Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 2001
Tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven
stamp that reads “Deleted. ” Archive staff explained that one item in a collection of the correspondence of Elemér Czakó (1875-1945) had been entered in their collection as part of a sealed collection loaned to the National Archive in 1985. In 2000, the heir to the collection, citing a passage in the loan agreement, asked that the material be returned. The archive offered to purchase the collection, but no agreement was reached. The collection was then qualified as protected and returned. Although, when a collection is declared protected, all owners are required to report any changes in ownership, it appears that the Czakó legacy was sold item by item, or in small bundles, and no reports of ownership changes were submitted. During his lifetime, Elemér Czakó was particularly concerned with art, museum science, and printing. He worked at the Museum of Applied Arts, the Ministry of Religion and Public Education, was principal of the School of Applied Arts, director of the University Press, and curator of the Hungarian material displayed at many international exhibitions. Beginning with the 1930s, he was active in post office stamp issuing. His level of general knowledge, artistic ability, and his printing expertise made him an ideal person to assist in preparing stamp issues, and to serve on juries selecting stamp designs for printing. Since the stamp combined all his areas of interest, it was a focal point of his activity, much to the benefit of the Stamp Museum, which was established in 1930. He considered it important to collect documents and data on and related to the stamps, and he established the document archives. The collection he initiated contains a wealth of material on stamp designing and on the work of the graphic artists who designed them. It becomes clear from his publications, correspondence, and the documents he collected, that he was planning a monograph on the Hungarian stamp in which the artistic aspects of the stamp would have received more emphasis that is usual in philatelic literature. Helbing’s initial lines in the letter reflect an interest in stamp graphics and in plans to process the stamps. Czakó sent a letter to Helbing, which he also sent to several other artists, and our letter is Helbing’s reply. It is likely that fewer artists than expected had responded to Czakó’s letter. With a bit of investigation, it would have been possible to describe Ferenc Helbing’s life and career without the data supplied by Elemér Czakó. The particular value of the letter shown here is that it goes beyond dry data, reflecting his opinions and taste in detail, and the manner in which he attempted to establish harmony between his artistic concepts, the conditions set by the client, and given technology. The letter is a treasured part of our collection, since the museum has a rich collection of materials on both the author and the addressee, and when reading it, a new light is shed on many of these items. Alexandra Halász: Documents on the Early Forgery of Hungarian Stamps We are using the term “forgery” in an older sense, for today’s tricks to avoid payment of fees qualify as fraud, a misdemeanour. The term forgery is used in old documents, to mean that originally valid printed stamps, were again affixed to letters after they had been used once. Thus, the user saved the delivery fee and cheated the post office. Doing this required that the original postmark not be visible. This was easy to do if the postmark was never stamped on the letter, but this was not typical of early letters. So, 206