Meet Girl On The Stamp! - Film Abt Czech 1938 Masaryk Stamp

Hi, folks -

I wanted to alert you all to an important philatelic-related film that's debuting here in the US. A new documentary, "In Masaryk's Hands", is about the history behind the most important Czech stamp in the 20th century - the famous "Masaryk with the Girl" stamp, which was the last stamp issued in 1938 before the Germans occupied the country, and later became the first stamp re-issued when the country became free again in 2000.

The little girl of the stamp, Eva Neugebaurova Hanka, is still alive and will be attending the premier of the film in New York as well as the showing in Chicago. As you philatelists know, meeting a living person who has been on a postal stamp is a rare event indeed! Her daughter will be attending for the Philadelphia show.

Here are the details regarding the showings. The shows are free (but of course a small donation would be gratefully accepted). Links are provided to the venues and/or posted information.

NEW YORK -- Tuesday, October 14th @ 7:00 pm - The Czech Center, 321 East 73rd Street, NY, NY LINK

PHILADELPHIA --Saturday, October 18th @ 2:00 pm - Trinity Episcopal Church, 708 Bethlehem Pike, Ambler, PA LINK

CHICAGO -- Thursday, October 30th @ 7:00 pm - T G Masaryk School, 5701 W 22nd Pl, Cicero, IL LINK

In Masaryk's Hands – (father of the modern Czech Nation).
Directed by Jan Rousek from the Czech Film Academy in Prague
52 minutes

In 1928, during a state visit to the small town of Zdar nad Sázavou, in the heart of the Czech-Moriavian Highlands, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk lifted three-year old Eva Neugebauer up from the crowd. He held up the child, gussied up by her mother in a kroj (the traditional Czech native costume) and bearing a bouquet for the president. Fortunately the attending press photographer, Jano Šrámek had the presence of mind to snap the picture. From this fortuitous moment, an iconic image was born, linking Masaryk's enlightened humanism and a nascent Czechoslovak statehood in a symbolic picture of the elder statesman holding aloft the future of his nation.

The photo flew around the world as an immensely popular image and just before the Nazi invasion and after Masaryk's death, it was transformed by the gifted Czech engraver Bohumil Heinz into a postal issue. The great Czech writer and Nobel Prize nominee Karel Kapek pushed for the stamp being used as fund-raiser for needy children and the stamp became wildly popular not just among Czechs but throughout the philatelic world as well. During the war and the battle of Britain, exiled Czech airmen has it made as a poster to remind them of what they were fighting for and to this day, Eva Neugebauerová - now Hanková receives fan mail from collectors of this stamp with requests for autographs. It was then re-issued in the year 2000 by the now free and again democratic Czech republic in celebration of those original Masaryk ideals of the first republics foundation from the ruins of WWI and the nearly three hundred years of foreign rule by Austrian Monarchs.

Eva, the unwitting child-celebrity of Czech democracy, was however forced to emigrate in 1950, while that very fledgling democracy was once again being violated by global forces beyond its own control. She was a newlywed and fled with her husband Ladislav Hanka through the Šumava hills and across the Bohemian Wood, in a peregrination through displaced persons camps in Bavaria, postwar UN relief agency employment in Farnkfurt, by ship from Bremerhafen and through the port of New York to the Corn fields, Czech communities and land grant colleges of Iowa – eventually to land among the Great Lakes in Kalamazoo. There she raised a family with her microbiologist husband and taught school. With this film she is being visited in her retirement by her great-nephew and film director Jan Rousek who has done a masterful job documenting the question of whatever happened to that cute little girl in the stamp. The film itself is now a piece of history and documents a life story which like the stamp doesn't end with a picture but becomes an epic journey which is itself emblematic of much that took place in the mid-twentieth century and wrote itself into the hearts of people, affecting the way we live today.

Jan Rousek (born 1984) completed his studies in history, before embarking on the study of film making at the highly selective and prestigious Prague FAMU (Film Academy of the Muse-inspired Arts). He specialized in documentary film and this is his masterwork for graduation.

