Famous Jews on postage stamps

The idea to write such an essay came to me when I met Ronald Eisenberg’s magnificently published book “The Jewish World in Stamps” with the subtitle “4000 Years of Jewish Civilization on Postage Stamps”.

The main parts of this book, richly illustrated with vintage miniatures from different countries, include the biblical period, the Jewish diaspora period before the 20 century, the achievements of Jews in the world culture of the 20 century, the Holocaust, Zionism and the State of Israel, Jewish traditions and values, Jewish communities in the world.
For me, the leader in the “Forum” section is “Memorable Dates”, in which over 4 of the year more than 1250 mini-biographies of famous Jews appeared, and who wrote essays about 30 on the same subject, of course, the most interesting was the section where the stamps presented by philatelists called personalities, that is, the same famous Jews depicted on postage stamps. These brands are considered the same distinction of famous people as laureate, prestigious awards, etc. The brands of those countries where celebrities were born or achieved success are valuable.

In the USSR, such marks were awarded to the writer Sholom Aleichem, the poets Marshak and Pasternak, the musician Anton Rubinstein, the artist Levitan, the scientists Einstein, Mechnikov, Ioffe, Mintz, the revolutionaries Sverdlov, Volodarsky, Uritsky, the military commanders Gamarnik and Yakir, the inventor Espe- ceterater. Volynov. Such a small number of marks with a huge number of prominent names of Russian-Soviet Jews evokes the idea that the notorious 5 point worked here. In the post-Soviet period, Cliffs, Bernes, Meyerhold and Botvinnik appeared on the stamps of Russia.

On the stamps of the United States, famous Jews are several times larger. This is a patriot who financed the American Revolution, Chaim Solomon, Raoul Wallenberg, writer Ayn Rand, composers Dmitry Temkin, Max Steiner, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rogers, Frederick Lowe, actors Al Jolson, Douglas Fairbanks, Lorin Bacall, Ted Bara, Ledin Bacall, Teda Bara, Ledin Barall, Tad Bara, actors Jalon, Fairbanks, Lorin Bakall, Teda Bara Albert Einstein (generally a champion among famous Jews in the number of stamps issued in different countries), Gerty Corey, John Neumann, Richard Feiman, Victor Stabin, and others.

Among European countries, Austria leads in the number of stamps depicting famous Jews. Among them are writers Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfel, composers Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schonberg, father and son Strauss, Imre Kalman, actress Sara Bernard, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, scientists Robert Barani, Lisa Meitner, Otto Warburg, etc.
On stamps of France are the writer Marcel Proust, composers Jacques Offenbach, Darius Milo, Paul Duke, actress Simone Signoret, philosopher Henry Bergson, engineers Andre Citroen and Marcel Dassault.

On the stamps of Germany are the poets Heinrich Heine and Nellie Sachs, the philosophers Moses Mendelsohn, Martin Buber and Leo Baek, the composer Felix Mendelsohn, conductor Otto Klemperer, Anne Frank.

Naturally, the largest number of personal stamps of famous Jews was released by Israel. They depict prominent figures of Jewish thought, culture, science, literature, art: Chaim Weizmann, Maimonides, Max Nordau, Edmond de Rothschild, Theodore Hertz, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Henrietta Sold, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Sholom Aleichem, Haim Bialik, Mendele Moiher-Sforim, Saul Chernyakhovsky and many other names that have been honored with their marks. So on the Israeli stamps are depicted the heroes of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, Itsek Zuckerman and Libya Lyubatkin and the heroes-parachutists Haviva Rein and Enzo Sereni, abandoned in the countries occupied by the Nazis for sabotage.

Jewish themes and personalities are also represented on stamps of Canada, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and such exotic countries as Palau, Grenada, St. Vincent, Sierra Leone, the Marshall Islands, Barbados, Maldives, Monaco, Mali, Uganda, about which the author of the book “The Jewish World in Stamps” Ronald Eisenberg asks himself why they need to issue stamps in honor of Leonard Bernstein, Barbra Streisand, Theodore Herzl, and from myself I will add Igor Tamm, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Boris Spassky, Elizabeth Teylor and others.

The answer, as always, is given by Wikipedia. For some of these dwarf countries, tourism and the issuing of postage stamps provide the main income. By the way, the smallest independent state in the world, Nauru (an island with an area of ​​21,3 square kilometers and a population of 11500 people), which recently recognized the independence of Abkhazia for $50 million promised by Russia, also issues stamps, on which, however, for the most part only flora and fauna islands. Nauru's main source of income - phosphates - has run out, and you can't earn much from stamps.

My collection “Paintings on Stamps”, which I collected in the Soviet Union, included reproductions of paintings by Levitan, Chagall, Modigliani, Serov, Brodsky, Pizarro.

Source