| POLAND
1917 KROLESTWO POLSKIE ESSAYS
In early 1917 Germany was confident of
winning the war
and was planning to restore the Polish monarchy, when the war ended,
under
German rule. So in the early part of 1917 the German Authorities
requested the
Polish Civil Administration in Warsaw to arrange for a submission of
designs,
by Polish designers, for a definitive series of stamps for this planned
Kingdom
of Poland.
 
A competition was
organised by the Warsaw Society of
Artists for its members with a monetary prize from the German
Authorities. One
of the conditions of this competition was that the stamps be inscribed
"KROLESTWO POLSKIE" (Kingdom of Poland). A total of 32 artists
submitted some 148 designs by the closing date of 1st December 1917.
Essays of these 148 designs were printed on 35 different sheets in
black, brown, green and blue. Thirteen
of these designs were chosen and the Warsaw Society of Artists
published these,
together with the rest of the designs, in a booklet on the 11th January
1918.
Some time afterwards the Imperial Printing Works in Berlin engraved all
of the
designs. The 13 chosen designs were printed in the proposed colours on
5 sheets and all the
other designs were printed in black. These stamps were mounted in
folders and
circulated amongst the various German embassies and legations in
existence at
the time. With the collapse of the German offensive these designs never
went
past the proof stage.
The artists include the following: M
Bystydzienski , Henyk Oderfeld, Nikodem Romanus,Jozef Tom, Apolonjusz
Kedzierski, Ludwik Gardowski, Ludwik Sokolowski, Zygmunt Beniulis, Jan
Ogorkiewicz, Edmund John, Edward Trojanowski and Mieczyslaw
Neufeld.
The
independence of
Poland some nine months later, in
November 1918, created an urgent need to produce stamps for the
fledgling
country. Two of the artists who took part in the 1917 competition,
Edward
Trojanowski and Edmund Bartlomiejczyk, were asked to modify their
designs for
use by the newly independent Republic of Poland. So, within a short
space of time,
by the end of January 1919, these stamps had been printed and issued
throughout
Poland as the first Polish definitive issue.
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