Magyar Posta is continuing to issue thematic personalised stamps in 2023. This year again four new stamps with labels are due to be released, two of which are to be issued on 4 April 2023 as part of the Eminent Philatelists series. For each theme, 12,250 copies of the stamp with a label designed by the graphic artist Imre Benedek were produced. They may be purchased at Filaposta and from Magyar Posta’s online store while stocks last.
Dr Béla Térfi (1869-1959) was a minister and eminent philatelist. He studied at the College of Mining and Forestry in Selmecbánya (now Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia). After the fall of the Monarchy, he was appointed to the National Office for Public Nutrition, and during the Soviet Republic he became the government commissioner for grain collection of the People’s Commissariat for Public Nutrition. In the midst of the great difficulties caused by the hostilities, he performed his duties with aplomb, and, despite his previous role, his name appeared in the second government formed by Count István Bethlen in 1921, in which he served for six and a half months as minister without portfolio for public nutrition. By the 1930s he was vice-president of the National Forestry Association. The fruit of his decades of research and collecting, covering 49 archives at home and abroad, and the study of many private collections, is his life’s work, “Bélyegelőtti levelek és azok lebetűzései” (Pre-Stamp Letters and their Notation), which was published by the letter collecting society LEHE in 1943. His unique collection of pre-stamp letters is now in the Stamp Museum, and the best of it is on permanent display.
Elemér Czakó (1876-1945) was the librarian of the Museum of Applied Arts in 1899. From 1911 he was the director of the School of Applied Arts, and between 1925 and 1934 the director general of the University Printing House, which he reorganised. He was co- president and later honorary president of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society and an honorary member of the National Society of Applied Arts. He is the author of several manuscript studies pertaining to philately, which were used as source material for theHungarian Society for Philatelic Research’s Monograph Project. In his philatelic history research, he sought all surviving ministry and state printing office documents relating to the first stamp issue in 1871 and wrote his study in the early 1940s based on these. Hisendeavours appeared in 1941 in the form of a book, “A bélyeggyűjtés értelme” (The Merit of Stamp Collecting). He donated his library of philatelic books, manuscripts and copies to the Stamp Museum. After his retirement, he was an organiser and permanent participant in the stamp jury. He played an essential role in bringing about the first golden age of the Hungarian stamp.
