Tag: Romania stamp

Here we have a statue honoring Romanians and Soviets that fought against fascist forces in World War II Romania twenty five years later. In 1990, it was repurposed to honor World War I fallen. So going from some of sacrificed in the second war to all those sacrificed in the first war. Confusing isn’t it, but creating statues is dangerous stuff in the modern. 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 stamp artist Aida Costantinescu had a challenge. The monument honored communist partisans of two countries, Romania and the Soviet Union. However the stamp might mean more to people if it was more inclusive to include all the fallen. Perhaps that is why the Romanian flag is obvious, but the Russian flag is faded and seems just like a red background. Perhaps if similar care had been taken, the monument might not have been disturbed upon the next revolution.

Todays stamp is issue A658, a 55 Bani stamp issued by Romania on the 25th anniversary of VE Day. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.

Statuary is a temporary thing. As the Red Army approached in 1944, the Romanian King Michael had Prime Minister Antonescu arrested and appointed a new communist Prime Minister. Antonescu was killed by firing squad after a show trial. The bending with the wind did not save King Michael he was forced to abdicate when the Prime Minister pulled a gun on him. Rough place, but the regime like that is going to be very particular about who it wanted honored.

In the 1990s after the 1989 Revolution, the statue was repurposed but allowed to stand in honor now of less contreversial fallen of World War I. The nearby masuleam that was part of the complex had the remains of the fallen communists replaced by WW 1 remains taken from the main monument of that war.

During the same period after 1989, at least a half dozen statues of firing squad victim Ion Antonescu went up. This time he was revered not just by right wingers but communists who felt left out of the post war government. Apparently he was now a strong leader.

This also didn’t last, and like 1945 by decree. Romania wanted to join the European Union. Like the communists of 1945, they had definite ideas on who an EU country could honor, and that did not include Antonescu. The Romanian government was forced to hire a committee led by Ellie Wiesell to put together a case that Antonescu was anti Semetic and responsible for Jewish deaths. Upon receipt of the report, Romania enacted a law against new statues of Antonescu and requiring old ones removed. Of the six statues, one was removed and another was encased in a metal box. With the other statues, private property was claimed.

Other statues went up after the 1989 revolution. Unfortunately, the modern are better at taking down statues instead of creating new ones. A statue meant to illustrate the Romulus and Remis story of the she wolf nursing the Roman leader instead just resembles a naked guy being chased by a stray dog, a common occurrence in Bucharest, but hardly worth a statue. It was later taken down.

Another was the statue commemorating the 1989 revolution. It is meant to convey an idea crystalizing simultaneously among a large crowd. What was built however resembles an obelisk impaling a potato.

Similarly the base of a former statue of Lenin has gone through 17 itinerations since Lenin was removed. Perhaps the eighteenth should just put Lenin back in his place, understanding it was one period in a long history.

Well my drink is empty, Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

A landowning class can not continue if there is land reform. To prevent that, a Royal from outside is brought in, who has little connection to the peasants, doesn’t even speak their language or attend their church. 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.

Todays stamp has an impressive look. A celebration of King Carol I forty years on the throne. So here is the King taking his oath years before, in French. There are others of him leading the army and attending church, not the Romanian Orthodox one. Carol apparently took the trappings of his office very seriously. His Queen once joked he wore his crown to bed. That shows on the stamps. That the people were so beaten down that his German royal house lasted 80 years is the tragedy that this stamp puts a brave face on.

The stamp today is issue A27, a 1 Bani stamp issued by the Kingdom of Romania in 1906. The stamp is part of a 10 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 65 cents in its mint condition.

Romania was a coming together of Wallachia and Moldavia under the Moldavian Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza. There was a token allegiance paid to the Ottoman Empire but the Prince was working for European recognition of the new country. The people were overwhelmingly peasant, Orthodox Christian and spoke Romanian, which is a derivative of French.

Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza was a leftist reformer who sought land reform  and was greatly influenced by the Europe wide insurrections of 1848. The landowning class, the Boyars were successfully fighting him on land reform . There were ethnically of German stock and so tended to side with the Germans on the European issues. The peasants were heavily with the French. The Prince sought more power to get his reforms through but the left was loosing patience with him. A coup occurred in 1866 supported by the right and some on the left  and forced Cuza to abdicate and into exile.

The right wing of the coup plotters then recruited a German Prince Karl to be a new Prince and he served first as Prince Carol and later as King Carol I in a 48 year reign. He was an able soldier and won some extra land at cost of Bulgaria and succeeded in putting down forcibly the frequent peasant uprisings. He built the elaborate German style Peles Castle. He also prevented any land reform.

He did not get along well with his German Queen and after a Princess died young there was no further issue. The prospect of being King of Romania was not appealing either to Carol’s brother nor his brother’s son who both renounced any claims to the succession. Finally Carol found another German nephew Ferdinand who was willing. King Carol wanted to side with the Germans in World War I against the will of his people but he died in 1914 and since Ferdinand had a British wife he listened more to his people, or at least his wife.

The monarchy was exiled after World War II. After the cold war the current would be Royals initiated a court case to have the Royal properties returned to them personally. Peles Castle is now owned by them though still open as a museum. The current would be royal Princess Margareta grew up in Switzerland and is named after a Danish Royal grandmother. She tries harder than her ancestors in that she was baptized Romanian Orthodox and does speak Romanian. She even married a Romanian after a five year relationship with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The Romanian government as yet to accede to becoming a constitutional monarchy.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another and ponder this idea of bringing in a foreign King. He seemed to be a strong and lasting leader, but the good he did was only for a few. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

When we think about how on the razors edge the early space flights were, we begin to get a sense of why the Cosmonauts and Astronauts were so revered, with so many stamps from so many places. 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.

This was a ten stamp issue celebrating various missions. Most countries doing space stamps indicated the cold war team they were on by which missions  they covered. Romania had a little bit of an independent streak and so honored the Cosmonauts and Astronauts of both worlds. Romanian Dumitru Prunariu went to space in 1981 on the Soyuz 40 mission as part of the Soviet Intercosmos program.

Todays stamp is issue C159, a 1 Leu airmail stamp issued by Romania on January 15th, 1964. The 10 stamps were of different denominations with the lower values being diamond shaped. The set was also, and more commonly available perforated. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.40. The perforated version loses about a third of that value.

Valeri Bykovsky was born in 1934 in a suburb of Moscow. At age 16 he heard a presentation given to young men by the Moscow aviation club and eagerly joined. This then lead to a spot for him at the Kachinsk Military Aviation Academy and he was commissioned at age 21. Valeri was a fighter pilot and later a parachute instructor. He had 72 jumps before being accepted in the Cosmonaut training program.

After being a backup pilot on the Vostok 2 mission, Valeri got to space the first time on the Vostok 5 mission in 1963. The mission would see Valeri alone in his capsule and was scheduled to last eight days. During the mission he was to photograph the earth and conduct experiments including attempting to grow peas in space. Also of course seeing how space treated Valeri physically and mentally was the big experiment. Once in space, solar flares turned out to be much stronger than forecast. It was worried that the flares might change the the dynamics of the atmosphere and cause the already shallow orbit to decay and lead to a less controlled rentry potentially anywhere. It was decided to bring Valeri home early, still having spent 5 days in orbit alone, a still current record. Valeri was awarded membership in the communist party while in space and much decorated and promoted back home.

After seeing his potential Soyuz 2 mission scrubbed after the failure of Soyuz 1, Valeri went back to space two more times in 1976 on Soyuz 22 and again in 1978 on Soyuz 29. On Soyuz 29 he flew with East German Cosmonaut Sigmund Jahn, the first German in space and again part of the Soviet Intercosmos program. Sigmund took a plush toy Sandmannchen to space in order to film a piece for the the German animated children’s show. The film included included Soviet Cosmonauts joking that Sandmannchen should mate with their present Soviet plushtoy mascot Masha. Back on Earth, it was decided that the footage was not useable.

