COVER N. 354 - GERMANY

Postmark: Garching B. München 108 85748  14.11.2023

Posted on the 14h November; received on the 20th November 2023

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There was a time when steps were being taken  in the right direction. It took a lot of courage, it took men of courage.

Men and Women of courage, the best of us, are often unsung heroes. They die in prison, by torture,  by fire, by poison. Some, on the other hand, due to circumstances that are often casuistic too, make it to the headlines and their actions can have a true exponential impact that transcends their immediate vicinity.

"Am abgrund der Deutschen Geshichte und unter der last der millionen ermordeten tat ich, was menschen tun, wenn die sprache versagt"

"Faced with the abyss of German history and the burden of the millions who had been murdered, I did what we humans do when words fail us". 

Thus wrote Willy Brandt in his memoirs, about his historical genuflexion in front of the Warsaw ghetto memorial, on a visit to Poland in 1970.

A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a firm defender of reason against confrontation, an humanist, and Europeanist, the antithesis of the greyish characters which a strange cold wind seems to be breeding nowadays in all continents of this much abused planet, Herbert Frahm, who would pass on to history by the pseudonym he used while working as a journalist exiled in Sweden in WW2, -  Willy Brandt - was the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, from 1969 till 1974.

In his years in office he would become the father of what would become known as the Ostpolitik, the progressive normalisation of relations between West Germany and the Eastern block, which would eventually lead to that unforgettable day of the 9th November 1989 when, at long last, Checkpoint Charlie became but a tourist site in Berlin, the capital of the reunified Federal Republic of Germany.

Thanks a lot Alex. Great cover, and one to keep in the "lest we forget" folder of the collection.

On 03DEC2020, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Willy Brandt's visit to the Warsaw ghetto memorial Deutsche Post honoured Willy Bradt's memory and legacy with the souvenir sheet containing a 1,1 € stamp, which Alex used on this cover.

The stamp, a portion of the photograph that occupies the entire sheet, depicts Chancellor Brandt knelling in front of the flower wrath, with the legend 50 years of Willy Brandt's genuflection in Warsaw, while on the top of the sheet the  quote from his memoirs is also printed.

The very neat and clear postmark hails from Garching bei München a Bavarian city in the vicinity of Munich.