Hans Reiche was an electrical engineer and philatelist who became a world authority on Canadian stamps.
Education
Born in Berlin, Reiche received a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Berlin Technical University in 1936, before travelling first to England in 1939, where he was interned after the start of World War Two, and then to Camp Monteith in Ontario, Canada in 1940. His father was the noted physicist Fritz Reiche who studied with Max Planck.
Career
Hans and his mother Bertha, donated Fritz"s papers to the Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics after his death in 1969. Non-philatelic documents about Hans Reiche and his family are held in the Ottawa Jewish Archives. Reiche"s main philatelic interests were Canadian constant plate varieties, about which he was a prolific author, Canadian pre-cancels and old German states.
He was prominent in many philatelic organisations including the British North America Philatelic Society, The Ottawa Philatelic Society, The Canadian Philatelic Society of Great Britain (Fellow 1979), The Royal Philatelic Society of Canada (Fellow 1982) and others
Reiche was a constant contributor to the newsletters and journals of philatelic organisations. Particularly notable was "Postmarked Ottawa" in The Canadian Philatelist, the official journal of the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada.
After his death, Reiche"s philatelic papers were acquired by the Canadian Postal Archives, part of the National Archives of Canada.