La Poste France Meilluers Voeux

LA POSTE FRANCE Meileurs Voeux

La Poste France Bicentennial Death Anniversary of Voltaire and J.J. Rousseau

LA POSTE FRANCE on 7 March 1978 issued a first day cover stamp marking the bicentennial death anniversary of Voltaire (1694-1778) and J.J. Rousseau (1712-1778). This vertical stamp rendered in a  garnet and lilac usef an Intaglio printing method. The designer and engraver was Eugene Lacaque. A total of  3,000,000 stamps were printed.

François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his nom de plume Voltaire. He was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity -- especially the Roman Catholic Church -- and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirised intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day. His best-known work and magnum opus, "Candide", is a novella which comments on, criticises, and ridicules many events, thinkers, and philosophies of his time.

He died on 30 May 1778. He was denied a Christian burial due to his criticism of the Church; however, friends and relations managed to bury his body secretly at the Abbey of Scellières in Champagne, where Marie Louise's brother was abbé. Interestingly, on 11 July 1791, the National Assembly of France, regarding Voltaire as a forerunner of the French Revolution, had his remains brought back to Paris and enshrined in the Panthéon. An estimated million people attended the procession, which stretched throughout Paris. There was an elaborate ceremony, including music composed for the event by André Grétry.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau  was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.

His "Discourse on Inequality" and "The Social Contract" are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel "Julie", or the "New Heloise" (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction. His "Emile", or "On Education" (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished "Reveries of the Solitary Walker" (composed 1776–1778) -- exemplified the late 18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterised modern writing.

Rousseau befriended fellow philosopher Denis Diderot in 1742, and would later write about Diderot's romantic troubles in his "Confessions". During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the Jacobin Club. He was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.


Source: Wikipedia

La Poste France Sesquicentennial Birth Anniversary of Leo Tolstoi

LA POSTE FRANCE on 17 April 1978 issued a first day cover stamp marking the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Leo Tolstoy. This vertical stamp rendered in a dark green and olive-green using an Intaglio method. The designer and engraver was Jacques Jubert. A total of  3,000,000 stamps were printed.

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoi was Russian aristocrat who lived from  9 September 1828 till 20 November  1910. He is generally  referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy. He was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909; the fact that he never won is a major controversy to some.

Tolstoy's notable works include the novels "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1878), often cited as the pinnacle of realist fiction. He first achieved literary acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, "Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth" (1852–1856), and "Sevastopol Sketches" (1855), based upon his experiences in the Crimean War. His fiction includes dozens of short stories and several novellas such as "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886), "Family Happiness" (1859), "After the Ball" (1911), and "Hadji Murad" (1912). He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays.

Canada Post 50th Anniversary End of Holocaust

CANADA POST on 9 November1995 issued first day cover stamp marking the 50th anniversary of the End of the Holocaust (1933-1945) in Nazi Germany. A total of 15,000,000 stamps were printed.

 

La Poste France National Deportation Memorial (1956)

LA POSTE FRANCE on 14 January 1956 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated to the National Deportation Memorial. What makes this FDC special is not just the stamp, but the cachet and postmark. The cachet on the envelope shows the camp as it was and the subsequent memorial that was constructed after WWII. The cancellation postmark originated from Natzweiler-Struthof, site of the concentration camp. Finally, the stamp depicts an emaciated internee and the monument at the site. The designer of the stamp was Pierre Lemagny and engraved by Charles Paul Dufresne.

Natzweiler-Struthof was a Nazi concentration camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the villages of Natzweiler and Struthof in the Gau Baden-Alsace of Germany, on territory annexed from France on a de facto basis in 1940. It operated from 21 May 1941 to September 1944, and was the only concentration camp established by the Germans in the territory of pre-war France. The camp was located in a heavily-forested and isolated area at an elevation of 800 metres (2,600 ft).The National Deportation Memorial was erected on the site of KL-Natzweiler, formerly known as the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, in Alsace. This complex was the only camp set up by the Nazis on the current territory of France.

