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20 September 1994 - Commemorative Postage Stamp: 50th Anniversary of the Death of Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  • Size: 35.50 x 29.82 mm
  • Paper: white, 90 g, adhesive
  • Comb Perforation: 14
  • Value: Kn 3.80
  • Issued: 350000

The motif on the stamp is Exupery's drawing of the Little Prince, designed by Hrvoje Sercar

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born on 29 June, 1900 in Lyon. He disappeared in an air battle over Corsica, probably shot down by Hitler's fighters on 13 July 1944. Some newspaper reporters claimed that Exupery disappeared under similar circumstances and at the same time somewhere over Karlovac (Croatia), but no conclusive evidence to this claim had been given.

Saint-Exupery lost his father at the age ot four and was brought up by his widowed mother in an old castle. He began to study architecture, but while doing his national service, he came into contact with aviation which was to influence the course of his entire life. He later became a civil pilot and flew on longdistance flights. In 1929 he took on the position of the manager of the Argentinan Air Mail Service in Buenos Aires. From the beginning of World War II to the moment of his death, he volunteered as a pilot of the Ally Air Forces.

Saint-Exupery wrote two novels The Southbound Post (1929) and The Night Flight (1931) and a handful of diverse writings of exeptional value: The Earth of People (1939), A War Pilot (1942), The Little Prince (1943), Letters to a Hostage (1944) and The Citadel, published in 1948.

The writer's small literary legacy is concerned entirely with his own life experience, mostly as a pilot. The excitement and the pleasure he felt when flying and the adventures he encountered, gave rise to Exupery's thoughts about the technical development of mankind and about its moral doubts. Saint-Exupery, who was a very courageous man himself, a true "humanistic aristocrat", appreciated above all courage and honesty. His writings are a wonderful combination of writer's skill, his moral qualities and values and at the same time a true document about the man and his time, about the adventurer, the poet and the philosopher.

The Little Prince, a wonderful modern fairy tale, is obviously based on a real event in the life of Saint-Exupery. The engine trouble in the desert and the encounter with the unusual, charming little prince might have been one of the adventures of Exupery - the pilot and poet.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a unique poet, possibly the only writer who literally reached for the stars. A stary light shines through the works of this author who felt no fear of flying.

Source: The Croatian Post and Telecommunications, 1994

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