Thurn and Taxis Postal System

Thurn and Taxis postal system, imperial and, after 1806, private postal system operated in western and central Europe by the noble house of Thurn and Taxis. At least two early ancestors of the family, then called Tassis, had operated courier services in the Italian city-states from about 1290, but the family’s important postal activities began with Franz von Taxis, who served as postmaster to the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I from 1489 and to Philip I of Spain from 1504. Von Taxis secured the right to carry both government and private mail throughout the Holy Roman Empire and in Spain for a fee and thereby founded the first public-access mail service. Taxis hired many relatives to operate his vast network, and the family was granted a patent of nobility by Maximilian I in 1512. For the next 355 years, branches of the family operated local and national postal services in Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, and the Low Countries (now the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), working both with and against other couriers. The family employed up to 20,000 messengers not only to carry mail but also to deliver newspapers. From 1852 they issued postage stamps. The last Thurn and Taxis postal system was purchased and nationalized by the Prussian government in 1867. A coiled horn, part of the family’s coat of arms, remains a symbol of many European postal services.