Tag: Serbia stamp

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Serbia 1880, Unlike so many places, Serbia had it’s own royal line, or more problematically two.

As the mostly Christian Balkans tried to extract themselves from the Ottomans rule, a King who could play in European power games was useful. Instead of employing an out of work German Royal as did others, Serbia was blessed with it’s own royal line. Some times however the blessings come fast and furious. For Serbia that meant a second royal line to compete and joust with. 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 shows Prince Milan I, at 26 a few years before he was able to get Great Power support for Serbia being upgraded from Principality to Empire and Milan I to King. Rulers didn’t last too long at the time so the stamp did it’s best to disguise his youth with the elaborate uniform and newly acquired mustache.

Todays stamp is issue A5, a 25 Paras stamp issued by the Principality of Serbia in 1880. It was part of a 6 stamp issue in various denominations. There are two colors of the 25p denomination, blue and ultramarine(a darker blue). I think mine is blue but that is open for debate with possible fading on a 141 year old stamp. According to the Scott catalog, the blue version is worth $1.90 mint. The ultra version is $1.50.

Serbia got a measure of independence from the Ottomans in the early 19th century. Some areas contained Muslim holdovers and also many Serbs were in Austrian and Montenegrin areas that were still Ottoman. The two royal lines were Karadordevic line and  the Obrenovic line to which Milan I belongs. His line was more simpatico with Austria and the Karadordevic line more with Russia. Milan grew up in exile in Moldavia as it was the other lines turn. He lost his father fighting for Romania as a mercenary and his mother became the mistress of the Moldavian King bearing him several out of wedlock children. She no longer had time for Milan and he was adopted by his cousin the ruling Prince Mihailo who had the Karadodevics expelled in 1858. Milan was given a Paris education. He had to return early at age 14 when Prince Mihailo was assassinated leaving no offspring. After some chaos a regency was agreed upon with a council of politicians advising now Prince Milan.

The young Prince faced one or two attempts on his life as a teen. One was a bomb and the other an incident in an outhouse. He was doing his business sitting on a wooden seat that gave way under his weight sending him into the pit below. He couldn’t climb out but had his sidearm and fired to summon help. There were rumors that the wood had been treated with acid so to give way under him. There were also rumors that both attempts were from his regents to scare Prince Milan into not dismissing them upon majority. It was not just a rumor that that was one stinky pit.

It was a violent time. There was a disastrous war with Bulgaria that was almost the end of Serbia. Only Austrian intervention preventing that. The other was more successful with the stripping of the last ties to the Ottomans and the recognition of Serbia as an Empire and Milan has the King. Austria was prominent in this and with so many Serbians living unhappily in Austrian territory an alliance with them undermined King Milan’s popularity. To address this, he took a Russian wife Natalie as his Queen. The union was unhappy although a son Alexander was produced. They divorced and she took the Crown Prince with her moving to Germany. Milan eventually was able to regain control over Prince Alexander. He then passed a new constitution friendly to Austria and then abdicated to his 13 year old son. He tried to serve on his son’s regency council but then Alexander’s mother returned from Germany with paperwork declaring her divorce from Milan invalid. The young Prince Alexander, incensed with both of them for not approving of his choice of wife had both his parents sent into exile. Former King Milan died in Vienna a year later at age 43. In 1903 King Alexander was assassinated at age 26 allowing the rival Karadordevic line to assume the throne. This put Serbia firmly in Russia’s orbit in time for World War I. Queen Natalie converted to the Catholic Church after exile and became a Nun serving the Church in France until her death in 1941.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast King Milan I. Getting out early and dying of natural causes was quite a feat for a leader in that time and place. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018

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State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs 1918, it would appear the new boss in Bosnia is Serb

A while back, The Philatelist did an Austria Hungary Bosnian region stamp overprinted to reflect the occupation of Serbia, see https://the-philatelist.com/2020/03/27/serbia-1916-with-bosnia-occupying-serbia-in-the-service-of-germans-it-may-be-time-to-stamp-the-black-hand/    .Three years later, the same issue of stamps is now overprinted to reflect Serbia was not only back in charge in Serbia but had Bosnia and relishing it with lots of fun cross outs. Emperor Franz Joseph was dead so lets cross him out and the new State of… failed to mention Bosnia  so better also cross that out as well. At least the stamp is still denominated in Austrian money, so there are additional cross outs to look forward to. 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.

