Netherlands’ oldest printed passport?
Netherlands’ oldest printed passport?
Note: As assumed the document wasn’t sold! Many of the lots have been unsold which implies that all estimates and minimum biddings were far overestimated!
The following passport is offered by a German auction house. Estimated result: €4.800 – €10.000. I am not so sure it will be sold and will keep track and report after April 26.
Description by the auction house Netherlands’ oldest printed passport?
The Hauge, Antwerp, 6 June 1645, passport for free convoy, help and support by all public powers and offices within and outside the Antwerp area, 31 x 31.5 cm, black, beige, printed on handmade paper, folds partially repaired with handmade paper, at the left edge stuck in with tape into a (damaged) paper folder, sealed and signed “Eyckbergh” in The Hauge, issued and signed “Wijnbergen” in Antwerp, seal with the Dutch Lion. The oldest printed passport of the Netherlands we know off! Museum quality!
Before the formation of the Dutch Republic, the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands had urban and not national citizenship. No inclusive citizenship status existed for the population of the Low Countries. Citizenship was a legal status available to all inhabitants of a particular city. There were certain obligation and privileges applied to all those that were burghers (citizens). These rights were never formally written down in legal documents, instead existed as a set of practices or city rights varying in every territory.
Tom Topol | Passport History Expert & Author.
Featured in media incl. CNN, BBC, Newsweek. Awarded by the U.S. Department of State.
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