Shared language, fundamental to ethnic identity, played an essential role in Gerhard Wolff’s decision to collect the stamps of Germany.  So too did Germany’s pre-Nazi lighter-than-air technological superlative, the zeppelin.  A collector since his school days in Hanover, where he traded his father’s cigarette coupons for stamps, Wolff’s outstanding exhibits of mail dispatched from over seventy countries and flown by zeppelin have won many prestigious awards.