As Yugoslavia was coming together in the last days of World War I, a rare show of unity was displayed by all the various ethnicities from Yugoslavia who were members of the Austrian Reichsrat parliament. They would work together toward succession. Stamp overprints tell the real story though, the Serbian Cyrillic script tells the Bosnians who was in charge.

Todays stamp is issue A23, a 3 Heller stamp issued by the not internationally recognized state of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in October 1918. It was a 16 stamp issue of overprints on an Austrian Bosnian military postage stamp from 1912 featuring Emperor Franz Joseph. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents unused. A postal cancellation doubles the value. the unoverstampted original from 1912 is also worth 40 cents unused.

At the time of this stamp there was still officially an Austrian appointed military governor of Bosnia, a Croatian General in Austrian service named Stjepan Sarkotic. He was not in favor of the Serbian takeover of the area though he realized there was going to be a major restructuring. In 1910, Austria allowed for freedom of religion in Bosnia to practice and not face attempts at conversion. To a large extent, this made Bosnian Muslims more comfortable. So it was with them that he met in the last days trying to avoid Serbian domination.

Austrian/Croat Governor of Bosnia Stjepan Sarkotic. He doesn’t look like the type of guy Bosnian Muslims could go to.

I mentioned above the action of the Yugoslav members of the Reichsrat. They were inspired by American President Woodrow Wilson peace proposal that specially set out self determination and autonomy for the many peoples of Austria Hungary. It was this spirit that lead to the forming of the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs that indeed had representation from some from all the ethnicities including the Bosnian Muslims.

Serbian Army enters Zagreb in 1918 during the State of Slovenes s Croats, and Serbs in 1918

It was not to be. Entente power Italy was still at war with them trying to grab territory and the Entente powers decided instead on a Kingdom for the area under the old Serbian King. The new Kingdom arrested now former Governor Sarkotic. When he was released he relocated to Vienna and worked with Croat nationalists there. His goal was reunification of Croatia and Bosnia with Austria because he thought it the only way for the other peoples of Yugoslavia not to be crushed by Serbian nationalism and the influence of the Serbian Orthadox Church. He died in 1939 before the next round of Yugoslav postal cross outs folowing the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, see https://the-philatelist.com/2019/09/20/croatia-1941-crossing-out-peter-ii-is-something-we-all-can-agree-on/  .

Well my drink is empty. Come again soon when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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Serbia 1916, With Bosnia occupying Serbia in the service of Germans, it may be time to stamp the Black Hand

Starting in 1878, Bosnia was occupied by Serb rival Austria. Naturally that was annoying and made a larger pan Serbia over all Serbs less possible. Why not form a Black Hand within the Serb government to make sure those wimps don’t make some back room deal with the Austrians and all their offered economic subsidies. Maybe we can even exact a little revenge on the Austrians with a little Balkan style justice. What could go wrong? 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.

I asked above what could go wrong. Well check out this stamp. Austrian Hapsburg Emperor Franz Joseph presiding over the military occupation government of majority Muslim Bosnia. Now that government was occupying Serbia which is spelled the German way. The Hapsburg Monarchy imagined that with some degree of local autonomy, the people of various ethnicities would be happy to be their loyal subjects. It worked for the most part with Hungary and many a new Balkan nation recruited a German Royal house to rule them. It seems implausible that it could have worked, but this stamp got your letter mailed in Belgrade for two years.

Todays stamp is issue A24, a 60 Heller stamp issued by the Austrian occupation government of Serbia in 1916. The Serbian overstamp of the Austrian military occupation of Bosnia stamp existed in 21 denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 80 cents unused. It is worth more used, I can see why Austria obviously printed extras for the stamp trade, there is a lot going on with this stamp for the stamp collector to ferret out.

The occupation of Bosnia by the Austrians put more of them on more sides of Slavic Serbia. Serbia was a landlocked country and most of it’s imports and exports passed through Austria with Austrians taking a big cut. Serbian alarm at this can be seen in the coup of 1903 that brought to power the less pro Austrian of the two Serbian Royal houses, see https://the-philatelist.com/2018/06/21/serbia-unlike-so-many-places-had-its-own-royal-line-or-more-problimatically-two/  . The new regime then tried to get tough on the Austrians by increasing customs duties on goods from Austria. Austria then closed the borders to all trade for landlocked Serbia. They then sent out feelers to the Serb government offering trade concessions in return for better relations and acceptance of the status quo.

