2006

[Editor's note: we do not attest to the accuracy or completeness of these notes which are provided by the Croatian and Slovenian Postal authorities and other independent sources.] 

(SLO) FOLKLORE - MASKS - THE COCKS (PONIKVE IN THE DOLENJSKA REGION)

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: January 20, 2006
• Risba: Milena Gregorčič
• Oblikovanje: Milena Gregorčič
• Motiv: The Cocks, Ponikve in the Dolenjska Region
• Tisk: Cetis d. d., Celje
• Tehnika: 4-colour offset
• Pola: 16 stamps
• Papir: Chancellor 102 g/m2
• Velikost: 49,70 x 35,50 mm

(SLO) NATIONAL COSTUME FROM CARINTHIA

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: January 20, 2006
• Oblikovanje: Studio Arnold + Vuga
• Motiv: National Costume from Carinthia
• Tisk: Cetis d. d., Celje
• Tehnika: 5-colour offset
• Pola: 16 stamps
• Papir: Chancellor 102 g/m2
• Velikost: 35,50 x 49,70 mm

• Data di emissione February 10, 2006
• Valore euro 0,45
• Tiratura tre milioni e cinquecentomila esemplari
• Vignetta riproduce, su fondo bianco, lo stemma della Società Dalmata di Storia Patria, fondata a Zara nel 1926 con l’obiettivo di tutelare e diffondere la cultura italiana della Dalmazia. Completano il francobollo la leggenda "SOCIETÀ DALMATA DI STORIA PATRIA", la scritta "ITALIA" e il valore "€ 0,45"
• Bozzettista ed incisore Rita Morena
• Stampa Officina Carte Valori dell’Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato S.p.A., in calcografia
• Colori due
• Carta fluorescente, non filigranata
• Formato carta mm 40 x 48
• Formato stampa mm 36 x 44
• Dentellatura 13 x 13 ¼
• Foglio venticinque esemplari, valore "€ 11,25"

Emissione di un francobollo celebrativo della Società Dalmata di Storia Patria

• Date of issue: February 24, 2006
• Value: 10 kn
• Author: Maja Danica Pečanić, painter and designer, Zagreb
• Size: 110 x 71 (35,50 x 29,82) mm
• Paper: white 102g, gummed
• Perforation: Harrow, 14
• Tehnique: Multicoloured Offsetprint
• Printed by: "Zrinski" - Čakovec
• Quantity: 20000

Motif: marble sculpture of Livia Drusilla, AD 14 to 21, Narona, Vid-Metković, Croatia; the head of the sculpture is the property of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

The city of Narona (now the village Vid near Metković, Croatia) was an important Roman colony in the Neretva river valley, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Though Salona unquestionably used to be the centre of the Roman province of Dalmatia, since the Late Republican era Narona played a more significant role in relation to south-eastern Europe, connecting the coast with the interior (particularly the area of the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina). Narona was first mentioned in historical documents as early as the fourth century BC by Pseudo Scylax and Theopompus, however in the mid-second century BC, according to archaeological excavations from 1997, 1998 and 1999, there was an archaeologically attested emporium located at the top of the Neretva river delta (Roman Naro, Greek Naron), on the very spot where the Roman forum of the Narona colony was to be built in the last decades of the first century BC. This place was of strategic importance for the communication from the Adriatic toward the hinterland of the ancient province of Dalmatia, as far as the rivers Sava and Danube. Narona was probably given the status of colonia, a colony, by the emperor Augustus, though there is another rather well founded opinion that it had already been a Julian colony, i.e. earlier than 27 BC. The city walls with towers were preserved. A number of partially explored country houses, (villae rusticae) in the immediate vicinity of the city walls show a considerable degree of interior decoration.

