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a close up of a postcard with a picture of a man on ita close up of a piece of paper with handwriting on it
Stanley’s Auction

303 - Philippines – Manila, 1908. Postal stationery card from the …
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Estimate €80 - €150
Sale commission
Description
Philippines – Manila, 1908. Postal stationery card from the Philippines under American administration, with a 4-centavo printed stamp (featuring the effigy of McKinley), cancelled in Manila (13 November 1908), with an Antwerp arrival postmark dated 16 December 1908, and a handwritten ship endorsement “p. S.S. Zafiro” indicating carriage by a named steamship. Violet commercial handstamp “EL ORIENTE – Fábrica de Tabacos – O. Ingenohl – Manila”. Addressed to Mr Stanislas Pauwels, 140 Boulevard Léopold, Antwerp (Belgium). On the reverse, a handwritten message in French, dated Manila, 11 November 1908, in which the writer expresses his gratitude for a congratulatory card on his appointment as a Knight of the Order of Leopold, and apologises for the delay, having just returned from the northern provinces of the Philippines where he endured three typhoons and terrible floods. The message is signed ‘Ingenohl’ — the El Oriente cigar factory belonged to Carl Franz Adolph Otto Ingenohl, a German-born industrialist who became a naturalised Belgian citizen, resided in Antwerp and travelled regularly to the Far East to oversee his tobacco plantations and cigar factories in the Philippines and Hong Kong; the Belgian honour announced in the message is entirely consistent with his Belgian nationality and his connections to Antwerp. Fate was to add a curious twist to this story: Ingenohl’s brother, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, commanded the German High Seas Fleet at the outbreak of the First World War — and for that reason the American authorities seized the Manila factory in 1917 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, despite Carl’s Belgian citizenship. He fought for a decade to recover his property, winning a case before the United States Supreme Court in 1927. The Belgian knighthood so proudly announced on this card in 1908 thus takes on, in hindsight, a poignant historical resonance. A fine example combining postal history, the history of Belgian enterprise in the Far East, and a first-hand account by a prominent figure in the colonial tobacco trade. Keywords: philately, marcophily, postal stationery, US administration, McKinley, ship endorsement, S.S. Zafiro, maritime mail, cigar industry, tobacco, Order of Leopold, Antwerp, incoming mail from Belgium, Far East. The descriptions are based on our interpretation of the postmarks and handwritten inscriptions, which are sometimes difficult to decipher; they are provided in good faith and without guarantee.
See original version (French)
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About the sale Asian Art
Auction location
Auction time 07/16/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits:
SANCHEZ Hugo
See original version (French)
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