Many Serbs harbored the dream of Serbs controlling more of nearby lands with a relationship with big power Russia. A yugoSlavia if you will with Serbs dominating. Members of the government and Army were very worried Serb Prime Minister Nikola Pasic would wimp out and accept an Austrian deal. They formed a secret society called the Black Hand that would dispense rough justice to wimps and sell outs. Their leader was a Serbian Army Major code named Apis. Since their views coalesced, Black Hand was in alliance with Muslim Albanians who also resented Austria. Black Hand was very worried, with some justification that the upcoming visit of the Hapsburg heir to the area and so there was arraigned a successful assassination of him in Sarajevo that lead to the starting of World War I.

Code name Apis (on right) hatches another scheme with two fellow Black Hands. Or perhaps they are just considering the latest offer from The Hairclub for Men

In the early days of the war with Austria, Apis was promoted to Coronel, although allegedly not for his planning of the assassination. By 1916, however Serbia had been conquered with the remnants of the Army marching into Albania. The Serb government in exile reconvened on the Greek island of Corfu. With complete victory it seemed the way back was to purge themselves of the Black Hand in order that they might be allowed to return to Belgrade by the Austrians. Code Name Apis was tried for his part in the assassination and executed. The government was later allowed back to Belgrade and given power to rule a wider Yugoslavia not by Austria but rather by the victorious Allied side.

In 1953, Tito’s later version of Yugoslavia had their high court withdraw the conviction of Apis. They didn’t quite say that the assassination in Sarajevo was a good thing, but they said that there was inadequate evidence to convict. This was allowed to happen, Austria was now the land locked ethnic rumpstate and was no longer mounting much of a defense of the Hapsburgs.

Well my drink is empty and I will not again today reach for the bottle, I don’t want to be accused of having a black hand. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2020.

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Yugoslavia 1967, Easing out the Serb, even if he is the real Yugoslav

Yugoslavia despite going it alone on the world stage, was getting ahead pretty fast in the 50s and 60s. There was a very unusual stable peace. As always though, there were those who want stick to their own. 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 celebrates the UN organized International Children’s Week by displaying a child’s drawing of winter. The stamp is from the period of the economy taking off and the issue definitely has the look of a western stamp issue. With the success, an aging President for life Tito began decentralizing power to the ethno-states that made up the Yugoslav federation and in doing so set in motion the process of the eventual breakup.

Todays stamp is issue A217, a 30 Paras stamp issued by Yugoslavia on October 2nd, 1967. It was a single stamp issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

Marshal Tito had lead the resistance to the Germans and was in position to take over at the end of the war. He had made contacts with the west during the war and they had changed their affiliation to him from the former Yugoslav royalist regime with their drunken child King, see https://the-philatelist.com/2018/07/30/communist-yugoslavia-1950-sells-off-the-invalid-exile-stamps/ . This put Tito, a Croat, in position to break with Stalin and charter his own course for Yugoslavia. He had with him a cadre of economists from Croatia that suggested a form of Socialism where the means of production were owned by the in place worker cooperative instead of the state directly if distantly.The access to markets on both sides of the iron curtain, the flexibility of the worker coops and the low conversion value of Yugoslavia’s currency allowed for high rates of economic growth.

It should be noted the disparities. The economic powerhouse was mainly in the north of the country in Croatia and Slovenia. The center of the country, as in older days contained the security apparatus of the country and was mainly Serb. Serbian Aleksandar Rankovic was a Communist who had fought in the resistance with Tito. As head of the security section of the Yugoslav League of Communist parties, it was his job to keep a lid on nationalist sentiment of the various peoples of Yugoslavia. This made him revered by Serbs and resented by the rest. In 1966, Tito purged Rankovic and threw him out of the party. This was seen as telling the security agencies to lighten up. Tito had an excuse, there was an accusation that Rankovic had bugged Tito’s private quarters.