Late in his career, Valeri was a Major General and an important figure in the Intercosmos program. He died in 2019.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to join Romania in toasting the space travelers of both worlds. Come again tomorow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Early in the 20th century, there were those that espoused blimps for the roles that larger model airplanes eventually filled. There was just enough success to make the tech detour memorable. 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 headscratcher of this stamp is that it comes from Romania. Other stamps in this set honoring the history of blimps show German Zeppelin models over Bucharest in the 1920s, but that is the only tendential connection of blimps to Romania.

Todays stamp is issue AP75, a 1.5 Leu airmail stamp issued by Romania on March 20th, 1978. It was a six stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents cancelled to order.

Our story begins on September 23rd 1916 when a flight of four LZ model Zeppelins in the service of the Imperial German Navy made a successful bombing raid on London dropping 7000 pounds of bombs. LZ 76, on it’s first mission and commanded by Alois Bocker was hit by anti aircraft fire and was forced to go off course. Over the county of Essex it was caught by an RAF biplane fighter B. E. 2e flown by Alfred Brandon that forced the blimp to land in a field. The German crew attempted to burn the craft before it fell into British hands but failed and the British reverse engineered and copied the design.

The end of World War I saw a severe cut in demand but two blimp copies of LZ 76 flew in 1919. The one on the stamp R34 was built by Willian Beardmore and Company in Scotland. The blimp had a crew of 26 and cruised at 50 miles per hour. On July 2nd, the blimp set out from RAF Croydon for Long Island, New York. The journey took 108 hours and by the time the blimp made it to New York it was almost entirely out of fuel. Crossing the Atlantic east to west meant fighting headwinds and much later Concorde airliners would themselves be at the very edge of their range. Since nobody in the USA had experience remooring a flying blimp. one of the crew parachuted out before landing to show the waiting crew how it was done. The parachutist, E. M. Pritchard thus became the first person to reach the USA by air from Europe. The return trip was also successful and because of tailwinds only took 75 hours.

In 1921 R34 crashed into a hillside in the Yorkshire moors in bad weather. It had not recieved the sent return to base signal. R34 was scrapped and the RAF ended their blimp program entirely later that year as an economy measure.

William Beardmore and Company was a giant concern in the twenties building ships, airplanes, one blimp, cars and owning a steel mill. At it’s height it employed 40,000 people. The Deppression was hard not just on blimp production and bankers forced Mr. Beardmore out of his own company. Most operations were quickly would down but  a few persisted. A competitor to the London Taxi by Beardmore lasted until 1966. The Parkhead Forge steel mill lasted until 1983. The shipyard is now a hospital and the steel mill is now the site of a shopping mall called The Forge but forgetting Mr. Beardmore.

Well my drink is empty. I included a lot more names than I usually do hopefully inspiring the readers to look up further the interesting men of earlier times that actually achieved things. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Romania only came out from under Ottoman domination in the second half of the 19th century. After that things happened pretty fast with locals offering ways to better utilize what God had given Romania. One thing God had given was oil and Romanians proved to have the ability to find it and develop it without the foreign  domination of for example the Middle East. 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.

One of the things that Romania did well with it’s stamps was present Romanians of high achievement to the wider world through their stamps. This was true or the early Royal and later communist government and on into the 1990s. Most years there was an issue of famous Romanians. This unfortunately has dropped away with famous Romanians being replaced by famous people stamps. I can learn something new about previously unknown to me Romanians. Elvis or Lady Di, not so much.

Todays stamp is issue A519, a 55 Bani stamp issued by Romania on July 20th, 1962. The famous people issue that year covered 9 people, none of which I had ever heard of. Proving that over time, The Philatelist has much still to learn and pass on to my dear readers. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether used or unused.

