Towards the end of the 19th century stamp collecting reached hundreds of thousands of people of all classes. Even some states had collections of postage stamps, for example, England, Germany, France, Bavaria, and Bulgaria). In countries who held national collections, museums were built to dedicate that nation's history with philately, and the first such appeared in Germany, France, and Bulgaria. Allegedly, the first of these museums housed the collection of the British Museum, curated by MP Tapling and bequeathed to the Museum in 1891. The Museum für Kommunikation Berlin also had an extensive collection of stamps. The largest collection of the time belonged to Baron Philipp von Ferrary in Paris.