Official postcards

As is known, our fellow club member Ad van Tiel collects almost everything that has to do with motorcycles and can be stored in an album. His collection also includes a number of "official postcards", official postal items sent by (semi-) government institutions from before the present time, in which almost everything is arranged by e-mail and the internet.

Here's an interesting example. It is a Swiss card from 1955, with the same text on the back in the 3 official national languages German, French and Italian:

With the help of a dictionary and Google translate we have translated the German text on the back as good as possible:

Request for return of an expired "Motor Vehicle Provision Order".

The "Motor Vehicle Provision Order" relating to the vehicle described on the back of this card and bearing the date on the other side, has expired. We request that you return this document within 10 days to the Department of Army Motorization, Bern 3.
If you are unable to hand over this provision order, you must declare the loss to us in writing, together with this card.

You are relieved of the obligation to provide this vehicle in the event of war mobilization.

A renewed same obligation is reserved on the basis of the legal provisions.

Department for Army Motorization

Apparently at that time in neutral Switzerland there was, also in peacetime, an official registration of the obligation to provide a civilian vehicle in case of mobilization.

The address side should state which vehicle it is, but this information seems very limited:

The only thing that is clear is that it is a Triumph motorcycle, possibly from year (19)48.
In Switzerland, license plates are not vehicle specific, but personal, so listing a license plate number does not seem useful. The vehicle owner lives in Vicques, a town in the district of Delémont in the canton of Jura. The license plates in Jura start with the letter JU, followed by 5 numbers. Nothing on the card resembles this, so there is indeed no license plate number on it.
Furthermore, there are only some numbers, nothing that resembles a type designation, cylinder capacity or frame number. Apparently the Swiss government still trusted the honesty of its inhabitants!

With special thanks to Ad van Tiel

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