Grigore Cobilcescu was born in Lasi in what was then the Principality of Moldavia in 1831. Moldavia had been the first to exploit petrolium in the area not by drilling for it by gathering it from ditches where it would sometimes appear. The main use was fuel in lamps as it was before use in transportation. G. C. (this simple philatelist can’t spell long names and I found several different spellings anyway in my research), Studied geology locally and then won a state scholarship to further his studies in Paris. He then returned to become a geology professor at the University of Lasi.

In 1883 he did the work that contributed the most. G. C. correctly theorized the types of geological formations that might indicate where there were oil deposits. As Romania came together, this geology knowledge became very important. By 1900, Romania was fourth largest oil producer in the world and the largest in Europe. In recognition the Lasi University awarded to G.C. a seat in the Romanian Senate reserved for them. He used that platform to lobby for Romania to be very careful about letting foreign interests to take over what could be Romania’s route to wealth. He went so far as to resign his Senate seat in 1885 in protest to a trade deal the Senate had ratified with Austria Hungary. G.C. was right to worry about that, over the years Germans and Soviets have during different periods plundered the oil revenue stream given by Romania.

Despite digging ever deeper wells, water injection and even off shore Black Sea oil wells, Romanian oil production peaked in 1976. The drop off after that was pretty steep as the old fields went dry. By 1980, Romania was a net importer of oil. Thus they mostly missed out on the oil booms of the 1970s and 1980s. The earlier facilities had attracted so much unwanted attention from Germany and even Allied bombing followed so closely by Soviet seizing of the output. One wonders if Romania would have been better off without G. C.’s knowledge and leaving the exploitation for a time when the fuel was more valuable and Romania might have been more able to retain control of it. That worked for Norway.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast G. C. both for the new knowledge he discovered and for realizing how important it could be for his new country. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Romania kept getting bigger up through the first half of the 20th century. They scooped up new territory from the Ottomans, Bulgaria, and Hungary. As can be imagined, many had to move. Why not show however good stewardship by building the longest bridge in Europe. Nobody would expect to find that in Romania, and having it designed by a Romanian would show the possibilities. 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.

This stamp issue celebrated Romania obtaining the province of Dobruja from Bulgaria 50 years before. The stamps show the port of Constanta on the Black Sea that was so important to Romania, an ancient monument to show the history, King Carol I who obtained the area, and the then King Carol Bridge in Cernavoda that was Romania’s great achievement in the area. Stamps can help a country to put their best foot forward and this issue was definitely doing that.

Todays stamp is issue A80, a 10 Lei stamp issued by the Kingdom of Romania on October 25th, 1928. It was a seven stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $3.25 unused.

The region of Dobruja was awarded to Russia in the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878 from Bulgaria after Russia defeated the Ottomans. They then traded the area to Romania for land in present day Moldavia. The area was about half Romanian but also contained Bulgars, Turks, Russian Tartars, Gypsies, and Germans. The port of Constanta on the Black Sea was very important and would be more so if it could be connected more directly to Bucharest.

Anghel Saligny was born in 1854 the son of a French educator who operated a boys boarding school in Focsani. He was able to continue his engineering education in Germany and was later employed designing railways in Saxony. Soon he was back in Romania designing railways and working on the facilities of the port of Constanta. A bridge over the Danube at Cernavoda was quite daunting due to the needed length and the bridge was initially bid out. Instead Romania decided to trust Saligny with the 8600 foot bridge. The bridge was built in five years and named for then King Carol.

In World War I the bridge very nearly saw its end. Bulgarians with German support were advancing through Dobruja toward Bucharest. The government considered blowing the bridge to slow the advance. Instead a new General was appointed as commander of the Romanian Second Army. He suggested that the government blow up the previous commander instead of the bridge. The bridge was made temporarily impassable but the Romanian 2nd Army was able to hold the line along the wide Danube. After the fall of the Royal Government in 1948, the bridge was renamed after Anghel Saligny.