Here is Eva as she is today, and as she was, with President Thomas Masaryk, in 1926 when the famous photo was taken. The stamp was created in 1938.

What a story, what a stamp. Thanks for telling us and showing us.

When I first read this part I thought it was a Philatelic dating service.


-IBFS

Ha! I see what you mean about the dating service. At 86 years old I'd imagine Eva would be very amused as well!

I encourage anyone in the area to come see the film - there's way more to the story than I've written here. It tells the story of not only the stamp and what it meant to a nation and people, but also the story of escaping communist occupation, the dangerous journey across the Iron Curtain and making a life in a new and strange land.

You just can not beat history in stamping.

Will it ever get around to all theaters? I would like to see it.


-IBFS

I doubt it, IBFS. It's a small independent film and there's not a lot of budget behind it to market it. Plus, although I think it's a pretty good film and is particularly interesting from a philatelic and human-interest point of view, I'm not sure there's enough audience for it.

Hopefully the director, Jan Rousek, will make it available on the web. I will get a chance to speak to him at the NY premier on October 14th and I will suggest that to him. If he does I'll certainly post it here for those who may be interested.

I wanted to be sure to get this out particularly to the stamp community because of the rare event of being able to meet a person who was on a stamp - it's such an unusual opportunity. As I said earlier, Eva will be at both the NY and Chicago showings.

I may go, depending on my work schedule.

Will be great to see you, Revcollector. I will be attending both the New York premier as well as the Philadelphia showings. I'm fairly recognizable - I'm 6' tall and have a large white handlebar mustache - so please introduce yourself if you see me.

The girl on the stamp, Eva Hanka, will be flying in from Kalamazoo to attend the NY premier, to be held this Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm. See the original posting, above, for more details and links. Her daughter and son will also be in attendance that evening.

Quote from the third paragraph of kmclemore's post of 10/09/2014 11:04 pm: "... The great Czech writer and Nobel Prize nominee Karel Kapek pushed for the stamp being used as fund-raiser for needy children and the stamp became wildly popular not just among Czechs but throughout the philatelic world as well. ..."


kmclemore - Thank you for your detailed info. Just a minor misprint crept in: the Czech writer's name was Karel Èapek, not Kapek. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek

Èapek is reported to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel "War with the Newts" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_with_the_Newts ), seen as an attack on Nazism in Germany and the Communist International. Asked to submit another work for consideration, he refused to comply.

Quotation from Wikipedia on Controversies about Nobel Laureate selections, paragraph 2: 'The academy considered Czech writer Karel Èapek's War With the Newts too offensive to the German government. He also declined to suggest some noncontroversial publication that could be cited as an example of his work, stating "Thank you for the good will, but I have already written my doctoral dissertation".[39] He was thus denied the prize.' (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_...l_candidates ).

Thank you, Florian! Yes, I know it's spelled with the "C" having a "hacek" above it. However, many forums and even some browsers have problems with displaying that character. For example, even in this forum your "C+hacek" displays for me as "E+charka", so it looks like "Eapek" and not "Capek". To prevent this happening I used the version of the name that would best display and be reasonably close to the correct sound.

BTW, for those of you who don't know who Karel Capek/Kapek was, if you've ever used the word 'robot' you can thank him - he originally coined the term. (As someone who teaches robotics, he's well known to me!)

kmclemore - Thank you for explaining to me the problem of various forums and browsers with displaying diacritics, which I was only partly aware of. That was why I first used the simplified spelling Capek but when I found that Èapek appeared on the monitor after opening the link to Wikipedia, I added the diacritic. Now I know better thanks to you.

Regards,

Florián

How come we live in the 21st century and still programmers haven't been able to find and use the Unicode solution?????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

The first version dates from October 1991 !

Even the NSA should not have been able to read the works of Wladimir Wladimirowicz....

Revcollector, it was nice to see you at tonight's world premier for the film. I'm glad you enjoyed it and that you found the story interesting. Eva is in remarkably bright and capable shape for 88 years old... She never fails to amaze me.

I hope some of you other stamp collectors will plan on joining us at the Philadelphia, Chicago and Kalamazoo showings.