Nansen Passport 1925 – Free City Of Danzig

NANSEN PASSPORT – FREE CITY OF DANZIG, Germany 1925 and valid till 1926, with revenue and stamps

CONGRATULATIONS to the seller and buyer! See the footer of the ID-Card, which shows it’s a NANSEN CERTIFICATE OF IDENTITY. This travel document is the first NANSEN I saw, which was issued by the FREE CITY OF DANZIG (Gdansk), which is now part of Poland. NANSEN DOCUMENTS for refugees are rare to find for passport collectors and, therefore, a high-ranking item on each collector’s wish list. I am glad to have very few examples in my collection.

Nansen passports were internationally recognized identity cards first issued to stateless refugees by the League of Nations. Designed in 1922 by Fridtjof Nansen, in 1942, they were honored by governments in 52 countries and were the first refugee travel documents. Approximately 450,000 Nansen passports were issued, helping hundreds of thousands of stateless people to immigrate to a country that would have them. The Nansen International Office for Refugees was awarded the 1938 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to establish the Nansen passports.

The Nansen passport was developed as a result of a series of citizenship laws in European countries, including but not limited to the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, that excluded millions of ethnic minorities, which were erstwhile residents in their states, from attaining citizenship. Hundreds of thousands of them stayed permanently abroad. It proved to be a great success, one of the few that could be attributed to the League of Nations.

While Nansen passports are no longer issued, present national authorities, including the United Nations, issue documents for stateless people and refugees. These include a Certificate of Identity (or Alien’s Passport), Travel Document (also known as a “Refugee Travel Document”), and Laissez-Passer.

Nansen Passport 1925 – Free City Of Danzig

Tom Topol | Passport Historian & Author
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