Sunday 7 April 2019

Could be Grimm

1961: Humanitarian Relief and Welfare Funds (Design - Bert Jäger 1919-1998)
Germany has had a long history of issuing Humanitarian Relief stamps to support social welfare starting in 1929 however the series of stamps which were first issued in 1959 broke with their traditional subjects in an attempt to appeal to children and  featured the tales of the Brothers Grimm.  The series would be issued for nine years so I'm jumping in with two from the 1961 Hansel and Gretel set. We have the brother and sister with the cannibalistic witch luring them in to her gingerbread house and then Hansel trapped in the witches cage.
1962: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Design - Holger Börnsen)
I don't have any full sets and usually just the middle stamps (somehow the low and high value have eluded me) so no beginning or end for these stories perhaps stuck in the middle of a perpetual fairy tale, not always a safe place to be. Glad to see Snow White is bringing hot drinks for the cute dwarfs alas while they were away later she then has been tempted to taken a bite from a poisoned apple.  The artist Holger Börnsen (b1931) won Deutsche Bunderspost's stamp competition and would produce a run of the Grimm stamps 
1963: The Wolf and the Seven Kids (Design - Holger Börnsen)
The mother goat is warning her kids not to open the door while she is away however the wolf has tricked his way in with the ruse of a white floury hand, fooling them to think it was mother goat. 
1964: Sleeping Beauty (Design - Holger Börnsen)
Down to just one stamp of this set and Sleeping Beauty about to prick her finger and go to sleep for a hundred years.
1965: Cinderella ( Design - György Stefula)
A change of artist in 1965 brought in György Stefula (1913-1999) and Cinderella feeding the birds who bring her the ball dress and then the prince offering her the slipper.  The original Grimm collected story is indeed rather bloodily grim when the step sisters try to fit their feet in the slipper
1966: The Princess and the Frog (György Stefula)
Lastly here is the Princess and the Frog meeting and dining until he is kissed and becomes the handsome prince. The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected stories from the oral tradition that had been around for hundreds of years and wrote them down, publishing the first collection of 86 tales in 1812 but it had grown to 211 stories by the time of the 1857 edition.


Sunday Stamps II prompt this week is the Letter G - here for Germany and Grimm - more tales featuring the Letter G at See It On A Postcard 

4 comments:

FinnBadger said...

Your collection is lovely. How nice that it was issued for multiple years.

Mail Adventures said...

I would have been delighted to send letters with those stamps as a child. Well... probably I'd be delighted right now, too!

Bob Scotney said...

A post that is not at all grim!

violet s said...

Love the artwork. Today's illustrations tend to veer towards being too cute.