Austria paid dearly for involvement in World War I. Given that the war started with the assassination of an Austrian Royal and the last Emperor Karl had offered an early, gentlemanly end to the war for which he was Sainted, this was quite harsh. Yet here we have an early stamp from the treaty created rump state based on ethnicicity. Notice the German identity popping up, hmmm…. 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.
Here we have the Roman God Mercury. He shows up in a fair number of stamps of Catholic countries, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/05/22/spain-1962-can-the-winged-helmit-of-mercury-stop-us-from-falling-behind/ , Just a way to call for heavenly blessings without being overtly religious. Notice the overprint denoting the new German Austrian Republic. With the Hapsburg’s gone, there were three political parties. The communists, the socialists, and the conservatives. The two left parties were in favor of joining the new left wing Weimar Germany. The conservatives didn’t, they probably harbored some royalist loyalty. The World War I victors were not going to have that, whatever the will of the Austrians and the German title of the Austrian Republic was quickly removed.
Todays stamp is issue SH2, a 5 Heller special handling stamp issued by the German-Austrian Republic in 1919. It was an overprint of the earlier Austrian Empire stamp of 1917. There are later overprints that take into account the inflation that was about to grip Austria. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents unused.
Austria was in a lot of flux at the end of the war despite defeating Serbia and having much military success against Italy. The sacrifice asked of the many nationalities was too high and first Hungary broke away then all the nationalities were forming separate nation states. This left the question of what to do with the German speakers of Austria. It was thought at the time that Austria itself was not economically viable without the industry of Bohemia or the farmland of Hungary. With the Hapsburgs gone, there was no other reason not to join Germany. The new Austrian Parliament passed a resolution in 1919 in support.
Request denied. New treaties even forced the removal of the German title from the Austrian republic. Austria did it’s part to try to stand up for German speakers as one might expect of an ethnostate. Austria issued claims for the return of large areas of land that contained majority German speakers. See map above.
These demands were ignored. The left of center government under Chancellor Karl Renner passed many reforms to help the common person but the government was perhaps not left wing enough for the capital Vienna and yet far to liberal for the rest of the country. Interestingly he was in favor of the union with Germany as it occurred under the Nazis in 1938. He thought the Nazis were just a fad like other right wing governments he had witnessed. With the experience of World War I, Renner was ready when the German war effort flagged in 1945. He put together a provisional government of the three parties from before and declared the 1938 union with Germany null. Knowing Renner was far more left wing than who the Americans would have put in charge, Stalin quickly recognized Renner’s government. This got Austria much better treatment post war as it was classified as being liberated from Germany instead of being a part of it. Impressive flexibility on Renner’s part and he was again Chancellor until his death in 1950. Typical of Austria, he died in Vienna, but Renner’s home town and former family land were now in Czechislovakia.
Well my drink is empty and I am left wondering if the overprint of German-Austria looks as bizarre to modern Austrians and Germans as it does for me. Then again I don’t understand why the Austrian Republic still has Empire(Reich) in it’s title? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.