Tag: Germany stamp

World War I horrors had a profound effect on the art of Europe, especially in Germany where the old system was not just discredited but gone. This expressionist movement aimed to shock and succeeded. A backlash was probably inevitable. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Max Beckmann’s work displayed on this stamp is titled Junger Argentinier. Beckmann through his art was trying to move beyond the emotionalism and self obsession of the expressionist art movement. The dourness definitely remained.

Todays stamp is issue A1099, a 55 cent stamp issued by Germany on February 13th, 2003. It was issued in conjunction with a second stamp featuring a different artist. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 75 cents used.

Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1884. He was into a well off but middle class family that afforded him an education steeped in the old masters. His early artistic output reflected this.

In World War I. Beckmann volunteered for service as a medic. In this role he experienced the horrors and loss. As with most of his contemporaries, his postwar art  became less literal and realistic. He was them awarded a prestigious teaching position at the Stadelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfort.

As his art matured, Beckmann began to reject the excesses of other expressionists and joined a movement toward a new objectivity in art. This was a more back to business style more reflective of America where the war was less impactful.

Beckmann was not alone in thinking the Expressionists had gone to far. On the far right in Germany there was a yearning to get back to a style of art that uplifted, was pro family and patriotic. Beckmann was not a fellow traveler in that.

With Nazi control of the institutions, Beckmann was dismissed from his teaching position. It then went  further with his art on the list of those to be removed from museams and galleries. As a final insult, Hitler labeled modern art as degenerate and a traveling show was hastily arraigned to display the art now banned in a mocking manner. The show included works by Beckmann. The day after the Degenerate art show opened in Munich, Beckmann and his family moved to Amsterdam in Holland. He was not Jewish.

It took 10 more years for Beckmann to achieve his goal of moving to the United States. The Nazis were not done torturing Beckmann. Still in German occupied Holland and near 60, there was an attempt to draft him into the army. In 1947 he was finally allowed to come to the USA and given a teaching position at Saint Louis University. He died three years later.

Well my drink is empty. Understanding the troubles Beckmann faced, one can understand the dourness of his work. I can understand the right’s desire from more uplifting art, but perhaps that needs to happen organically when times are better. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

The Junkers F 13 was an innovative product of a great man with a united country behind him. The industry he worked in now requires a consortium of companies and countries to ever more rarely bring a product to market. In the optimism of 1991, Germany can be forgiven to look back fondly at what was accomplished and imagining it could happen again. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

If there is a failure in the aesthetics of this stamp, it is not capturing how radical this airplane would have looked in 1919. It was a world of open cockpit biplanes. The stamp does however show you the characteristic corrugated alluminum alloy skin that made the advancement possible. So as with so many stamps, the more you look the more you see.

Todays stamp is issue A711, a 30 pfennig stamp issued by Germany on April 9th 1991. It was a 4 stamp issue in various denominations remembering German pre war civilian airplanes and airships. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents whether mint or used.

Hugo Junkers founded his company in 1895 in Dessau, Germany initially manufacturing boilers and radiators. Hugo had some radical ideas for getting into the manufacture of airplanes. He had the idea that aluminum could be made strong enough that the skin of an airplane could be made integral to it’s structure. This would reduce weight and allow for better aerodynamics. To make this work, Junkers developed an age hardened alloy of aluminum that they called Duralumin and further strengthened the metal by corrugating it. The resulting F 13 airliner of 1919 was thus a revelation facing the post World War I need for civilian airliners.

Hugo Junkers had to work hard to market his airplane. One thing he did was start his own airline that in turn bought over 60 of the airplane. His airline was eventually in 1926 merged with an airline subsidiary of the Lloyd’s shipping line to form Lufthansa which in turn took another 72 F13s. Junkers offered low down payments and lease deals that got F13s flying all over the world. The planes had a variety of different engines mostly from Daimler Benz, BMW, and in house Junkers designs, but the airframe was perhaps more advanced than the engines available. Over 300 F13s were built by 1932 and the technology developed was still very much in evidence in the later larger and more numerous tri motor Junkers airliners.

As the politics in Germany changed it became quite bad personally for Hugo Junkers. He was requested by the Nazi government to participate in the rearming of Germany. Hugo said no thank you. He was then put under house arrest and told to give up his stock in the company he founded and all of his patents. In exchange, Hugo would not be tried for high treason. Hugo was an older man by then not up to the stress coming his way and he died at home still under arrest. The stolen company then went on to build many notable warplanes such as the Stuka dive bomber. In the 1960s the remnants of the Junkers operation were merged into Messerschmitt.

In 2016, a new build replica of the Junkers F-13 was built as a personal tribute to Hugo Junkers. Though it had a radio and a transponder, it was otherwise original including a rebuilt 1930s vintage Pratt and Whitney radial engine. The technicians and engineers on the project had so much fun, that they agreed to take further orders and at least 4 new builds have been completed. Not bad for a now over 100 year old airplane.

Well my drink is empty but I will be ready the next time Germany wants to toast Hugo Junkers. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

When Germany did not recover quickly after World War I, it was natural to turn to an old national hero to get back on track. The key word is old though and his time had past. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sir back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp is very much in the style of a royalty stamp and indeed the 1920s era German presidency had duties that closely reflected a modern royal. The exception to that is that he stood for election and in that was lowered to that level with runoffs and coalitions to obtain power. Hindenburg himself claimed to personally favor a return of the Kaiser from his exile and he be allowed to return to his retirement.

