Karl Seizinger

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Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Seizinger (born March 23, 1889 in Hildburghausen , † May 4, 1978 in Haarlem, Netherlands ) was a copperplate engraver . He designed postage stamps for the postal administrations of several states and the United Nations . He also worked as a banknote engraver . He was considered a master of his trade and won numerous prizes at international stamp exhibitions.

Life

In his native Hildburghausen, Karl Seizinger learned the craft of a copperplate engraver at the Metzeroth graphic institute. After completing his training, he turned to Berlin to work at the Cartographic Institute. In Berlin he also met his future wife Elisabeth.

When the First World War broke out, Seizinger became a soldier and first came to France on the Western Front. He was later assigned to the Ottoman Army as a pilot. Back in Germany after the war, he couldn't find a job, because most printing companies no longer had the pictures of their books printed out as engravings, but instead used more modern and cheaper techniques. He finally found a job as an engraver of banknotes in 1921 at the securities printing works of the Finnish National Bank in Helsinki .

In 1924 Seizinger accepted an offer from the Czechoslovak State Bank and moved to Prague , where he also worked as a banknote engraver. In addition, he studied for three years at the Prague Art School with Max Švabinský . As a stamp engraver he was responsible for the issues of the series Hrady, krajiny, města (German castles, landscapes, cities) for the first time in 1926 . This series established the good reputation of Czechoslovak postage stamp art. Seizinger was enthusiastically celebrated in trade magazines. Until 1934 he engraved all of the country's editions. After that he was only responsible for some of the Czechoslovakian brands and worked as a freelancer for the state printing company, while a second engraver, Bohumil Heinz , received the remaining orders. In 1938 the pad for the 1st Prague Stamp Exhibition was published as the last of Seizier's numerous Czechoslovak issues.

In the same year - before the German occupation - he left Czechoslovakia and first went to Belgrade. He only visited Czechoslovakia, which was re-established after the war, once in his life when he was a guest at a stamp exhibition in Brno in 1974 .

In Belgrade Seizinger soon began to work for the Yugoslav Post. His first set of stamps appeared in September 1939. Another set with motifs from Croatia followed in March 1941. After the German troops occupied Yugoslavia in April 1941, Seizinger went to Zagreb , where the Independent State of Croatia had just been proclaimed. During the war, he engraved several stamp issues for the Croatian post office, including motifs of historical personalities and St. Mary's Church in Zagreb.

After the re-establishment of the Yugoslav state, Seizinger had to leave the country as a German and lost his entire fortune. He could not find work in his home town of Hildburghausen, and he was also concerned about the political situation in the Soviet zone of occupation. So he decided to move on and in 1947 applied to the Dutch banknote and stamp printing company Joh. Enschedé en Zonen in Haarlem. From 1948 to 1961 he worked there and engraved banknotes and postage stamps for the Netherlands Antilles and Curaçao , for Portugal , Syria , Indonesia and Dutch New Guinea as well as for the UN postal administration in New York.

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personal data
SURNAME Seizinger, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Seizinger, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engraver
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildburghausen
DATE OF DEATH May 4th 1978
Place of death Haarlem , the Netherlands