me an empty stage. A set without shadow, without a backdrop¹⁴¹…my sole fortune consisted of a shack built against the Spanish fort, and in this shack, a basin, a pitcher of saltwater and a bed that was too short.¹⁴²
Aviation is in its infancy and he tells of a risky venture involving long distances, poor materials and constant breakdowns. What’s more, trouble with the nomads persists, and vigilance is required.
The nights in Cape Juby were divided up into quarter hours like clockwork: the sentries called out the alert to one another, one man to the next, with a loud, regulation call…and we, the passengers on this blind vessel, we heard the call grow louder as it came closer and closer, circling above our heads like seabirds.¹⁴³
There is less to fear by day.
When they [the chiefs] met us outside the forts, they wouldn’t even insult us. They turned aside and spat. And they drew this pride from the illusion of their own power. How often have I heard them say, after placing an army of three hundred rifles on war footing: ‘It’s lucky for France that it’s more than a hundred days’ march away from here.’¹⁴⁴
[1919: Overprint on a Spanish stamp, with a royal crown from 1872]
To pacify the chiefs, they are taken on plane trips, sometimes all the way to France. Some of them burst into tears at the sight of the lakes, trees and green fields down there. In Cape Juby, water is worth its weight in gold. It takes hours to dig down through the sand to ‘some mud mixed with camel urine? Water! In Cape Juby…the little Moorish children don’t beg for money, but hold out a tin can for water: “Give me a little water, give me…”’¹⁴⁵
The Cape Juby era ended in 1956 when Morocco finally gained its independence. Its name was changed to Tarfaya Strip, named for some hardy tamarind bushes that grow wild here, and the area was downgraded to a Moroccan province. The population has held steady at around five thousand to this day. The inhabitants live off fishing and some trade with the Sahrawi, who still travel in the area.

The buildings inland from the headland consist of a cluster of modest two- or three-storey houses lining a main street of brown gravel. They are typical of the first half of the 1900s, with flat roofs and walls of only partly dressed concrete blocks. Most of them are very dilapidated and at constant risk of being buried by sand.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (2016):

Night Flight
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (2000):

Wind, Sand and Stars
Arthur Cotton (1894/1912):

The Story of Cape Juby

In Cape Juby, day lifted the curtain

on what seemed to me an empty stage.

A set without shadow,

without a backdrop

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

PERIOD:
1919-1920
COUNTRY:
SOUTH RUSSIA
POPULATION:	AREA:
NO INFORMATION	1,130,000 km^2
LATVIA POLAND ROMANIA BULGARIA Moscow SOVIET REPUBLIC Kiev SOUTH RUSSIA Crimea BLACK SEA TURKEY Novorossiysk PERSIA

A White Knight Loses his Grip

There were at least five ‘times’ in use in Novorossiysk: (1) Local time; (2) Ships’ time; (3) Petrograd time – standard throughout Russia for railways and officially used by the Volunteer Army; (4) Cements Works’ time, announced by hooters every hour; (5) British Mission time, according to the Mission clocks, which were unreliable. There was about 1½ hours’ difference between the fastest and slowest of the times, the others coming in the middle. It was, therefore, difficult to keep appointments, though one could always excuse oneself for being late by the explanation that one had thought the hour arranged was by such or such a ‘time’.¹⁴⁶

The British journalist Carl Eric Bechofer was confused. He had arrived in the port of Novorossiysk on the northeast coast of the Black Sea late in November 1919. It was a month since he’d travelled there by boat from London. At that time, The Volunteer White Army had been on the offensive, ready to attack Moscow. Now, the fortunes of war had turned and the White Army forces were fleeing south at breakneck pace, towards the town where Bechofer had just landed.
It had all started a couple of years earlier in the wake of the Russian Revolution. After the coup against Tsar Nicholas II in 1917 a group of generals loyal to the Tsar had fled to the Caucasus to consolidate resistance against the red Bolsheviks. Among them was General Anton Ivanovich Denikin. His generous waistline, Hindenburg moustache and goatee beard gave him a solid appearance, but he may have been lacking on the intellectual front, according to the British agent, Sidney Reilly.¹⁴⁷ Even so, he managed to scrape together a considerable force that would serve as the southern flank of the Volunteer White Army. An equivalent group under the leadership of General Kolchak would cover the area to the east and further into Siberia. It was an exaggeration to describe this as a volunteer army: forced conscription was widespread.

