1952 laissez-passer with a twist
Surprising visa inside an early Israeli travel document.
What at first looked like another early Israeli travel document turned out to be something much more interesting and important enough, I believe, to write an article about.
Before we go into the document some words may be needed to be added first regarding the issuing of Israeli travel documents, the early versions, from 1948 to around 1952.
The fundamental tool that all governments use in order to print out their official material. Here are several as examples: the US Government Printing Office, British TDLR, German Bundesdruckerei, French Imprimerie Nationale etc., and also Israel has its own official printer: Government Printer (D.M. – ד.מ.)
Israel “inherited” it’s Government Printer (GP) from the terminated British Mandate in 1948, which was originally established in an old winery, in what was a German settlement colony called Sharona. The Winery went bankrupt and it turned into a printing press in the 1930’s. The printing press went into Jewish control during the early stages of the War of Independence also known as the 1948 Israeli-Arab war which was the 2nd stage of the 1947-49 Palestine war. The location, known earlier as Sharona colony changed its name to the HaKirya in 1948, after the founding of the state. From then onwards for about a period of 4-5 years, Israel issued 3 different types of travel documents which were NOT yet considered as a national passport (Israel did not have an official passport during its first 5 years: from 1948 to 1953 it had a travel document “Au lieu de Passeport National”):
- End of 1948 to the end of 1949-> first version without the national emblem;
(The Israeli national emblem was officially chosen during the first half of 1949)
- End of 1949 to mid-1950-> second version WITH the national emblem;
- Mid-1950 to end of 1952-> third version of the travel document.
Following the Citizenship Law of 1952 (see also Israeli nationality law), Israel began to print and use official passports at the end of that year and stopped using the Laissez-Passer as a means of travelling. From 1953 everyone began to use passports only, unless they were not entitled to, thus being then issued travel documents or Identity Certificates.
The passport:
Israeli laissez-passer No. 54522 was issued on May 13th 1952 to Eliezer Finkelstein aged 24 at Zurich, making this also a consular issue. Interesting enough, his “nationality” was undetermined, not being clear enough and he was not considered an Israeli citizen properly which would have allowed him to obtain a the laissez-passer in au lieu de passeport national (there are several reasons for this, one of them that he could have refused to accept Israeli citizenship or become a citizen in order to maintain his original other status/nationality, if he had one). We can see that when he was given the travel document here the above-mentioned phrase was hand-deleted.
The passport has a very limited number of visas inside but the significant one dating from June 24th and issued at the Austrian Consulate General in Zurich by 61 year old Konsulatssekretär Josef Rheinberger (!), and for this reason I decided to write the article here. This official has an amazing historical background and past while serving on various diplomatic postings! He originally was attached to the Austrian diplomatic mission at Belgrade in 1935, then Yugoslavia, and in 1938 moved to the consulate at Zagreb. The interesting point is that after Germany took over Austria (Anschluss) he opted to change sides and work for the German Foreign Ministry! Several years ago his diplomatic pre-1938 passport surfaced and from online images we can tell that he continued to use his Austrian document until 1939, most likely by then being issued a German diplomatic passport for his posting at Zagreb (I added sampled images from various visas issued by this diplomat and an image from his 1935 diplomatic passport as well).
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
