Schätzungsgebühren

Recently I could add about 30 missing items to my collection via Hans. Such an addition requires rearrangements here and there in the stock books, and then you also come across something that was forgotten. I came across 2 Schätzungsgebührenmarken.

"Gebühren" is the German term for compensations. These can be compensations for all kinds of official (government) services, such as rights or fees.
The addition "Schätzung" must therefore indicate the specific purpose of these stamps.
The internet provides very little information about these types of stamps. They are not postage stamps, but they are nice items with, among other things, an image of a motorcycle on them. But what kind of stamps are these? They are tax stamps that are obtained after the inspection of a second-hand motor vehicle.

I found images of these 2 other stamps on internet.

The red one has a value of 12 RM or Reichs Mark. This was the currency in all of Germany from 1924 to 1948.
The yellow stamp from 1950 has an overprint from Reichs Mark to Deutsche Mark, or DM for short. The Deutsche Mark, also called D-Mark, was the means of payment in the western occupation zones of Germany from 1948 onwards, which formed the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) the following year, from 23 May 1949. This stamp was therefore used in West Germany.
In East Germany, the Mark der DDR, or DDM for short, became the new currency in 1948. Until 1964, the name Deutsche Mark was also used for this, although it was not the same as the West German DM. After that, the official name became Mark der Deutschen Notenbank, which was changed again in 1967 to Mark der DDR. In the West, the East German currency was usually referred to as Ostmark. After the unification of the two Germanys, the (originally West German) DM was used throughout Germany from 1990 until the introduction of the euro in 2002.

My stamps from 1961 have a motorcycle on the image, next to the car. And the letters DAT, which stand for Deutsche Automobil Treuhand. The DAT was founded in 1931 to determine the value of vehicles as an independent party "in good faith" (in German: Treuhand). The DAT still exists today.

Here a "Schätzungsurkunde" from 1949, with the stamp in the lower left corner.

The 6 cylinder "Chevrolet Limousine" has a value of 2115 RM! The stamp has a value of 20 RM, apparently 1% of the value of the vehicle.
It is remarkable that both the document and the stamp still use the Reichs Mark, while a new Mark had already been introduced in both Germanys.
The document itself states that it was issued by a station (German: "Stelle") approved by the DAT in Berlin-Charlottenburg (a district of West Berlin in that time). But that station was located in Schwerin and that is in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which was part of East Germany at the time. An East German document, therefore. Apparently the old name Reichs Mark was still used there (also).

Wim Meijer

Sources:
About the German currencies: Wikipedia
About the Gebührenmarken:
   https://www.ddr-spendenmarken.de/Staatliche_Organisationen/Gebuehrenmarken/gebuehr_4.php

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