The idea of putting dignified people in absurd situations and watching them getting flustered is often comic gold. Perhaps less so now as we gradually run out of the dignified. 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.
Talking of this stamp issue is dangerous. The issue appeared shortly before cartoonist Loriot died in 2011. In 2012, his daughter sued those on the internet displaying images of the German stamps. She won, and got a large settlement from the German language Wikipedia. I think I am okay with my wife having taken a picture of a stamp in my personal collection. If not Ms. von Bulow, let me know and I will pull the article down. If the estate didn’t want there to be a series of stamps honoring your late father however, surely the time to act was before they came out.
Todays stamp is issue SP475, a 45 Euro cents +20 cent semi postal stamp issued by Germany on January 3rd, 2011. It was a four stamp issue in various denominations. Those dignified readers out there will be happy to know that I don’t have the one with the cartoon depiction of two naked men in a bathtub. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $1.90 whether used or unused.
Vicco von Bulow was born into an aristocratic Prussian family in 1923. After wartime service and university training in graphic design, no not yodeling but really not that far off, he began work as a cartoonist in 1950. His work was released under the name Loriot. This is based on the French word for the oriole bird as it appears on von Bulow’s family crest.
His greatest success came in the 1970s when he created the character of Wum, a talking dog who becomes the mascot of a German protest organization. Wum was voiced by Loriot himself when he got a radio show. Wum/Loriot had a German pop hit in 1972 with the dog singing “I wish I had a little kitty cat” in a half sung/half spoken style called Spechgesang. In 1976 the characters got a German television show that went back and forth between skits acted by Loriot and cartoons drawn by him. among the more famous skits were the protest organization demanding equal treatment of man and women. even if means suckling babies temporarily lose weight. Cue the Cartoon a a baby trying to suckle a man. Another features a bored housewife goes back to an iffly credentialled college to get a diploma in yodeling, convinced that such a waste of time credential will change her lot in life.
You can probably gather this type of thing is not my cup of tea. To each his own. These people who pretend to mock the comfortable when they are really on the inside just protecting them from the notion that it is their charge is to maintain standards in order to prevent the sinking into depravity.
Well my drink is empty and so I will have to wait until tomorrow when there will be another story to be learned from stamp collecting.