In the 1980s a new slightly longer bridge was built nearby the Anghel Saligny Bridge. It was also designed in Romania and handled rail and road. The older bridge has not been taken down due to it’s historic signifigence. The new one may be slightly bigger but is not so handsome. The new bridge got a stamp in 1989 but that stamp is only worth 25 cents.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Anghel Saligny. His work was considered on the same level as Gustave Eiffel, whose firm had also put in a bid on the project. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Interesting the earlier communist issues of Romania before the stamps were farmed out for foreign exchange. The image of the lowly citizen in their labors as part of the creation of a better state was unique to the time. How much was the reality however. 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.

Romania in the mid 50s was still paying a huge price for the previous governments having fought alongside the Axis in World War II. The overwhelmingly peasant, agricultural based economy was required to make great transfers of wealth to the Soviet Union. Yet these stamps show little of the country’s agriculture, instead opting for industrial workers and urban students such as the girl pictured on this stamp. The communists party was divided between the prison faction, industrial leftists organizers that were imprisoned for their activism and the Moscow faction, more intellectual, mainly Jewish leftists who had been in exile in Moscow until they returned with the Red Army in 1944. The 80% of the country that were simple peasants can be excused for feeling removed from the debate.

Todays stamp is issue A378, a 40 Bani stamp issued by the Peoples Republic of Romania in 1955. It was a 12 stamp issue in various denominations that featured various professions in Romania. Only one of the stamps was an agricultural worker who showed off a new tractor, no doubt provided by the new communist industrialization. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

As the fortunes of war changed Romania attempted to change sides. The fascist Prime Minister Antonescu was dismissed and arrested by King Micheal and turned over to the Red Army for a show trial and execution. Communist industrial leaders including future General Secretary Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej were released from jail and quickly appointed to high roles in the still Royal government. The Red Army  was welcomed and with them came Romanian exiled Communists like Ana Pauker who became foreign minister, the first female to hold such a position in the world. The communist raising of women to high postions was real. By 1948 the communist takeover was complete with the King forced at gunpoint to abdicate but then generously allowed to leave weighted down with crown jewels and 47 paintings. Better than King Michael did for his former partner Prime Minister Antonescu.

There was now a power struggle setting up over who got to run the Communist Party. In this Ana Pauker was at a big disadvantage. She had been absent and was of Jewish background. The Jews had been very unpopular in the old days as the often operated as advantage taking intermediaries between peasants and absentee German landlords. There were far fewer Jews after the atrocities of the war years but where Gheogiu-Dej had suffered for his beliefs in fascist jails, Anna Pauker had prime gigs in places like Paris and Vienna promoting international communism.

Stalin was very much in charge in the client state of Romania and he had become suspicious of dual loyalty among Jews in the movement. Suggestions of dual loyalty are often used as a slight against Jews but when Ana Pauker went against Stalinist policies by helping remaining Jewish Romanians escape to Isreal and trying to extract extra privledges for wealthier Kulates peasants her fate was sealed. She was removed as Foreign Minister and placed in jail awaiting her own show trial. The death of Stalin got her reprieved, as she was friendly with Molotov’s wife but she was unsuccessful in her quest to return to power. She died of breast cancer in 1960.

With all the debts due Moscow Gheogiu-Dej progress in Romania was slow. He attempted to industrialize to busy the many workers coming off the farm and started trading ties to the West. His largest achievement was negotiating the withdrawal of the Red Army from Romania in 1958. He died of lung cancer in 1965 and his deputy Ceausescu replaced him and continued to expand industrial ties to the west.

Well my drink is empty and I don’t think I would do well in the Romania of the day as I have many loyalties. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

When politics unite to form an abominable coalition, the Prince must act, even if he is wrong and foreign. 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.

