I don’t really know how the postage stamps of my 2 times great-grandfather, Emil Heinrich Max Lindner, came into my possession as a child. I think they were just around, and I swept them into my stamp collection, because, after all, they were stamps and I was a stamp collector. I don’t remember anyone ever saying, “Here, you can have these stamps,” but they ended up on a shelf in my closet when I was about ten; later, my family just seemed to consider them to be mine.
The funny thing is that these stamps are not what you might expect. This is not an album of different stamps from countries around the world. No, this is an old cigar box full of hundreds and hundreds of the same issues. These stamps are very special to me as a collection, because they are a revealing look into the personality of the elder Max Lindner.
First let me tell you a little about the man. Emil Heinrich Max Lindner was the son of Johann Friedrich Heinrich Lindner and Charlotte Bertram. He was born in Sondershausen, Thuringia, Germany on 11 April 1831. Somewhere along the line he met fathered a child with Friedricke Emilie Hähnert of Königsbrueck, Saxony. This was my great-grandfather, who bore his name. Were Emilie Hähnert and Max Lindner married? I still don’t know the answer to that question. If they were, the marriage had ended by 1862. Max married Christiane Charlotte Pueschel and their son, Heinrich August Gustav Lindner, was born on 28 May 1862, in Dresden, Germany. They had two more children together, Clara Pauline Minna and Heinrich. Heinrich died in 1880 at the age of 12. Max the elder was a tischler, or carpenter, who lived at Duerrerstraße 42. The 1888 address book for Dresden lists both father and son simultaneously. I was excited to see this entry with the identity of both men as Emil Heinrich Max Lindner. Within the family there has been mild disagreement about the order of the given names. They were the same. The junior Emil Heinrich Max Lindner was listed with the occupation of steinmetzgeh., or journeyman stonemason. At age 62, Max and Charlotte Lindner decided to immigrate to Cincinnati, Ohio, to join their son, Gus. They passed through Ellis Island on 17 August 1893, arriving with luggage that consisted of three bags.
So, what about my odd box of postage stamps? My great, great-grandfather’s hobby was cutting stamps into little pieces and gluing them cardboard to create artwork. I have been lucky enough to have been given one of his pieces. It is a small floral design – only about 9 inches by 11 inches. Green Ben Franklins are the leaves of the plant and pink George Washingtons are the tiny flowers.
Max’s major accomplishment was a large American eagle that my aunt had in her living room (over the fireplace, I think), although I am not sure where it is now. It was an impressive piece of work that must have required an inordinate amount of patience and a very steady hand to execute. I am not sure if this art form would be considered German Scherenschnitte or not.
I recall my mother telling me that Max would canvas his neighborhood to ask his friends and acquaintances to save their canceled postage stamps for him. As you can see, he carefully counted them and bundled them into little wrapped packages. You can tell that Max must have been a meticulous individual, but he was an artist as well. It’s funny that one of my precious possessions is an old box of worthless stamps. Max died 14 April 1912 just before my grandfather, his grandson, arrived in the United States.