 

The main Struthof camp was linked to about 50 satellite camps, mostly in Germany. From 1941 to 1945, more than 52,000 deportees and its commandos were interned here. Their composition and origin varied over the course of the war. Initially prisoners of common law and "German asocials", Russian and Polish prisoners of war were then predominant for a long time. But there were also deportees for political (Communist) or racist (Gypsy, Jewish) reasons, resistance fighters, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses from all over Europe. Women were included as well. Thousands of them died, mostly from exhaustion, abuse or starvation, others lost their lives in so-called medical experiments used to fuel research at the eminent Reich Universität in Strasbourg. The camp was also the place of execution of resistance fighters. The mortality rate there was 40%.The crematorium came into operation in the autumn of 1943. Initially, it was used to cremate killed Jews who had been subjected to medical experiments. In July 1944, four resistance women were executed and cremated. In the night of August 1 to 2, 1944, just before the liberation of Alsace, 106 resistance fighters were murdered and cremated. The same happened with 35 resistance members of the mobile group Alsace-Vosges.

In 1955, the survivors of the camp launched a national campaign to  construct a memorial worthy of the victims. The chief architect of Historic Monuments, Bertrand Monnet, designed a 41 metre high concrete structure clad in white stone from Hauteville. It was shaped to represent the "flame of memory of the deportation which must not be extinguished" and houses the skeletal image of a deportee engraved by the sculptor Lucien Feugniaux.  The statue is inscribed with the caption “To the heroes and martyrs of the deportation, grateful France”. The base of the monument hosts a vault where rests an unknown French deportee buried on 5 May 1957.

The National Deportation Memorial was inaugurated on July 23, 1960 by General De Gaulle, accompanied by two former ministers deported, Edmond Michelet, survivor of Dachau , and Pierre Sudreau, survivor of Buchenwald.

According to the Foundation for the Memory of Deportation approximately 165,000 people were deported from France to the entire Nazi concentration camp system, including:

- 89,000 for the repression of the fight against the occupier (resistants, political opponents, hostages or victims of reprisals), but also homosexuals and common law prisoners. 60% came back

- 76,000 (including 11,000 children) for the implementation of the "final solution of the Jewish question" in Europe. Only 3% survived.

Notable inmates included Boris Pahor, Trygve Bratteli, Charles Delestraint, Per Jacobsen, Asbjørn Halvorsen, Diana Rowden, Vera Leigh, Andree Borrel and Sonya Olschanezky. The writer Boris Pahor wrote his novel Necropolis based on his experience.

Source: French Wikipedia

Österreichische Post 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp

 

ÖSTERREICHISCHE POST on 6 May 2005 issued a first day cover stamp marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. The stamp features the "The Stairway of Death" coated in the blood of the detainees who were forced to build it and the camp, among other notorious activities. Österreichische Staatsdruckerei GmbH printed the stamp. Cancellation postmark originated from Mauthausen.

The first detainees arrived at Mauthausen in August 1938. It had been the largest granite quarry of the Austrian empire. And it was the main labour camp until 1942. Thousands of men climbed these 186 steps day after day, five at a time, with a granite block on their shoulders. It is how the stone walls of the camp were erected.

The primary function of the “Stairway of Death” was to exhaust the detainees, in the words of one of the accused at the Mauthausen trial (Dachau, 1946). Massacres on these steps happened daily, as men were pushed into the abyss, or forced to throw themselves down. It was thus also a macabre place of spectacle. Historian Michel Fabréguet described the quarry as “a human slaughterhouse”.

Political opponents and groups of people labelled as ‘criminal’ or ‘antisocial’ were initially imprisoned here and forced to work in the granite quarries. In 1938, the SS transferred the first prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. During this phase, the prisoners, who were all Germans and Austrians and all men, laboured here. In addition to working in the quarry, their daily lives were shaped by hunger, arbitrary treatment and violence. Later in the war, women were transferred here and were increasingly used as forced labourers in the arms industry.

When the US Army reached Gusen and Mauthausen in May 1945, some prisoners were in such a weakened state that many still died in the days and weeks after liberation. Of a total of around 190,000 people imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp and its subcamps over seven years, at least 90,000 died.

 

 

Deutsche Post 30th Anniversary of Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück

DEUTSCHE POST in the former German Democratic Republic on 5 September 1978 issued a first day cover stamp dedicated 30th anniversary of Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück. Postmark cancellation for this FDC originated from Berlin.

   

Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 20,000 of the total were Jewish, approximately 15%. 85% were from other races and cultures. More than 80% were political prisoners. Many prisoners were employed as slave labor by Siemens & Halske. From 1942 to 1945, the Nazis undertook medical experiments to test the effectiveness of sulfonamides. An estimated 30,000 to 90,000 died or were killed.