One can see the similarity to a Napoleon III stamp from France I did recently. The early versions, which I believe mine is, were actually printed in Paris. A later version with less distinct printing and cheaper paper came from Bucharest. These medal like profiles of royalty originated on the first postage stamp the penny black from 1840 with Queen Victoria. By the 1870s it was a little overdone with small country people outside of the country will have difficulty identifying. Notice Britain did not have to put the countries name on the stamp. Queen Elizabeth II is the last monarch who does this. I wonder if it will end when her time has passed.

The stamp today is issue A11, a 10 Bani stamp issued by the Principality of Romania in 1872. It was part of a 7 stamp issue in various denominations showing new Domnitor(Prince) Carol I. He had recently arrived from Germany and had tactfully changed his name from Karl. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth $5. The mint versions of this issue are more valuable with the 30 Bani version of the later Bucharest printing up at $190.

Romania had come together after a merger of Moldavia and Wallachia under Domnitor (prince) Alexandru Ioan Cuza. He was quite liberal and actually from Romania. He was in favor of a land reform that would free the multitude of peasants  from their mainly ethnically German landowning class. Trying to thwart this was what Cuza referred to as an abominable coalition of liberal and conservative wealthy politically connected German front men. There was soon a coup and the local Cuza was out on his ear and liberal politicians were off to find a German to be there King. They found their man in a serving Prussian officer named Karl. He had enough distant family connections to Napoleon and spoke French if not Romanian. He was also Lutheran but agreed to raise his sons, which he never had, Orthodox.

Somehow this was allowed to happen and Karl, sorry Carol, proved his worth as a military leader against the Turks and has a power player in the dance a small country must do when dealing with France, Russia and Germany. The liberals that had gotten rid of Cuza were having second thoughts. Carol’s regality grated on them and they began thinking of a coup to become a republic that would more benefit the urban government workers and the Jewish who were so many of their supporters. They planned a two day coup that would happen the first night in Ploesti and the next night move to Bucharest. One of their leaders was Ion Bratianu who had earlier recruited Karl, sorry Carol. Late at night they arrested the police chief of Ploesti and took the city hall and the Telegraph Office. Unfortunately the guards they placed on the telegraph operator got drunk and forgot to police his transmissions. He asked the Bucharest station how the coup was going there and the Bucharest operator told him everything was quiet. He reported to Prince Carol and he showed his efficiency by having troops in Ploesti  by morning to arrest the conspirators. They then insisted it was not a coup but a party prank.

Carol showed his acumen by buying off the liberals by making an uninterrupted series of them Prime Minister, including Ion Bratianu. They did nothing for the peasants who were put down efficiently and bloodily by Carol who was soon upgraded from Prince to King. He ruled till 1914 when he abdicated after trying to side with Germany in World War I instead of respecting the people’s French loyalties.

Well my drink is empty and I better not have another or the people around me won’t stay silent about all my hair brained conspiracies. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

A series of local artists self portraits. A fitting complement to the self reflection that must go on during a period of heavy change. 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.

A large well printed stamp in bold colors is always a pleasure. Doubly so when the art being displayed is actually local to the place. The stamp designers in this case decided on a group of Romanian artists’ self portraits. This can be seen as a country looking in the mirror. How appropriate at a time of great change. There is always the fight over what to preserve and what to renew. A great time to look in the mirror.

Todays stamp is issue A608, a 6.5 Lei stamp issued by the Peoples Republic of Romania on August 10th, 1972. The stamp features Romanian artist Ion Andreescu’s self portrait ninety years after his death. It was part of a four stamp issue in various denominations featuring self portraits of local artists. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents in its cancelled to order state.

Romania in the 1960s had its communist government go through a period of maturation. Many of the Warsaw Pact allies found themselves with governments that were much more hardline than the Soviet Union itself as their leaders did not change when Khrushchev came to power in Russia. This left an opening for China that was much more doctrinally pure. Romania itself was coming out of a period of punishment for being on the wrong side in World War II. It was only just wrestling control of its industries that had been taken over by Russian entities as to guarantee payment of reparations due the Soviet Union.

