Exhibition The letter in the change of five centuries - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1961 - 7

At the opening of the exhibition »The Letter in the Change of Five Centuries« on August 31, 1961 in Nuremberg, the Deutsche Bundespost issues a special stamp. The Postal Museum in Frankfurt am Main preserves a copper engraving depicting a Nuremberg postman from the beginning of the 18th century. It made sense to choose this figure as the embodiment of the exhibition theme. Reproductions of the sheet were sent to the artists commissioned with drafting. Two designs have been submitted by Heinz Schillinger. Professor Eduard Ege and Herbert Kern each delivered three proposals, Reinhart Heinsdorff four. The two works by Heinz Schillinger are characterized by a surprising interplay of graphic rigor and to the limit of a bizarre humor of increased lightness. They are structures that are worked with the utmost meticulousness and precision, and thus exemplary examples of shapely brands. They could not be realized only because, with all kindness, a certain penchant for caricature clings to them. Reinhart Heinsdorff dissolves the figurative drawing in a delicate grid system, which he places like a line net over the brand area. He achieves an effect that significantly emphasizes the character of the stamp. From his various modifications, the variant was selected, in which the drawing is on a color plate with negatively recessed font. The Federal Minister for the Post and Telecommunications has approved the proposal of the Art Advisory Board. The stamp was executed with reddish-brown background in offset printing and black drawing in intaglio printing in Bundesdruckerei Berlin.