 

On the site of the former concentration camp, there is a memorial. In 1954, the sculptor Will Lammert was commissioned to design the memorial site between the crematorium, the camp wall, and Schwedtsee Lake. Up to his death in 1957, the artist created a large number of sculpted models of women. On 12 September 1959, the Ravensbrück National Memorial was inaugurated outside the former concentration camp on an area of 3.5 ha between the former camp wall and the shore of the Schwedtsee Lake. Rosa Thälmann, a former concentration camp inmate and widow of the politician Ernst Thälmann, held the opening speech. Compared to Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen, it was the smallest of the three National Memorials of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Polish Post Birth Bicentennial of Frederic Francois Chopin

 

POLISH POST issued a single-stamp souvenir sheet honouring Frederic Francois Chopin on 22 February 2010, marking his birth bicentennial. This first day cover of  a 4.15-zloty stamp shows detail from a Frederic Chopin statue in Warsaw.

The too-short life of Polish-born composer and pianist Frederic Chopin was born in the village of Zelazowa Tola, roughly 30 miles west of Warsaw, where the family moved shortly after Frederic’s birth in 1810. He was taught piano and organ as a youngster and entered the Warsaw Conservatory at age 16, where he studied music theory and composition. Though Chopin performed infrequently in public (and often to small groups), admiration for his work grew with the public and among other notable composers and musicians.

After moving to Paris, Chopin became friends with Franz Liszt, and a companion to the author Aurore Dupin, the woman who famously wrote using the nom de plume George Sand. Chopin’s already delicate health declined in his 30s; he was treated for tuberculosis, though there has been recent speculation that he might have been stricken with cystic fibrosis. He died at age 39 on Oct. 17, 1849, and his own funeral march from the B-flat minor Sonata was played at his graveside.

Chopin achieved great popular recognition during his lifetime. Among his most famous works are the Piano Concerto No. 1 (1830), the Nocturne in E-flat major (1830-31), and later works including the Sonata No. 3 in B minor (1844), Polonaise-Fantaisie (1846), and the Minute Waltz in D-flat major (1847).

Source: Linn's Stamp News

Poșta Română Birth Centenary of Johnny Weissmuller

POȘTA ROMÂNĂ on 2 June 2004 issued a first day cover stamp honouring native son Johnny Weissmüller on the centenary of his birth. Postmark cancellation originated from Timisoara, Romania

Johnny Weissmüller (born Johann Peter Weißmüller; 2 June 1904 – 20 January 1984) was an American Olympic swimmer, water polo player and actor. He was known for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century. He won the 100m freestyle and the 4 × 200 m relay team event in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Weissmuller also won gold in the 400m freestyle, as well as a bronze medal in the water polo competition in Paris. In all, Weissmuller won five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, 52 United States national championships, and set 67 world records. He was the first man to swim the 100-meter freestyle under one minute and the 440-yard freestyle under five minutes. He never lost a race and retired with an unbeaten amateur record. In 1950, he was selected by the Associated Press as the greatest swimmer of the first half of the 20th century.

Weissmüller saved many peoples' lives throughout his own life. One very notable instance was in 1927 whilst training for the Chicago Marathon, Weissmuller saved 11 people from drowning after a boat accident. On 28 July 1927 sixteen children, ten women, and one man drowned, when the Favorite, a small excursion boat cruising from Lincoln Park to Municipal Pier (Navy Pier), capsized half a mile off North Avenue in a sudden, heavy squall. Seventy-five women and children and a half dozen men sank with the boat when it tipped over, but rescuers saved over fifty of them. Weissmueller was one of the Chicago lifeguards who saved many.

Born in Freidorf, the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary (now  Timisoara, Romania) into an ethnically Banat Swabian family, he was baptized into the Catholic faith by the Hungarian version of his German name, as János. Early the next year on 26 January 1905, he embarked on a twelve-day trip on the S.S. Rotterdam to Ellis Island alongside his father, Peter Weißmüller, and mother, Elisabeth Weißmüller (née Kersch).

Following his retirement from swimming, Weissmüller played Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan in twelve feature films from 1932 to 1948. Weissmüller went on to star in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over an eight year period, then filmed 26 additional half-hour episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.

On 20 January 20, 1984, Weissmüller died from pulmonary edema at the age of 79. He was buried just outside Acapulco, Valle de La Luz at the Valley of the Light Cemetery. As his coffin was lowered into the ground, a recording of the Tarzan yell he invented was played three times, at his request. He was honored with a 21-gun salute, befitting a head of state, which was arranged by Senator Ted Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan.