Lovrenc Košir

Laurenz Koschier, Slovenian: Lovrenška Košir, ( born July 29, 1804 in Unterluscha at Bishop paint, Carniola, today: Spodnja Luša nad Škofjo Loko; † August 7, 1879 in Vienna ) was an Austrian official, who, among other things in Vienna, Ljubljana (now Ljubljana) and Agram (now Zagreb) was employed. He is next to Rowland Hill and James Chalmers attributed the invention of the postage stamp.

Life and career

Lovrenška Košir or Laurenz Koschier was the sixth child of a Carniolan, di Slovenian peasants born in a village, which today belongs to the municipality of Loka. He was able to attend high school in Ljubljana and the local Jesuit secondary school, as well as the KK School in Ljubljana studying agriculture. 1829 it joined a job in the civil service initially in the accounts of that time Austrian Venice and then in Milan. Due to his successful career, he was employed in 1834 as an accounting officer in Vienna, where he noticed the extremely complicated and very error-prone payment of the postal services.

Dated December 31, 1835, five years before the introduction of the world's first stamps in the UK, to the President of the KK General Court Chamber ( Finance and Trade Ministry ) in Vienna, which was under the postal system, the subaltern accountant Laurenz Koschier a proposal for the introduction of stick- Brieftaxstempeln. This should serve in the Empire of Austria for pre- payment of the stamp for sending by " stuck- stamp ". The pressed paper wafers, as he called them, are known to us today as stamps. The proposal of the officials was examined in detail, but for now 965/671 dismissed on 11 May 1836 business number Z 15: Sorry, could the proposals, no use will be made ​​, but will be " laudable desire to be useful to the Post Office ," recognized. Whether the transfer was not long after Koschiers was in his Krainer home to Ljubljana at his own request or whether the lower and lower-paid post was an example of the infamous "Thanks to the House of Austria ," is unclear.

After fifteen years in Ljubljana Koschier was to Agram (now Zagreb) 1851 shifted, where he remained until his retirement in 1872, after he had reached in 1856 with the appointment as " Vice State Accountant " his career highlight. Retirement but took advantage of the widowed civil servants, whose three children Anna, Theodore and August were also already died, for a work in a completely different area: In addition to his Slovene mother tongue, he had already acquired a knowledge of German, Italian, French and Latin language early, and now he dealt with the creation of a Croatian -Hungarian dictionary before he died after seven years in 1879 in Vienna, where in Floridsdorf ( 21st district ) was named the Koschiergasse after him in 1953.

Stamp pioneer

The stamps should be modeled on the official seals already used in Austria by the authorities after the performance of Koschier / Košir. However, since he had contacts in England, it is possible that he took the idea of the stamp of James Chalmers, who had made ​​stamp designs a year before him, but his designs submitted until three years after Koschier. On the other hand claimed Laurenz Koschier in a majestic petition to Emperor Franz Joseph I, after he had given his approval to introduce a " franking of letters by means of negotiable and glued stamp " on September 25, 1849 he himself had in 1836 his project a British trade agent named Galloway explained, which then Rowland Hill have reported it.

1902 people read in the "New Book of World Post":

However, a letter Koschiers with the same claim to the Universal Postal Union on the occasion of its preparatory conference on September 20, 1874 in Bern remained unanswered, and a Croatian historian, Dr. Velimir Sokol, who had dealt several times with the person Koschiers, will have 1979 finally demonstrated that Koschier zukomme ever no part in the invention of the postage stamp.

Memory brands

• Laurenz Koschier / Lovrenška Košir was immortalized by the former Yugoslavia on several special stamps. The land sat a very for its recognition as the only true inventor of the postage stamp. In 1948, a four-part special stamp series was issued with his portrait. In the same year the Yugoslav postal system was even an airmail stamp out on the Lovrenška Ko? Ir portrait, his birthplace are displayed in heimatlicher landscape and a airplane. The specialty of this brand is but the empty spaces that attach each brand. In them are a Serbo-Croatian and French inscription on the merits of Lovrenška Košir - provide information about the introduction of the stamp - or from " Laurent Kochir " in the French text.
• On 4 May 1979, the first day of the Austrian commemorative stamp " Laurenz Koschier. Pioneer of stamp " on the occasion of his 100th death anniversary. Also, special and official first day cover show this naming scheme.
• On 21 May 2004, a special issue of the Slovenian post was published to mark the 200th birthday of Lovrenška Košir that, his birthplace and a handwritten excerpt from his proposal in German script with his signature in the letters " Laurenz Koschier " shows it. Significant visible is his signature on the attached special Loka ( Bishop paint)