The Whites were supported with weapons and money from France, the USA, Poland and England, which hoped that a victory would help return the market for European goods to pre-war levels. They also expected the Whites to recognize the substantial loans Nicholas II had contracted with American and European banks during his reign.

In spring 1919, Denikin informally established what was known as the South Russian Government. It stretched all the way from the Caucasus Mountains in the southeast to Kiev, with fertile plains on either side of the Dnieper River, and an extensive coastline, which included the Crimean Peninsula in the south. Here he established a number of local administrative posts, with awe-inspiring military courts. Treason and assisting the enemy resulted in summary execution, without any fuss. On the whole, Denikin ruled with a firm hand.

In autumn 1919, the Whites embark on a major offensive against Moscow. It is a failure, largely because of bickering among the generals. In addition, the soldiers are poorly trained and there are no logistics in place for securing provisions. The soldiers have to find their own food along the way. This leads to extensive looting, and conflicts with the local population. It ends in the massacre of whole villages, particularly those with Jewish inhabitants, who are assumed to be supporters of the Bolsheviks. The Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky, describes the behaviour of the Whites as ‘a comet with a filthy tail of robbery and rape’.¹⁴⁸ And many of the peasant population who have been fairly uninvolved in the conflict up until now join the Reds.

It is also a cold autumn. A porter at Novorossiysk railway station answers without hesitation when Carl Eric Bechhofer asks him who he thinks will win: ‘The Bolshevists, for sure. You see, they have warm clothes.’¹⁴⁹

On the train north, Bechhofer meets a beautiful young woman with a big basket of butter. She is thinking of selling it closer to the front line, where the profits are higher. He shakes a finger at her jokingly: ‘So you’re a speculator.’ She laughs. ‘Well what about it? Who isn’t a speculator nowadays?’¹⁵⁰

For Bechhofer, the next question is where it is safe to get off the train because the front line is constantly shifting backwards and forwards. In the recent past, Kiev has been captured and re-captured a grand total of sixteen times. The city’s great cathedral has been alternately refurbished as a place of worship by the Whites and a corn store by the Reds.¹⁵¹
By spring 1919, Denikin had seen to it that the South Russian government got its own stamps. My block of four is from the first batch produced in May. There is plenty of residual gum, which is golden brown and probably produced from slaughterhouse waste, unlike later issues. I can confirm that it still tastes of boiled down horse-carcasses.

The main motif is tiny, set in an inner oval and surrounded by floral ornaments. Nonetheless, there is little doubt that it portrays a knight wielding a lance. It is, of course, Don Quixote’s antithesis: Saint George. He had already earned a place on the Tsar’s coat of arms for saving towns and beautiful maidens from Muslims and greedy dragons, if only in the world of myths. It is nonetheless clear that Denikin identifies with this. Much of his motivation comes from religion. He is strictly Russian Orthodox and is taking an increasingly indignant view of the blasphemous behaviour of the Reds.

In the wartime winter of 1920, South Russia experiences severe inflation. My block of four, which is postmarked 20 January, consists of 35-kopeck stamps whose individual value was insufficient to send even the smallest letter. A couple of months later, all the unused stamps are collected up, and much higher prices are overprinted. The price of the 35-kopeck stamp is raised to five roubles, equivalent to five hundred kopecks.

By that time, South Russia is heading into the sunset. By the end of March, only the Crimean Peninsula remains, with a little strip of coast right in the north. The South Russian government under General Denikin is dissolved on 30 March, when he hands over leadership of the White Army to Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangel, a fanatical aristocrat who looks as decrepit as a superannuated high court judge. As Denikin is being evacuated on a British man-of-war, Baron von Wrangel sets up the Government of South Russia – in other words, he just reshuffles the original name.

[1919: miniature motif of St. George on the Denikin army issue.

Brown sticky side, which indicates a production date in May 1919]

Von Wrangel’s forces keep a firm grip on Crimea through the summer and autumn. Many are killed in constant skirmishes with the Reds. The following winter looks set to be even harsher than the year before, and soldiers freeze to death, even after stuffing their shirts with moss. In November, the Whites give up and the remainder of the army is evacuated with what’s left of the Russian Black Sea fleet. We’re talking about almost 150,000 people here, including the soldiers’ families. In the years that follow, most of them are settled in Balkan countries.

The generals flee further. Denikin settles in the USA, where he dies of a heart attack in 1947 after writing five fat volumes of memoirs.¹⁵² Baron von Wrangel starts an association for what remains of the White officer corps, whose object is revenge. He is probably poisoned by a Soviet agent after settling in Belgium.