Anew 50-pfenning stamp, containing a drawing of a tree so drawn as to portray a face remarkably like that of Hitler, was enjoying a brisk sale today in West Germany.
The debt-ridden Federal Post office was understood to be delighted at the heavy sales. It issued a statement today emphasizing that the artist, Otto Rohse, 39, of Hamburg, had not intentionally drawn a face. The Post office also said the stamp would not be withdrawn. The stamp depicts a castle tower and beside it a tree. Some of the branches form the shape of the face resembling Hitler.
The artist insisted today that he had never seen Hitler’s head in the drawing “and neither did the Post office Art Commission which passed the design.” He added that he had been an ordinary soldier in a tank division from 1934 until the end of the war and that he was never an admirer of the Fuehrer. “On the contrary, my family were members of the anti-Nazi Confessional Church,” he stressed.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