The necropolis (burial grounds) from this early ancient period was not investigated, though many Roman Latin epitaphs were preserved. The most impressive building on the wide forum is the Augusteum, discovered and excavated in 1995 and 1996, at the locality of the former Plećaš’s barn. This small temple, with a cella and propyleaeum, on a raised plateau next to the forum, exactly at the spot where the Lower and Upper city meet, had been erected for emperor Augustus round 10 BC. This is also the time when the first statues in its interior with a simple black and white mosaic-covered floor had been erected. These statues were erected on a constructed pedestal. It can be concluded that the Augusteum was destroyed in the late fourth century. The whole of the forum complex was already deserted. Some Christian basilicas were constructed in the Lower city. The Augusteum at Narona, with its 15 preserved large statues out of, probably, the total of more than 20, represents the most numerous group of Roman imperial statues that have been ever found.

Beside the statue of Livia from the Augustan period, by the new discovery of the head and torso join – shown on the Croatian Post postage stamp – another statue of Livia was also discovered, this one from the Tiberian period, 14 – 21 AD. The statue is 184 cm high/tall. The torso is made from Pentelic marble and the head Parian. Livia Drusilla, born in 58 BC, died in AD 29, was first married to the Roman military leader Tiberius Claudius Nero and was the mother of emperor Tiberius and the military leader Nero Claudius Drusus. In 38 BC she married Octavianus, the future emperor Augustus. The imperial governor (pro-praetor) of the province of Dalmatia, Publius Cornelius Dolabella simultaneously erected two statues in Narona, the statue of Tiberius and the one of Livia, the latter now known under the name “Oxford-Opuzen Livia”. Livia as the emperor’s mother had been highly honoured, more than she had been in the Augustan period. When she was finally deified at the time of Claudius in AD 41, her cult in Narona has been built up even more, as a matter of fact two inscriptions from that time mention her priest as sacerdos Divae Augustae. Livia’s cult in Narona, even before this discovery, was attested by inscriptions as well as the portrait exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford that was acquired for the museum by Sir Arthur Evans in Metković in 1878, (it was previously noted by Mihovil Glavinić in 1874). The marble head of Livia from the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, has been on a several-year loan to the Archaeological Museum in Split where it had been exhibited since December 18, 2000, thanks to the museum board, the Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum, and their director Dr Christopher Brown and the curator Professor Doctor Michael Vickers. By this generous contribution to the evaluation of Livia’s portrait and statue, the collaboration of the two museums has been pointed out, the collaboration between the oldest British and north-western European museum Oxford, and the one in Split, the oldest Croatian and south-eastern European one. Endeavouring to find the torso that would correspond to the Oxford head has lasted for a long time and caused great media attention, both in Croatia and Britain.

In the London The Times four articles were written by Norman Hammond, professor at Boston University and The Times archaeology correspondent: How a murderous matriarch lost her head, October 25, 2000; Oxford thrilled by headless torso discovery, November 22, 2000; Two heads of Livia are better than one, April 4, 2001; Body of evidence resolves the mystery of Livia’s head, June 20, 2001 On January 22, 2001 it was undoubtedly attested that the join of the Oxford head and the torso of the statue that was kept in Opuzen was perfect. The Opuzen torso was discovered earlier than the year 1847 in Narona, most probably together with another statue, the one of Tiberius, later attested to have come from the Augusteum. The torso was first mentioned by Sir Gardner Wilkinson who had seen it in Opuzen and wrote about it in 1848. The director of the Archaeological Museum in Split, Mihovil Glavinić, who noted the heads of Livia and Mercury in the autumn of 1874, also saw the torso in the same year. The statues were transferred to Opuzen in 1847 or some time earlier under the direction of the prefect of the district Anđelo Vidović and placed in his house in Opuzen. Owing to the fact that the town of Opuzen had already lent the torso to the Archaeological Museum in Split, the “new” statue of the Oxford-Opuzen Livia was also displayed in this museum on May 14, 2002. This statue was presented to the wider Croatian and European public owing to the great project of the Narona Augusteum exhibition that was realized by Emilio Marin, the leader of the excavations in Narona from 1988 to 2004. The exhibitions were accompanied by four catalogues. The exhibition in Split, The Augusteum at Narona – the Siesta of the Narona Emperors in Split was held from May 4 to June 15 2004. The Oxford exhibition The Rise and Fall of an Imperial Shrine – Roman sculptures from the Augusteum at Narona was held from July 6 to October 17 2004, the one in Barcelona Divo Augusto – La descoberta d’un temple roma a Croacia – El descubrimiento de un templo romano en Croacia from November 4, 2004 to January 30, 2005. In Vatican the exhibition L’Augusteum di Narona – Roma al di la dell’Adriatico is held from February 22 to May 18 2005. In Zagreb the exhibition will be shown in the Gliptoteka HAZU (the museum of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences) from June 10 to December 31 2005. In this way the Oxford-Opuzen Livia from Narona has turned into an excellent ambassador of Croatian archaeology and a good will ambassador between Croatia and Great Britain.

