Chess stamp

In 1991, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union , the Soviet Post paid tribute to the Estonian Grand Master Paul Keres .

Chess stamps are stamps with motifs related to the game of chess in a broader sense . The specialty of philately attracts chess lovers, who in this way combine two areas of interest.

Chess and philately

The special collection area emerged relatively late. The first postage stamps depicting chess pieces or other chess motifs appeared only after the Second World War . After that, however, development progressed rapidly. The subject turned out to be a very popular collecting area in philately.

The Bulgarian Post issued the first stamp on the occasion of the Balkan Games in 1947. The stamp appeared within a set of multiple sports stamps and featured a white jumper on a brown background. Against the background of the first official World Chess Championship held by FIDE in Moscow, the Soviet Union followed with three brands the following year . In Yugoslavia, for the 1950 Chess Olympiad in Dubrovnik, a generously designed set of motifs was published that contained five values. In the 1960s, postal administrations in non-European countries, such as the states of the Caribbean or the Philippines , occasionally used chess motifs.

It was obvious that the trend towards chess tokens came from the chess-loving Eastern Bloc countries . In the GDR , the 1960 Chess Olympiad in Leipzig provided the impetus for the publication of the first three chess motifs. A special stamp was issued in 1968 for Emanuel Lasker's centenary . On October 5, 1972, the Deutsche Bundespost and Deutsche Bundespost Berlin followed suit with four welfare stamps each. The chess motifs show historical chess pieces made of porcelain from the faience manufacture Gien (France). As part of the children's toys series (for the youth with a surcharge), a postage stamp followed on June 5, 2002 showing chess figures. On March 13, 2008, a postage stamp (sports aid with surcharge) was issued from Germany for the Chess Olympiad in Dresden. Switzerland - for the first time on the occasion of the 1968 Chess Olympiad in Lugano - and Austria also brought out chess tokens. The area "Chess and Philately" also includes postmarks with chess motifs, first day covers and chess postcards. The first postmark (advertising stamp) in the world with the word "chess" was used in 1923 in Germany in Borstendorf / Erzgebirge to advertise the domestic chessboard industry. The postal administrations occasionally issue special postmarks for larger chess events . A very early example is the special postmark for the unofficial Chess Olympiad in Munich in 1936. The ongoing interest of the chess philatelists is proven by auctions, specialist catalogs and a number of specialized internet offers . Telephone cards and banknotes or coins with chess motifs are considered to be neighboring collecting areas . The community of chess motif collectors has existed in Germany since 1969 and , according to its own information, has around 150 members worldwide. In the Netherlands there is the motif group chess , which organizes an auction of collectable items twice a year. Former world champion Anatoli Karpov owns a particularly valuable stamp collection .

Design of the stamps

With regard to the design of the motif, there are different types of chess stamps. In the beginning, classic motifs with individual chess figures that symbolically referred to a chess event were chosen more often. World championship fights, chess Olympiads and important tournaments serve as occasions to this day . There are also portraits of famous chess masters or other motifs from chess history . It is also not uncommon for stamps to be found on which specific lot positions can be recognized - a difficult form of representation due to the limited size.

The variety of motifs and the sometimes high artistic quality are just a few examples. The aforementioned Yugoslav motif from 1950 was far ahead of its time in terms of graphic design ; multi-color printing was also used here for the first time . A Cuban postage stamp from 1964 shows the twelve-year-old (later world champion) José Raúl Capablanca , whereby the idiosyncratic presentation is reminiscent of a chessboard standing on top .

The Hungarian Post produced a stamp block with a unique design in 2004. A total of 64 stamps show all (including the empty) fields of the initial position of the Hungarian Defense . This is to remember the chess tradition of the country and the victory of Pest chess clubs in correspondence chess match 1842/45 against Paris in which this opening occurred for the first time.

literature

Fritz Hoffmann and Johannes Hoffmann: Chess under the microscope. A primer for chess players and philatelists , Sportverlag, Berlin 1988, 2nd edition ISBN 3-328-00172-7 .