In 1965, Nicolae Ceausescu took over as part boss. He was able to use some of the developments of the past government to his advantage. Romania had come a long way to transition from a peasant country to an industrial one with the concomitant move to the cities. The previous government had also managed to get Soviet troops out of Romania in 1958. This made it much more difficult to snap Romania back into line as was done with Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ceausescu had more freedom to operate.

Operate he did. He opened relations both with Red China and with the west. Romania always had a closeness  with France and this rematerisalized. The  ties with the west led to an influx of consumer goods into the cities that was very popular. Also the contacts with China and North Korea inspired Ceausescu to embark on a plan to renew the cities in a Communist modern image. This lead to much construction of apartments and subways and large public edifices. This tended to wipe clean the vestiges of old Romania. The industrialization and urbanization led to a reduction in birth rates. This was addressed by banning abortion and a big push to more children that lead to the largest generation Romania as seen to date. Ceausescu was out to make Romania an important country.

Ion Andreescu the artist on todays stamp had a short life. He was allowed into a local art school and soon was staying on as a teacher of drawing and calligraphy. He was allowed to go on to Paris where he was able to refine his skills and take in the influence of the impressionist movement. He did both landscapes and portraits including a series of portraits of a Romanian peasant girl. At age 32 he returned to Romania sick with tuberculosis. He died of this the next year.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to celebrate introspection. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

A poor, peasant country with a German King, might lean toward socialism if it the movement was not so urban and Jewish. It is problem, luckily there is Neculuta and others to build up. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp today is from 1950s Romania. This was before the stamp printing was farmed out. Predictably the printing was quite poor. On the other hand, the communist government was new and anxious to demonstrate a place in Romanian history. So otherwise obscure figures are brought forward on stamps and philatelists get to expand their knowledge of far off places and long gone times.

Todays stamp is issue A370, a 55 bani stamp issued by the People’s Republic of Romania On October 17th, 1954. The stamp features Dumitru Theodor Neculuta on the 50th anniversary of his death. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 30 cents cancelled.

Neculuta, there are several spellings and different names he released his works under, was born in rural Romania to peasants when the country was still affiliated to the Ottoman empire. He only had two years of schooling and beyond that was self taught. Starting at age 10 he apprenticed as a shoemaker. He published a few pieces of poetry in Romanian journals and one book of his work came out three years after his death in 1904. His poems were about life and love and the desire for socialist political change and the frustration of change not occurring. His work is described as rising to the level of average for the time. This may come across as faint praise but it must be remembered the place and class from which he came.

The country of Romania was around 1900 ruled by a German King and was busy trying to secure more territory. A vast majority of the population were rural peasants. The absentee landowners were mostly German who lived in the cities and the onsite tradesman and managers were mainly Jewish. This created a disconnect with the government.  It was also a problem that the normal socialist movements that might be expected to lead a reform movement were also urban, Jewish, and mostly involved in industrial trade unions, a small slice of the economy. The peasants rebelled against the system many times but were put down easily.

The Communists took power after World War II by the power of the Red Army that was sweeping across Eastern Europe behind the retreating Germans. The last of the German Kings was forced to abdicate and moved to Switzerland. Being put in power by a foreign army can leave a lack of legitimacy to rule. Here enters the now long dead poet Neculuta. A communist of peasant stock who was exactly what the communists needed more of in an earlier time. In 1948 the government posthumously named him a member of the Romanian academy and statues, street names and postage stamps appeared. All for a person whose work rose to the level of average, for the time. What he was is the right type of person the government wants to talk about. Funny how that works. There was a stamp issue of famous people in 2004, the century of Neculuta’s death, but he no longer makes the cut. The actor Henry Fonda did?

Well my drink is empty, and so I will open the discussion in the below comment section. We have a few Romanian readers, so if any of them would like to track down a sample of Mr. Neculuta’s work. Please tell us how it is to modern eyes. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.