Austria had manged to rope a dope an end to the occupation of four belligerent occupiers barely 20 years before. From lack of food and fuel to enough wealth and spare energy so to reach out to those who might not have benefited yet. In the case of this stamp, the handicapped are being offered a helping hand, though with a strange period image. There must have been some kind of miracle between. 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 image on this stamp is a fun one that could only be from this period. An earlier era stamp would have shown the handicapped as pathetic desperate wretches in the hope of extracting the most sympathy from those more blessed. A modern stamps would have the afflicted recast as the hero slaying the challenges they face. He we have a three part image with one distorted. In other words things aren’t really great until they are great for everyone so lets get to work. Neat!
Todays stamp is issue A502, a 6 Schilling stamp issued by Austria on October 2nd, 1978. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, this stamp is worth 55 cents used. A stamp issue like this from anywhere dates badly, because what they did for the challenged is far less than what is done now and definitions of who was handicapped was much narrower.
In 1945 Austria was in quite a bad position. It was a region of Germany. In March, Germany launched Operation Spring Awakening that hoped to secure oil fields in the area between Vienna and Budapest and retake Budapest. The Soviets were ready for the attack, defeated it and counterattacked taking Vienna. Former left-center President Renner reached out to Stalin and convinced him to let Renner create a new Austrian government. The Allies had previously decided that the union of Austria and Germany would not stand post war but Austria would be treated as a perpetrator rather than victim country. The German and some Hungarian remnant forces were enough to slow the Soviet advance westward to allow Americans to enter western Austria and surrender to them. The Renner government quickly declared the end of the union with Germany and made noises that Austria was but another victim of the Nazis.
Renner was not a man the Americans would have picked but he was in place and Austria was divided into four sectors like Germany had been. Vienna was divided like Berlin. Austria was really in a bad way. they still bought their coal and most of their food from the East but that was virtually impossible now. The Austrian oil fields were in Soviet hands and the Russian sector was heavily looted. Austria like other Eastern European countries were expected to pay the cost of the Soviet 40,000 troop occupation Force. America was creating arms stockpiles in the west assuming an East and West Austria with an armed western Austria as a cold war ally.
An election was held at the end of 1945 that elected a more right of center government, but the Soviets refused to let it be seated. There were food riots in Bad Ischi in 1947. There was a poor potato crop that year and communists tried to claim greedy farmers were withholding food to sell for more on the black market. This then backfired because the agitators were Jewish and many blamed the black market on them so they became the targets of the riots. This discredited further the old exiled Jewish communists in Stalin’s eyes and made them put more faith in the local left wing government installed by Renner. America responded with much food and industrial help because Renner’s people could be seen as keeping the real communists at bay.
The death of Stalin provided a opening in the 1950s. The Soviets hoped that by withdrawing their forces and allowing Eastern and Western Austria to reunite as a neutral country that it would show a path for a similar outcome for Germany. So Austria allowed to unite but the west held the line in West Germany.
If you compare economically Austria today to Hungary the former partner that remained under Soviet occupation during the cold war, the differences are dramatic. GNP per capita in Austria is three times that of Hungary and even 10% ahead of Germany. Plenty or resources to help the challenged.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast President Renner. He didn’t live to see Austria reunite and prosper but it could not have happened without him. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.