Cold war era eastern European farm out stamps could be fun and were often aimed at children. Here our communist Czech friends remember the Bohemian uprising against the Catholics and the following Hussite Crusades. 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.
In stamps we don’t often get to travel back before 1840 and the first postage stamp. Here we do, because a noble ancient war with crusades fought by knights around castles with cannons is always fun. To increase the fun, the stamp is oversized with a lot of disparate things going on for children of all ages to deduce. This is a fun stamp but comes through with what was going on with the hobby at the time. Stamp values were rapidly inflating and stamp makers were using new printing techniques to make ever more bold stamps. Somewhere in this we lost the serious adult collector who really doesn’t look much at stamps after World War II. The hobby came to be seen as a hobby for children and many big collectors took advantage of the high prices to cash out. The young collecters, myself excluded, did not continue into adulthood and we are left with a much smaller hobby. Most of us think the answer is get more kids involved but I say lets get the old rich guys back, this time from the new countries that have interesting, often colonial postal histories.
Todays stamp is issue A620, a 60 Haleru stamp issued by Czechoslovakia on August 31st, 1970. It was part of a five stamp issue in various denominations that displayed cannons over time. Todays stamp shows cannons from the time of the Bohemian Hussite Wars in the 15th century. According to the Scott catalog the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.
Jan Hus was a Bohemian priest who rebelled against the Catholic church’s habit of selling indulgences. This was over a hundred years before Martin Luther. At the time there were rival Popes and the one in Rome was trying to raise a lot of money to fight his rival. Hus thought this wrong and lead his followers to Prague where they attacked church and Holy Roman political leaders. His people stormed the palace and threw many of the occupants out the windows to their death. The Pope then launched a series of 5 Crusades that attempted to bring Bohemia back into line using mainly German knights. None succeeded as the Bohemians had developed new tactics taking advantage of new developments in artillery and personal arms. Hus himself however was captured and burned at the stake for heresy. After this the Hussites began fighting amongst themselves and the Polish King turned on his own force that he had sent to fight with the Hussites. Though Jan Hus did much to inspire the Protestant Reformation, Bohemia/Chechia remained Catholic.
The stamp also features Saint Barbara who has roots in Roman mythology where her command of lightning lead her to become the patron saint of explosions and by extension artilleryman and miners. The lack of clarity of whether she was merely a figure of myth have seen the Catholic Church deemphasize her. Really they are probably not to in to praying for artilleryman. She is still important in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The British Royal Navy Gunnery School is named for her and in Chechia her statue is still placed at the entrance to a new road tunneling projects.
Well my drink is empty and I may have another as I imagine the bombs bursting in the air and hoping Saint Barbara will see that the flag is still there in the morning. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.