Civil Censorship Study Group

The cover shown in the attached scan has a handstamp of the National Comptroller (or Controller) General, Control Office. I have found no record of civil censorship in Venezuela during WWII. Unfortunately there is no collector organization devoted to Venezuelan philately outside of Caracas, and the link that I have to their website is down.

What I see here strongly suggests currency control. The cover is from a private person to a health department in the US, probably requesting a document for which there would have been a fee. The handstamp is applied over the flap, suggesting that the cover was submitted open to the Controller General's office where it was examined, sealed and stamped before being allowed into the mails. The presence of 2 examiner numbers on the US resealing tape suggests that when the cover was opened in Miami, something of value was found to be enclosed.

Beyond that (and this is perhaps a bit of a stretch), is the appearance of "Controle" in French and Greek censor devices (the latter specifically dealing with currency control), suggesting that the Sala de Control was doing more than auditing the governmental accounts.

Anyone who can shed light on any of this, or who has other examples of this or similar markings, is encouraged to post a reply here.

Good afternoon,

I´m not an expert in law, but looks like this has nothing to do with currency control as we know it (opening and/or inspection of mails). It seems more like a private use of an official cachet. A naif try to evade US censorship?"

"Contraloria General de la Nación" of Venezuela ( a kind of "Court of Auditors") was created by President Eleazar López Contreras in 1938 (15th of July) and deals mainly with fiscal control of public agencies. It was divided into 3 different sections or "salas" :

-Sala de centralización.
-Sala de examen.
-Sala de CONTROL.
In Spain, the High Court or Tribunal Supremo is also divided in "salas".
If you "google" Contraloria General de la Nación" and sender´s name, there are some matches.......I have no time today for checking it , but I´ll try it tomorrow.

I hope this helps
Sorry for my bad english!

Best regards.
Jose M.

Hello Jose,

Many thanks for your quick reply, and for the inspiration to check the name of the sender and the Comptoller's office. I should have thought to do that on my own. Getting old, I guess.

Following your suggestion I found a single Google entry that contained both Contraloria General de la Nación and Adolfo Weisshaar. http://www.pgr.gob.ve/dmdocuments/1948/22773.pdf

This linked to a 1948 issue of the Gaceta Oficial. Both names do appear in that publication, but they are not related. There is a record of a decree of the Contraloria on page 8, but Weisshaar's name comes up (also on page 8) only in a proceeding of the Tribunal Nacional de Reparaciones de Guerra where he is a witness to the non-culpability for acts of aggression by a German subject.

Looking further, by Googling "adolfo weisshaar" Venezuela, I found an entry at http://www.cenco-zotti.com/QuienesSomos_ng.php that begins "It was on November 17, 1949 that three visionary entrepreneurs, Henry Kaufmann, Adolfo Weisshaar and Heinz Petzold, and just in the aftermath of the 2. World War, founded CENTRO QUIMICO, S.A.CENCO. The original mission was to represent Venezuelan and foreign companies and to distribute their products to the chemical, pharmaceutical, veterinary, agricultural, food and flavour and perfume industries."

Various other, later, Google entries identify Weisshaar only as Citizen; not in any official capacity.

While it is possible that Weisshaar did have an official position during WWII and became a private businessman after the war (we have a big revolving door between government and business in the US as well), so far I am not able to document anything but the post-war businessman part of the equation.

I would say that at this point the question is still open as to whether the handstamp indicates some sort of official currency control, or the (mis-)use of an official handstamp (or even the use of a private fabrication) in an attempt to evade US censorship. If the latter, it certainly failed, given the examination of the cover in Miami. More examples of this handstamp (or similar ones) would certainly be useful in deciding the issue.

Dann