Lovrenc Košir

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Laurenz Koschier , Slovenian: Lovrenc Košir , (born July 29, 1804 in Unterluscha near Bischoflack, Upper Carniola , Slovenian: Spodnja Luša nad Škofjo Loko ; † August 7, 1879 in Vienna ) was an Austrian civil servant who u. a. worked in Vienna, Ljubljana (now Ljubljana ) and Agram (now Zagreb ). In addition to Rowland Hill and James Chalmers, he is credited with inventing the postage stamp .

Laurenz Koschier

life and career

Lovrenc Košir or Laurenz Koschier was born as the sixth child of a Carniolan, ie Slovenian, farmer in a village that today belongs to the municipality of Škofja Loka . He was able to attend grammar school in Ljubljana and the Jesuit Lyceum there, as well as study agriculture at the KK Lyzeum in Ljubljana. This was followed in 1829 by a position in the civil service, first in the accounting department of Venice, then Austria, and then in Milan. Due to his successful work, he was employed as an accounting clerk in Vienna in 1834, where he noticed the extremely complicated and very error-prone payment for postal services.

On December 31, 1835, five years before the world's first postage stamps were introduced in Great Britain , the subordinate accountant Laurenz Koschier submitted a proposal to the President of the KK Allgemeine Hofkammer (Ministry of Finance and Commerce) in Vienna , who was responsible for the postal system of stick-on postage stamps . In the Austrian Empire, these were intended to be used for prepayment of postage by means of "affixed stamps". The pressed paper wafers , as he called them, are known to us today as postage stamps . The official's proposal was examined in detail, but initially rejected under reference number Z 15 965/671 dated May 11, 1836: Unfortunately, no use could be made of the proposals, but his “praiseworthy endeavor to be useful to the postal service” was recognized . It is unclear whether the transfer of Koschier to his Krainer homeland in Laibach was at his own request or whether the lower and poorly paid post was an example of the notorious “Thanks from House of Austria”.

After fifteen years in Ljubljana, Koschier was transferred to Agram (today: Zagreb) in 1851, where he remained until his retirement in 1872, after he had reached the peak of his career in 1856 when he was appointed "Vice State Accountant". The widowed civil servant, whose three children Anna, Theodor and August had also died, used his retirement to work in a completely different field: in addition to his Slovene mother tongue, he had learned German, Italian, French and Latin at an early age , and now he dealt with the creation of a Croatian-Hungarian dictionary before he died after seven years in Vienna in 1879, where Koschiergasse was named after him in 1953 in Floridsdorf (21st district) .

Postage stamp pioneer

According to Koschier / Košir, the stamps were to be modeled on the official seals used in Austria . However, since he had contacts in England , there is a possibility that he took over the idea of ​​the postage from James Chalmers , who had already made postage drafts a year before him, but did not submit his designs until three years after Koschier. In contrast, Laurenz Koschier asserted in a request for majesty to Emperor Franz Joseph I , after he had given his approval on September 25, 1849 to introduce "franking of letters by means of salable and glued-on stamps", that he himself had his project in 1836 with a British commercial agent named Galloway explains who then reported it to Rowland Hill.

In 1902 one read in the " New Book of the Universal Mail ":

"In 1858, the then Vice State Accountant L Koschier appeared in Vienna with the claim to be the inventor of the postage stamp. Thereupon the Upper Post Office in Leipzig received the order from the Saxon Ministry of Finance to report on this matter. It fell completely over In favor of Koschier, in that the documents submitted by him provided evidence that the aforementioned had already submitted the proposal to the Austrian government in 1836 to remove the cash postage and replace it with the franc stamps. Yes, even more, Koschier wants to in 1835 - before Rowland Hill - in Laibach with an Englishman by the name of Galway, discussed the system of standardized postage and, as he later said, initiated Hill's postal reform. "

A letter from Koschier with the same claim to the Universal Postal Union on the occasion of its preparatory conference on September 20, 1874 in Bern, however, remained unanswered, and a Croatian historian, a Dr. Velimir Sokol, who had dealt with the person of Koschier several times, claims to have finally proven in 1979 that Koschier had absolutely no part in the invention of the postage stamp.

Memory marks

  • Laurenz Koschier / Lovrenc Košir was immortalized by the former Yugoslavia on several special stamps. The country worked very hard to be recognized as the only true inventor of the postage stamp. In 1948 a four-part series of special stamps with his portrait was issued. In the same year, the Yugoslav postal system even issued an air mail stamp showing Lovrenc Košir's portrait, the house where he was born in a local landscape and an airplane . What is special about this brand, however, is the decorative fields that are attached to each brand. On them are a Serbo-Croatian and a French inscription, which provide information about the merits of Lovrenc Košir - or "Laurent Kochir" in the French text - for the introduction of the postage stamp.
  • May 4th 1979 was the first day of the Austrian special postage stamp "Laurenz Koschier. Pioneer of the postage stamp" on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his death. Special postmarks and official first day covers also show this name spelling.
  • On May 21, 2004, the Slovenian Post issued a special stamp for the 200th birthday of Lovrenc Košir, which shows him, the house where he was born and a handwritten excerpt from his proposal in German cursive script with his signature in the spelling "Laurenz Koschier". His signature is more clearly visible on the attached special stamp from Škofja Loka (Bischoflack)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Slovenian postage stamp from 2004 and the first day cancellation for it show the handwritten signature with the name "Laurenz Koschier" in German Kurrent script. In: Bulletin 2004/51 , p. 7
  2. ↑ a b c d e stampdomain.com: The Invention of the Postage Stamp: Lovrenc Košir (English)
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Maassen: Of stumbling blocks and milestones of German-Austrian philately. Philatelic historical notes on common history. (PDF; 118 kB) Lecture on the German-Austrian Philatelist Day in Bad Reichenhall, October 8, 2006
  4. ^ Ernst Bernardini: Laurenz Koschier (Lovrenc Košir), pioneer of the postage stamp . Carinthian Philatelic Club, Klagenfurt 2004 ISBN 3-85391-225-7
  5. ↑ a b Peter Diem: The postage stamp as a multiple bearer of Austrian symbols (PDF)
  6. ↑ Friedrich Schiller: Wallenstein's Death , II, 6 (1800)
  7. ↑ Österreichische Post AG Philately Shop
  8. ^ Armand Freiherr von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, The new book from the world post. History, organization and technology of the postal system from the oldest times to the present. Hartleben, Wien-Budapest-Leipzig oJ (ca.1902), p. 353, quoted from Jan Kosniowski, Stamp Domain, The Invention of the Postage Stamp: Some Early References to Lovrenc Košir's Claim.
  9. ↑ Dunja Majnaric Radoševic, Some Examples of Research in the Museum of Post and Telecommunication in Zagreb , CECOMM 2004, Bern / Switzerland: HT Museum, Zagreb , p. 4 (PDF, English; 130 kB)
  10. ↑ Philatelica Yugoslavia, 1945-50 collection, No. 18: ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Yugoslav 15 dinars airmail stamp from 1948 with bilingual allonge @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www14.brinkster.com
  11. ↑ Figure with accompanying text, Kosel.com: Europe 1979: Postal services
  12. ↑ CEPT first day cover May 4th! 979 with special cancellation 1010 Vienna
  13. ^ The Slovenian commemorative stamp from 2004
  14. ↑ special postmark v. May 21, 2004

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Košir, Lovrenc
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koschier, Laurenz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian civil servant, pioneer of the postage stamp
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1804
PLACE OF BIRTH Unterluscha near Bischoflack
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1879
Place of death Vienna