Germany - 1956 Schumann Stamps

On July 20, 1956 Germany issued two stamps commemorating the centennary of the death of Robert Schumann.
Unfortunately, the portrait of the composer was superimposed on the music of Franz Schubert.
One month later, two other stamps were issued, this time with Schumann's own music in the background.

I find it difficult to understand how such an error could have actually happened when there are so many checks and balances involved in the creation and issuing of stamps.

Any knowledge or gossip?

Because most artists/engravers are not musicians.

Also, the original designer of the stamp may very well have used a source that was in error, and simply propagated the error. I don't know the exact story for this stamp, so I'm just guessing (making excuses for the designer).

When I was in research, it was not unusual to see factual/technical errors propagating from research paper to research paper -- even in textbooks! I remember one landmark graduate level science textbook, in which we couldn't figure out part of an equation derivation. After hunting through a number of other famous texts and sources, we realized that for several decades, an error (originally probably just a type-setting error), had propagated through the various texts. The book authors had obviously just pilfered the derivations from that early flawed derivation, not noticing the typo!

This type of thing happens on US stamps, as well. Remember the US Grand Canyon stamp? USPS printed and then destroyed 100 million copies because it was inscribed Colorado instead of Arizona. Quite frankly, with today's education system, I'm surprised anybody noticed -- it must have been someone over 50! Anyway, after the stamp plate was corrected and printing run done all over again, they realized that the image of the Grand Canyon shown on the stamp was reversed (i.e., mirror image -- apparently when the designer used a the photographic film, they put the film down facing the wrong direction).

And who can forget the recalled Legends of the West!

There are actually quite a few of these examples for almost every major stamp-issuing country. To be honest, I'm more surprised there aren't more of these design errors EVERY year.

@khj
I understand your explanation and do agree with you to a point. When I spoke of the checks and balances involved in issuing stamps I had another scenario in mind. Say I am translating a Portuguese document. Suddenly I come across a quote in German. I have absolutely no knowledge of German so what am I going to do? Just blindly copy the quote? No, I seek the assistance and guidance of someone who is familiar with German. In the instance of this stamp, I would say if a "checker" is not familiar with classical music, would it not come naturally and instinctively to him/her to seek the assistance and guidance of someone who is? I guess that is the part that annoys me. That somewhere along the line, someone who was not familiar with music gave his OK to something that directly concerned music.

For starters, you are amongst a group with a similar bent toward attention to detail if not perfection in their personal work products. I collect design errors as a topic an the stamp world is rife with them. There are factual errors such as you see here in your example, many many varieties of misspellings, misstatement of facts, situations where the wrong photo was used and on and on. My own personal favorite is the fact that the U.S. has issued five different stamps recognizing or honoring President Harry S Truman and his name has been misspelled each time. (There is no period after the "S". It is a name, not an initial.)

My guess is that nobody in the process was truly familiar with such specific music. Considering all the varied topics covered by stamps, it would be nearly impossible and quite cost prohibitive to make sure everything is perfect. Stamp production is usually more concerned about the artistic quality of the stamp and the production quality/specifications. Factual accuracy gets a "good faith effort" but when you have to mesh it in with "artistic license", things get blurred quite easily. That's why, most of the time, these design errors are noticed AFTER the production and distribution, where they are noticed by someone in the general public (much wider pool of people, some who are sure to be actual experts in a particular field).

Ironically, things have actually gotten much better, because most postal agencies will release stamp designs publicly BEFORE the actual printing, so design errors do tend to be noticed/reported beforehand. Unfortunately for the Legends of the West issue and Grand Canyon stamp, nobody reported it until after the stamps were printed.

The other thing to note is that governments nowadays tend to be a little more sensitive to design errors because it's a lot easier for a small group of people to create quite a stir. In the not so distant past, many complaints about design errors could be expected to be shrugged off, unless it was something that would irritate a core group, such as with the Schumann stamp. A good example is the PRC stamp inscribed "all of China in red" (in Chinese of course), but where the designer left Taiwan not colored in red! Trust me, you did not want to be associated with the team to produced that issue! Not sure what happened to the designer. But the stamp is worth a bundle today.

@cgrotha
If I am allowed asides in this forum, let me relate a short story.
In the 1960s, a landslide in Italy wiped out a complete town called Longarone. Some 2000 people were killed and most buildings destroyed including the central registry. For emergency insurance, emigration, medical purposes the regional capital Belluno started issuing temporary certificates until official originals could be obtained from Rome. I actually saw a Certificato di Morte Temporario (Temporary Death Certificate) translated as Certificate of Temporary Death by a professional, big-name, international translation service. Not very many people outside our Bureau saw that document fortunately. Would you believe though, regardless the sad circumstances, that a life insurance company wanted to take advantage of that screw-up?

Unfortunately, I can believe that. Dead peasant life insurance policies, price gouging, $100M annual bonuses...

Greed does things to people, and it's not pretty.

By the way, Tony, I neglected to thank you for posting the 2 Schumann stamps. I love those 2 sets!

k