Todays stamp is issue A64, a fifty pfennig stamp issued by Germany in 1933. The issue was originally to celebrate President von Hindenburg’s 85th birthday in 1932. The stamp was issued for many years and there was a black outlined version upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2,40 used.

Paul von Hindenburg was born in 1847 in what is now Poznan, Poland. He was of noble birth and could also trace his family tree to Martin Luther. Like his father, he was a Prussian officer who fought the wars with Austria and France and eventually became a Coronel General, (equivalent to an American 2 star general), before retiring in 1911. He came out of retirement the first time in 1914 to replace a General who had lost his nerve when facing the large Russian Army early in the First World War. Hindenburg used his theories of maneuver warfare to surround and defeat the much larger Russian force at the Battle of Tannenberg. This was the site of a long ago defeat of Prussia by Slavs so was especially inspiring. Statues of Hindenburg rose throughout Germany made of wood that you could pay to put a nail in in support of war widows. Hindenburg was promoted to Field Marshall and sent to the Western Front where is theories on movement were not as applicable to the trench warfare.

The defeat in 1918 saw Germany shrunk, the Kaiser deposed, and German left wing element agreeing to very punitive punishments for Germany. Conservative elements in the country such as Hindenburg, again in retirement, saw this as a stab in the back to the noble German war effort. The “stab in the back” harkened back to the wonderfully titled 1876 Wagner opera Gotterdammerung. The left of course saw a disastrous war that severely bled the country of it’s men and treasure and discredited the old leadership. The early twenties saw the left in power and hyper inflation and continuing hardship among the people. The hard times lead to more radical right and left forces of Nazis and Communists that both agitated for ever more radical change. Into this, Hindenburg first in 1922 and again in 1925 offered himself as a presidential candidate that could unite the old and new right and bring back German greatness. He won in 1925 in a runoff but was not able to unite the country as the divisions were too deep. He was also unable to unite the right wing, Hitler thought him an old fool, and Hindenburg thought Hitler an uppity corporal with a funny accent. The situation became more unstable with the prospect of Hitler becoming Chancellor. In 1932, many on the left voted for Hindenburg hoping that he would prevent Hitler becoming chancellor. In the end he disappointed them by allowing Hitler to form a government. This might have been prevented as the Nazis were one of many parties and did not have a clear majority. It must be remembered that Hindenburg was quite old by then and his son Oscar had a lot of sway and was more amenable to Hitler. Hindenburg died in 1934 and the role of Chancellor and President were combined as the Nazis consolidated power.

One can see the pitfalls of even great military leaders venturing in to politics. As a head of state above politics, Hindenburg might have thrived. In an office that did not have much authority and had to consult rather than just order, Hindenburg was out of his element and forever tarnished his reputation. Both in allowing Hitler come to power and in not solving the national issues that were leading to such desperation.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast those paid to pound those nails to support war widows. They were the ones who the system failed, over and over. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

As the Red Army swarmed westward, they had a cadre of exiled Communists ready to take over. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The aesthetics of todays stamp are not the best, A generic old man. President Pieck had been in exile for more than a dozen years when he returned to Germany with the Red Army. That was not his first period in exile. One must wonder than even to communists in East Germany, if he was a stranger.

Todays stamp is issue A10, a 2 Deutsche Mark (East) put out by the German Democratic Republic in 1951. It was part of a 5 stamp issue in various denominations honoring East German President Wilhelm Pieck. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $4.75 used.

Wilhelm Pieck was born in what is now Poland in modest circumstances. He first worked as a logger and became active in the trade union and later joined the socialist SPD party in Germany. He was self taught. Him being a Red was difficult because his bride to be’s family was opposed. Since she was with child they consented but demanded a church wedding. Pieck showed up late and handed out communist leaflets as he walked down the aisle to the ceremony. He was part of the militant wing of the SPD that opposed the German World War I involvement. This saw Pieck exiled to Amsterdam during the War. After the war he returned but was one of the leaders of the SPD arrested by the Freikorps. Two other leaders were killed in custody but Pieck escaped into exile in Paris and became a member of the Communist International. It is understandable that with so many personal exiles, Pieck became concerned with the plight of fellow lefty exiles from nations that they had yet to take power. He was a founding partner of the International Red Aid. A red cross for political prisoners involved in class struggle.

Hitler coming to power saw Pieck and his family again going into exile for 12 years in Moscow. During the later part of these years he helped organize a group of German exiles ready to govern a new communist Germany. He was instrumental in merging two older left parties into the Unity Socialist Party of East Germany. He was named the first and only President of East Germany. By then he was quite old, even older than Adenauer, the West German leader.

Pieck served into his death in 1960 at age 84. By then he had outlived his wife by 50 years and suffered from two strokes and cirrhosis of the liver. In his last years he maintained a summer home on the grounds of Carinhall, Hermann Goering’s infamous hunting lodge. Both a world away and back home for the one time logger.

Well my drink is empty and Pieck has probably emptied the bottle. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.