How the humble matchbox shaped my life

Bear, Gagarin, Coswig labels from DDR (35 x 50 mm)

Between the ages of 14 and 17, I started to exchange labels with collectors in Eastern Europe. For these three years regular packets of labels went to East Germany (DDR), Poland and Czechoslovakia as it was then.

It wasn’t only the labels which were exchanged but I picked up a sense of the lives of these people from the post cards and letters which they sent with their labels. From being a distant place hidden behind an impenetrable wall, it became more familiar, and spiked a curiosity about their lives which has stayed with me throughout my life.

By the time I reached my twenties studying medicine in Aberdeen, I availed myself of an opportunity to visit Russia and Ukraine with a group of medical students, and embarked on a quest to visit Romania on a Honda 50 scooter. These trips would not have happened without the labels and my exchange contacts.

Exchanging labels with DDR

My first and most longstanding contact was with a gymnast called Peter Forster who lived in the town of Zittau on the extreme south east corner of the DDR, just a few Km from Poland and Czechoslovakia.

He sent me hundreds of labels, often in used condition, as that’s what I wanted, while I sent him sets of Brymay flowers and tartans plus other current sets from outside his orbit, like those from the Cornish Match Company.

He didn’t tell me a lot about his life but the labels spoke volumes – a picture is worth a thousand words.

Transport

Road safety

I had a sense of the torrent of propaganda to which he was exposed, some of which was explicitly political but more often concerned health and safety.

The relationship with the Soviet Union figured frequently, as did current preoccupations, like the war in Vietnam.

There were two match factories in the DDR – Riesa and Coswig. All the pictured labels come from Riesa except the Berlin bear, the 775 anniversary of Coswig and the two Vietnam solidarity labels.

Our friend the Soviet Union

Vietnam war

In 1993 I took the opportunity to visit his country but regrettably had not maintained a contact with him in the interval. Visiting Erfurt, Leipzig, Wittenberg and Halle proved utterly fascinating. To see a country which until 4 years earlier had been trapped in a timewarp, but was now like a vast building site, being rebuilt with West German money. We camped outside Leipzig in a vast campsite with several thousand emplacements. There was still ample evidence of its recent communist past. At one end stood a primitive toilet block like something out of a gulag. At the other end was a brand new fully automatic Swiss built shower block like a symbol of what was to come. The cities like Erfurt and Halle had escaped the architectural vandalism of the 1960’s in the west and were like beautifully preserved museums.

I was lucky to have a father whose world wide travelling in the merchant navy preceded his career as a family doctor. He was fascinated by the way people lived their lives in distant countries and he tried to introduce his family to the same curiosity and love of difference which he enjoyed himself. As children we visited the former Yugoslavia which in 1963 was really unusual. I of course was delighted and amazed to discover the rich variety of Yugoslavian labels. There was less propaganda than in East Germany and labels featured wildlife and many other themes. They were well produced and highly collectable.

Some samples of Yugoslavian labels from 1963/64

In the Czech Republic I continued to exchange labels with a teenager in the town of Liberec near the Polish border.

He sent me postcards and letters and a stream of propaganda labels of which these are examples.

Some Czech labels from 1965

I had at that point won a Honda 50 scooter in a competition and decided to take it to Transylvania, match boxes were very much part of that trip. Poorly printed on cheap card, they fascinated me despite their crude nature. I met a young collector who had seen me pick up a box from the roadside. He added a few to my collection.

Some Romanian skillets from my trip in 1970

Since retirement I have devoted myself to photography and publishing books. I have visited Romania more than 20 times to photograph village brandy making, and to visit the many friends I now have there. You can see more details at Broombank Publishing.

It’s difficult to say how much the collecting hobby added to my motivation to make these travels in eastern Europe. It was more of a steady background interest than the main factor.

Now here I am in 2026, 65 years after my collecting began. I’m still at it, perhaps more openly than ever before. I comb tobacconists in Croatia, pick up empty boxes from the tiny houses of elderly people in Romania, seek out bric-a-brac shops in Prague (one, run by a fellow Phillumenist who started when he was six in 1954, proved exceptionally helpful). The boxes and their labels seem to encapsulate a culture in miniature. I don’t think they will ever lose their impact.

To end on a humorous note : Neues Deutschland (ND) was the daily paper in DDR whose sense of humour is apparent!

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