Last month I promised you a list of my favourite history stamps issued in 2020. This is the list I came up with at the end of December:
- Women of the Reformation (Germany)
- Robert Schuman (Spain)
- Poles rescuing Jews - Edward Raczynski (Poland)
- Treasures of German Museums (Germany)
- Women's Suffrage (USA)
- 800 years Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier (France)
- 75 years AM-Postmarken (Germany)
- Olympe de Gouges (France)
- 50 years first Satellite (China)
- Battles of Thermopylae and Salamis (Greece)
- Les Grandes Heures de l'Historie de France (France)
- Centenary of the Carinthian Plebiscite (Austria)
- Roman Britain (United Kingdom)
- 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven (France)
- 75 years Peace (Norway)
Well, I do not like this list, I did not really like it back then and still do not like it now. First of all this actually can not be the final list, as I still not have the Roman Britain set (my order is travelled for over a month) and the golden rule is that I only include stamps in such favourite lists that I got during the year. So in fact the list has a gap and I do not know how to fill it. Also when I made the list in 2019, I did so to honour some stamps that I did not manage to include in my main list. This list however is different, as I made it completely seperately and that is not what I wanted. Furthermore I have no real connection to most of these stamps and that is again something that is important for me when I make such lists. Many of the stamps on the list I could exchange against other equally good issues with problems. Especially the first place had some serious contenders and also the last places were not very obvious. Just like Roman Britain there were some other issues that would deserve to be listed, but which I can not list, as I did not get them on time. So finally I decided to rework the list and present you a much shorter version here. Enjoy!
8. 250th Birth Anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven (France)
Beethoven was the big anniversary of the year and while I did not try to collect all stamps for the theme, I still tried to make a list of them and collected a few. The stamp from France is my favourite of these and soon I plan to post a review of all of them.
This series is now issued for some years and I never really took notice of them, although now that I saw this one, I have also checked out the last issues. In real life this sheet looks even better, but also digitally you can enjoy the beautiful design based on the Bayeux Tapestry. However it is not the overall theme of the sheet, Matilda of Flanders and William the Conqueror, but two of the smaller details. First there are the small animals at the borders that remind me of a seminar about Animals in the Middle Ages I attended at the university when somethig like that was still possible and second there are the men cutting trees. Have you ever expected to see Medieval men cutting trees on a stamp? I did not. Later this year I hope to make clear to you, why this fascinates me.
6. Centenary of the Chinese Translation of Das Kapital (China)
Chinese History and especially Chinese-European connections were among the themes that interested me very much last year and also I always like Germans on Foreign Stamps. This one got all of these. In the initial list it was not included, as I did to thought it would reach me before the year was over, but it did.
This one is an issue of local interest. First printed in Washington D.C. and London, a later version of them was also printed here in Braunschweig. Unfortunately no special postmark was available here, but I got it cancelled with a date postmark beside the First Day Special Postmark from Berlin. Also I think this is the first stamps of the Allied Occupation that is honoured on a German stamp.
Just like the Chinese stamp this is not really European history, but in an election year where hope is reborn this is actually a nice selection.
Like I had already mentioned in the last post, German museums were closed for a long time in 2020 (four months plus January 2021) and at the moment it is still not foreseeable when they are allowed to reopen. However in the remaining eight months, I managed to visit some interesting museums and exhibitions. I especially liked the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg, the House of the Bavarian History in Regensburg, the Rubens exhibition in Paderborn and the Pilgrimage exhibition in Lüneburg. The first museum I visited in 2020 was the Kunsthalle Bremen, because a painting from there was shown on the last stamp in the series Treasures from German Museums. This painting by Vincent van Gogh was actually not shown when I was there, as the complete permanent exhibition was under construction. I actually thought about another visit in summer, but the virus prevented me from doing so. Maybe this year.
This stamp I think is very interesting. Edward Raczynski was a Polish politician, diplomat of the Polish Government in Exile during World War II and President of Poland in exile between 1979 and 1986. This stamp from the series Poles Rescuing Jews commemorates his Note of 1942, the first official and a very accurate report on the Holocaust to inform the Western public about these crimes. Just like the Polish Underground State this is a theme I want to do some more research about.
With closed museums, cancelled events and postponed books 2020 was not a good year to remember history, but on the other side it was a year that will definitely go down in history. Beside the omnipresent Covid-19 pandemic the year also saw the Brexit. Covid-19 stamps there were so many that I did not want to choose just one of them for a Honourable Mention (will do a whole post about them in March), but the Brexit just got this one. A very interesting stamp!
When I first saw this stamp, I wondered how the stars are supposed to form a map of Europa. It took a moment until I noticed that it is actually a portrait of Robert Schuman. I really like the design of this stamp, which is said to be the start of a new series about the Founding Figures of the European Union. imitating a cube. Really looking forward to see Konrad Adenauer and the others on stamps like this.
As you can see the first place was actually supposed to go to the Women of the Refomation, but honestly that stamp does not deserve the inclusion. I like the theme, but the design was horrible and the face value way too high.
What were your favourites?
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