Gregor Mendel, the "Father
of Genetics", was born in Moravia, which after World
War One was incorporated into the new state of Czechoslovakia.
After World War Two, Czechoslovakia fell into the Eastern Bloc
as part of the Warsaw Pact countries controlled from Moscow. Mendelian Genetics had been under attack
in Soviet Russia because of its supposed philosophical conflict
with Marxist-Leninist theory. Genetics was officially condemned
in 1948 at a Congress organized by the pseudo-scientist Trofim
Lysenko as bourgeois, anti-Marxist "Mendelist -
Morganism". Scientific research was under heavy
state control in the eastern Bloc, and there appears to have
been little if any genetics research in Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, etc. thereafter. The situation did
not improve until the fall of Khrushchev in 1964, which was
strongly influenced by crop failures due to his reliance on
Lysenko's worthless methods. Soviet biologists thereafter
condemned Lysenko's theories, and his malign affect on
Soviet agronomy, biology, and genetics.
This Czechoslovakian stamp from 1965
therefore tells a story. It
acknowledges the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO), illustrates a pea
plant [upper left], a replicating DNA molecule
[bottom left], and rather incongruously a fuchsia [lower
left corner]. 1965 was the 100th anniversary of the
publication of Mendel's two scientific papers outlining
Mendelian Genetics, a significant event in world science and
presumably a source of pride to Moravian Czechs. Its printing is
on the exact cusp of the rehabilitation of genetics, and may be
a sign of which way the winds were blowing.
The same image of Mendel occurs in other dark
contexts. After World War I, the German city of Danzig became a
"Freie Stadt" (Free State), separated from Germany by a
land connection, known as the Polish Corridor, from the new
state of Poland to the Baltic Sea. The existence of the Corridor
and the supposed oppression of the German minority in Danzig
became the excuse for the German invasion of Poland that started
World War II. The original name of the city, Gdansk, was
restored in post-war Poland.
Of special interest in these items is the
association of the icon of Genetics with Nazi politics. The 10p
stamp reads "Healthy children - Happy future." The
texts above and below the portrait on the postcard read "Health
Care of the German People" and "Take
care of the bloodstream of future generations;"
the postmark includes "Health of the German People"
along with the swastika. All of these are
slogans associated with the Nazi eugenics program, promoted as
the "science of race hygiene."
In its darker form, "care for the
bloodstream" included the involuntary sterilization and
killing of persons regarded as ""Lebens unwertes Leben" ("Life unworthy of Life"). Initially, this
policy included institutionalized persons in mental asylums and
hospitals, including children, regarded by the State as having
hereditary defects and as drains on state resources.
Industrial-scale methods of killing advocated by the Aktion T4
program and used subsequently in the
extermination camps were first developed in these institutions.
Postage stamps have at other times and places
had significant political impact. The 3d Jersey Island stamp
[below left] was designed and issued during the German
occupation of the British-ruled Channel Islands during World War
II. Any reference to the British crown was banned: the designer
however worked the initials GR (Georgius
Reginus, King George) into the script patterns on either
side of the "3d".
The Serbian "death mask"
stamps [below right, inverted] featured two overlapping
busts of the founder of the new Serbian state alongside that of
King Peter I, who succeeded to the Serbian throne in 1904 after
the assassination of King Alexander. When the stamp is turned
upside down, the "death mask" face of the former king is
clearly visible, complete with bristling eyebrow and
mustaches, at the intersection of the two
faces in the medallion. Rumor has it that the printer was bribed
by King Alexander's mother.