Lighten up they did. By the early 1970s, there was a Croatian spring where Croatians began protesting that more power should be with them and less in Serb Belgrade. Also in Bosnia, Muslims were protesting talking up a Greater Albania. Instead of a crackdown, Tito, now well into his 80s, responded with a new constitution that devolved much power to the ethnostates that comprised federal Yugoslavia. This was much in line with the demands of the Croatian Spring.

Serbia saw all this differently than the rest of the country. Despite living in obscurity for the last 17 years of his life and there being no official public announcement of his death in 1983, approximately 100,000 Serbs turned up for Aleksandar Rankovic’s funeral. Pretty unusual for the purged head of the secret police of an authoritarian country. An early sign though of how serious the Serbs were about keeping Yugoslavia together.

Well my drink is empty and the Balkans are too lively a place to toast anybody and risk the following fight. So instead I will wait patiently till tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Communist Yugoslavia in 1950 sells off the now invalid exile stamps

Midway through World War II, the Allies shifted their support from the former Royal government of Yugoslavia to the Socialist force that was having such success resisting the German occupation. This left the Royals in exile out in the cold, and their stamp offerings. 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.

Exile agreed with the stamp issues. The Royal government in exile was out of London. Therefore the printing of their stamps moved to London, which had simply better printers. A while back we did another questionable stamp issue printed in Vienna on behalf Indonesian independence fighters. See https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/24/well-we-think-we-are-independant-we-have-a-constitution-a-flag-and-austrian-stamps/. In both cases, the iffy stamps are of far higher quality that what was printed locally in less trying times.

Todays stamp is considered an invalid overprint of issue 1K8 that was issued by the Royal government of Yugoslavia in exile in London. The unoverstamped version is considered legitimate even though they were not sold or used in Yugoslavia at all. The postal system in Yugoslavia was using stamps issued by their German occupiers and their collaborators. What makes the exile stamps legitimate was that they were valid for postage on Yugoslav Navy ships at sea. One can only imagine the infinitesimal number of the stamps used that way but that makes it a recognized stamp. With the change of affiliation of the Allies the recognized socialist government of Tito came into possession of the stock of already printed stamps. They overprinted the 1945 you see on my copy and eventually sold off the stock to stamp dealers in 1950. They were not valid for postage in Yugoslavia at all and so go unrecognized by the catalogs today. According to the Scott catalog, the 1K8 issue is worth $1.60 mint. My stamp, who knows? but less…

King Peter II briefly took the thrown at age 17 in 1941 after his father was forced to abdicate. He had signed an unacceptable alliance with Germany. The Germans invaded a few weeks later and the government offered little resistance and went into exile in London. Given his age, Peter was not taken seriously as a leader for Yugoslavia by the allied leaders. There were separate partisan operations actively resisting the Axis in Yugoslavia, a socialist one and a royalist one. The socialist one was much larger and more effective. In fact the Germans had the most trouble in Yugoslavia than in any of the other countries occupied. In many occupied countries the resistance was dominated by the tiny Jewish minority. After the Tehran conference in 1943, Allied help flowed to Tito and his partisans. When Tito cleared the Nazis out, Yugoslavia was quickly declared a People’s Republic and the Royals were stripped of their titles, property, and even their citizenship. King Peter refused to abdicate and moved to the USA leaving his son behind in England to be raised by a grandmother. Peter drank himself to death. His son Alexander, was Crown Prince for a few months as a baby in 1945 has now had Serbian citizenship restored and is allowed to reside in the old palace in Belgrade. In 2013, King Peter’s remains were returned to Serbia and placed in the Royal Tombs. Alexander still lobbies for his return to the Serbian Throne of his ancestors. Things were great under his great grandfather, so says Alexander…

Todays stamp features Vuk Karadzic, a Serbian linguist from the 19th century. He was born a peasant but was educated and transcribed for the first time Serbian folk songs and poems. There is a rich tradition in Slav countries of the peasant song and poetry recited and sung with great feeling at night around the campfire. The transcription lead to the songs becoming better known around Europe where they were quite a hit. Vuk later worked on reforming Serbian writing to bring it more inline with what was spoken. This lead to increased literacy. He also translated the New Testament into Serbian. Interestingly much of his work was banned in Serbia in his day even though it was not political. It was feared that the songs would stir up patriotic feelings of Serbs at a time when they were still pledged to the Ottoman Empire.

Well my drink is empty and I am faced with another fake stamp. Fake stamps though still have a story to tell. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.