Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Naturally some topics were approved more than others. "Lenin" was a good one, as well as "The Great Patriotic War" or "Pages in the History of Soviet Space Exploration" (which at least shows that John Macco and I are good comrades). Soon "Fauna", "Flora" and "Art" took their place in multitudes of sets issued to supply the official demand.
However (as the rather selective section on 'Russian History' on the website http://filatelist.ru warns):
"Themes sometimes approached absurdity, as, for example, "cat" and "dog". Later dog-breeding and hunting as a service was considered sufficiently serious, but the issue of cats on stamps, according to officials deep within the CPSU ideology, was NOT serious. As a result, the first national "cat" theme appeared only in the mid-nineties... (1)"
Thank goodness for perestroika, eh?
(1) As always, this is my version of Google's "Translate This Page" feature. I do hope I've got it right!
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This is interesting Guthrum. It makes me wonder how the stamp hobby was/is treated in certain regimes in history and even today. Were there active stamp hobbyists in Nazi Germany? I'm sure the entire society was a little preoccupied but was stamp collecting on anybody's radar screen in Germany during the years leading up to and including the war?
Does anybody know if there is active stamp clubs in North Korea? Just curious.
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Ernieinjax asked,
"Were there active stamp hobbyists in Nazi Germany?"
Absolutely! "Good" Germans were encouraged to collect stamps, and purchasing them was apparently seen, or at least thought to be seen, as evidence of patriotism. In one sense, Hitler himself "encouraged" stamp collecting, because he received royalties on every sale of a stamp bearing his portrait. Every year there was a "Stamp Day" Tag de Briefmarke and corresponding "Stamp Day" issues, and a plethora, still available to this day, of souvenir sheets, "memory cards," FDCs, and non-commercial covers franked with commemorative and pictorial stamps and often appear to have been philatelically inspired. Remember, too, that Third Reich stamps were far more about propaganda than the payment of postage, but that's true of the stamps of most countries at all times.
The "Winterhilfswerk" (Winter Help) semi-postal issues were supposedly issued to raise money to help poor people through the winter. In reality, some of the funds raised went only to Aryan families (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the physically and mentally disabled — those that survived — were on their own. Much of the "Winterhelf" money went straight into the Nazi war machine and into the bank accounts of highly placed Nazis.
You will see occasional references to stamp collecting in literature from and about the Third Reich. I have a novel (can't think of the title) in which a senior Nazi officer displays his collection to friends. I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, 1933-41 is a fascinating look at what life was like for Jews in Nazi Germany. Klemperer was a university professor who, with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1933, saw his upper-middle-class life shattered. He could no longer work, couldn't even go to a tobacco shop, and had to endure constant searches of his homes (he and his wife, who was not a Jew) had to move several times, each time to progressively smaller apartment). His stamp collection and reading aloud to his wife seem to have been among his few pleasures during the war.
Bob
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Thanks Bob. I enjoy your contributions. I was just doing some web surfing and was reading an article about accusations that a red haired army medical officer had looted a very large and valuable stamp collection in the closing days of WW2. I find that time period in history fascinating.
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My understanding is that most of the Hitler Head stamps available today were looted from German post offices by Allied troops as they stormed across Germany.
Bob
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The Soviet Russians see-sawed in their official view of stamp-collecting, at one point condemning it as bourgeois individualism, and later encouraging it as communist education of the masses. In order to encourage the latter, topical collecting became the officially approved version in 1966, by order of the ideological department of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union).
Naturally some topics were approved more than others. "Lenin" was a good one, as well as "The Great Patriotic War" or "Pages in the History of Soviet Space Exploration" (which at least shows that John Macco and I are good comrades). Soon "Fauna", "Flora" and "Art" took their place in multitudes of sets issued to supply the official demand.
However (as the rather selective section on 'Russian History' on the website http://filatelist.ru warns):
"Themes sometimes approached absurdity, as, for example, "cat" and "dog". Later dog-breeding and hunting as a service was considered sufficiently serious, but the issue of cats on stamps, according to officials deep within the CPSU ideology, was NOT serious. As a result, the first national "cat" theme appeared only in the mid-nineties... (1)"
Thank goodness for perestroika, eh?
(1) As always, this is my version of Google's "Translate This Page" feature. I do hope I've got it right!
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11:02:25am
re: Cats? You Cannot Be Serious, Comrade!
This is interesting Guthrum. It makes me wonder how the stamp hobby was/is treated in certain regimes in history and even today. Were there active stamp hobbyists in Nazi Germany? I'm sure the entire society was a little preoccupied but was stamp collecting on anybody's radar screen in Germany during the years leading up to and including the war?
Does anybody know if there is active stamp clubs in North Korea? Just curious.
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re: Cats? You Cannot Be Serious, Comrade!
Ernieinjax asked,
"Were there active stamp hobbyists in Nazi Germany?"
Absolutely! "Good" Germans were encouraged to collect stamps, and purchasing them was apparently seen, or at least thought to be seen, as evidence of patriotism. In one sense, Hitler himself "encouraged" stamp collecting, because he received royalties on every sale of a stamp bearing his portrait. Every year there was a "Stamp Day" Tag de Briefmarke and corresponding "Stamp Day" issues, and a plethora, still available to this day, of souvenir sheets, "memory cards," FDCs, and non-commercial covers franked with commemorative and pictorial stamps and often appear to have been philatelically inspired. Remember, too, that Third Reich stamps were far more about propaganda than the payment of postage, but that's true of the stamps of most countries at all times.
The "Winterhilfswerk" (Winter Help) semi-postal issues were supposedly issued to raise money to help poor people through the winter. In reality, some of the funds raised went only to Aryan families (Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the physically and mentally disabled — those that survived — were on their own. Much of the "Winterhelf" money went straight into the Nazi war machine and into the bank accounts of highly placed Nazis.
You will see occasional references to stamp collecting in literature from and about the Third Reich. I have a novel (can't think of the title) in which a senior Nazi officer displays his collection to friends. I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, 1933-41 is a fascinating look at what life was like for Jews in Nazi Germany. Klemperer was a university professor who, with the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1933, saw his upper-middle-class life shattered. He could no longer work, couldn't even go to a tobacco shop, and had to endure constant searches of his homes (he and his wife, who was not a Jew) had to move several times, each time to progressively smaller apartment). His stamp collection and reading aloud to his wife seem to have been among his few pleasures during the war.
Bob
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01:35:41pm
re: Cats? You Cannot Be Serious, Comrade!
Thanks Bob. I enjoy your contributions. I was just doing some web surfing and was reading an article about accusations that a red haired army medical officer had looted a very large and valuable stamp collection in the closing days of WW2. I find that time period in history fascinating.
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re: Cats? You Cannot Be Serious, Comrade!
My understanding is that most of the Hitler Head stamps available today were looted from German post offices by Allied troops as they stormed across Germany.
Bob
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