You can’t tear it down, your country is no longer a kingdom and most of the royals are not well remembered. So lets make some money and rent it out for weddings. 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.
To be frank, I am not much enamored with this stamp. The stamp is logical. Celebrating a thousand years of Upper Austria with a castle that was very near a thousand years old. Except that it wasn’t. The town is much older and had been the capital of a Roman Empire Province. The early castle was wood and replaced by a stone structure 600 years later. That is what is shown on the stamp. It was redone to be one of the many castles available to the Hapsburgs. If the Hapsburgs were so great though, why aren’t they still ruling? A 1000 years of upper Austria should be a time to show what is unique about upper Austria, what changed when the area affiliated with Austria. An empty place to stay by long departed royals doesn’t do that for me.
Todays stamp is issue A634, a 3 Shilling stamp issued by Austria on April 28th, 1983. It was a single stamp issue issued in conjunction with the Upper Austria Millennium Exhibition. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
The stamp shows the town of Wels in upper Austria. In Roman Empire times, it was known as Ovilava. Then it was the provincial capital of the province of Noricom. The town retained some importance as a market town into the middle ages. The first mention of a wood castle on the site was in 773AD.
The castle was reconstructed of stone for Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I. At the time Empires were built by arraigning useful marriages of Royal offspring. So Maximillian sent off his daughter Margeret at age four to be raised by the King of France and hopefully eventually marry his son. His son Phillip, who he marketed as the handsome, was sent to Spain in order to get a Hapsburg on the Spanish throne. Margeret did not succeed as her betrothed broke the engagement and married her stepmother. Even failure cannot long hobble a Royal however and Margret ended up a regent in Holland. Maximillian died in 1519 at Wels Castle. The castle has been empty for many years but is open for tours and can be rented for weddings so the bride can be a Princess for the day before starting their life with their own betrothed, who hopefully is as handsome as Phillip.
The portrait of the castle on the stamp is by noted Swiss engraver Matthaus Merian. It was part of a collection of engravings titled “Topographia Germaniae” that captured views of many Germanic cities of the 17th century. This work went back into print in the 1960s.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Prince Phillip the handsome. Good looks and royal blood can take you far, perhaps all the way to Spain. A better designed stamp would have had me toasting Upper Austria. Come again tomorrow for another that can be learned from stamp collecting.
