2021 MUELLER AWARD
Otto Kjrergaard “Ocean Letters” published in two parts in the February and April 2021 issue of The American Philatelist has been selected as the 2022 Barbara R. Mueller Award winner.
The USSS/Barbara Mueller Award goes to the author of the best article published in a single year of The American Philatelist, monthly journal of the American Philatelic Society. The award is named for the United States Stamp Society (USSS) and for one of its most prominent members, authors, and editors, APS Life Member Barbara R. Mueller.
Among her numerous honors in six decades of devotion to philately, Mueller was a member of the Hall of Fame of both the USSS and APS Writers Unit #30, and the recipient of the APS John . Luff Award for Distinguished Philatelic Research in 1956. In 2007, the United States Stamp Society founded the award to promote the USSS, its goals and its mission to the 28,000 members of the APS, an estimated 75 percent of whom collect U.S. material.
Otto Kjrergaard is a retired senior master from the University
of Aarhus, Denmark, with degrees in English, art
& design and counseling. He has collected and exhibited
Greenland Postal History, ocean letters, and some local
Danish exhibits. Kjrergaard has published several books
especially on postal history and countless articles in stamp
magazines and on the net. He is presently the editor of the
magazine for Danish Postal History. He has received several
awards including Danmark Medaljen, the highest award in
Denmark for philately, and is an honorary member of Danish
Postal History Society.
Kjrergaard’s article explored wireless telegraphy, an innovation that
combined radio with the post to speed communications
from ship to land. As Kjrergaard worked to develop a catalog
of ocean letters, he offered a primer on the topic, showing
a wide range of ocean letters material. In Part 1, Kjrergaard
offers an introduction and several other aspects of the topic,
such as a history of the major telegraph companies involved.
In Part 2, the author finishes the tale, showing examples from
minor ship letter companies, the less-traveled Pacific and the
final days of ocean letter use in Denmark.