Unique collection of Warsaw Uprising Mail returns to Poland

Almost all of polish newspapers alarmed about the german auction in Duesseldorf, where famous collector Manfred Schulze put over 120 exhibits consisting of stamps, envelopes and private letters. Finally, this unique collection of Uprising’s souvenirs was bought by the Warsaw Uprising Museum for 190.000 Eu, which was an opening price.

Big album of polish correspondence signed by AK Warsaw, with aquarel stamps ‘1 VIII 1944′ designed by polish painters, from the begging of auction, was named “filatelistic rarity” and rapidly was an object of controversy. The Warsaw Uprising Museum tried to collect funds, although it’s annual donation for buying exhibits was lower than proposed price.

Day by day to Office of the Capital City of Warsaw and Ministery of Polish Culture and National Heritage arrived the voices to help Museum to get the whole collection. Young students of Lelewel College planned even a collection on this purpose. Finally, Polish bank PKO BP and Polish Telecomunications were given aprobation of giving a part of the opening price. Then, collection of 123 of stamps and correspondence could be transported to Poland and exhibited in The Warsaw Uprising Museum next month, in March 2008.

As “Gazeta wyborcza” wrote in the last article on auction, Germans have offered their help to buy this unique collection.

Still, most of correspondence is deposed in private archives or were destroyed in SB magazins. To compare the numbers, museum’s exhibits are really a drop in the ocean of a real history of Uprising: during the Uprising period there were produced 13.000 unique stamps and over 150.000 letters, sent via 40 post-boxes. Maybe institutions and organizations with historical profile should pay more attention to activities that occur in the Internet? This way may be one of the possible solutions to collect exhibits still hidden in private archives. Online auctions are still full of historical objects.

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