The nice thing about Postcrossing is not only getting postcards, but also being surprised by the stamps people use. That certainly applies to a card I got from Sabine from Germany. This was beautifully stamped with a sheet in remembrance of Historic Postal Routes.
After a little research, I found out that the stamp from the "Europe" series is dedicated to the history of state-commissioned mail, which in Europe can be traced back to the Middle Ages.
The term "post" is derived from the Latin "posita", which means "established" and describes the transmission routes, on fixed routes at fixed times.
The de Tasso courier family, originating from Lombardy and calling themselves von Thurn und Taxis from 1650, played a leading role in the creation of the European postal system. In 1490, the German king and later emperor Maximilian I ordered the brothers Janetto and Francesco de Tasso to set up a postal service. With the help of their family, they created the Dutch postal rate, on which letters could be sent from Innsbruck to the Netherlands and as far as Italy. It is considered the first permanently operated, centrally organized postal route in the Holy Roman Empire and the year 1490 is considered the foundation year of the modern European postal system. Post stations were built along the route, where riders exchanged their horses and the couriers handed the shipments to each other in a relay race.
In 1597, Rudolf II declared the postal system imperial sovereignty, according to which only the state had the right to establish and operate postal facilities. The de Tasso family was granted a monopoly. Since then, their descendants ran the Imperial Post. But their monopoly was not undisputed: several monarchs did not recognize them, and state postal agencies were set up for their own postal routes. By 1800, all central European cities were connected by postal routes, but no longer only by the Imperial Post, which had to relinquish routes repeatedly.
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