• Date of issue: March 21, 2006
• Value: 1 kn
• Author: Irena Frantal, paintress, Academy of Art, Zagreb
• Size: 35,5 x 29,82 mm
• Paper: white 102g, gummed
• Perforation: Comb,14
• Tehnique: Multicoloured Offsetprint
• Printed by: "Zrinski" - Čakovec
• Quantity: 200000

The list of his professional involvements is rather varied: in his youth he worked in a Viennese bank and then tried to found his own bank in Rijeka together with a friend. Afterwards he was employed as a construction technician, which resulted in his later drawing up plans and building his own theatre (1805) that could seat one thousand and six hundred spectators. He also established a modern orchestra, brought in various theatrical troupes, founded a merchants’ club and proposed the building of a big hotel for business people and merchants.

As soon as the information about the British innovation of building chain bridges spread over the European continent, Adamić joined the group of the first designers of such a bridge (his bridge in Rijeka was designed at the same time as the planning for the building of the chain bridge in Vienna started (1823). Adamić’s design, unfortunately not carried out, of an iron bridge between Buda and Pest was definitely among the first bridges of this type in Europe and it was probably his initiative that motivated Istvan Szecheny to start the building of the famous Szecheny chain bridge.

Adamić also instigated the building of canals, roads and railways, from Panonia all up to Rijeka, and he also tried to obtain state subsidies that would enable him to introduce his own steamship line between Rijeka and Boka Kotorska. He also proposed important town-planning interventions to be made in connection with the building of new streets and he also started the planting of a plane-tree avenue on Fiumara. He was involved in projects that tried to enhance the navigability of the river Kupa, and in order to improve the connection of the Rijeka port with the inland he was preoccupied with the building of the “Luisiana” highway. Adamić was prone to frequent, distant and long-lasting business trips. At the time of the revolutionary tensions of the year 1789, he made a round of the Mediterranean ports and harbours and went to Istanbul to save his ships from being confiscated.

On account of the confiscation of his ships in Jamaica, then a British colony, in 1800 he went to London where he soon set upon the developing of the trade with the English. He promoted and advanced his business across the whole of the Mediterranean, and had his agents and partners all over the place – in Genoa, on Malta, in Tunisia. However, all of Adamić’s various activities and abilities could be subsumed under his business goals and be included in the context of the trading and economic development of that time. Those who follow the directions and encompassing span of Adamić’s running of his business, between Istanbul and London, Vienna and Malta, could also discover the image of the wide European space of that time, the rivalry of the European powers, the British and the French, the awakening of Central Europe, as well as the tempestuous circumstances in the Mediterranean, where new great powers continued completely ousting or seriously threaten the old ones – the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire.

Adamić’s versatility, dynamics and his extensive activity are impressive, as well as their origin – the ambience of a small port centre that tried to keep pace and be included in the mainstream of the leading European directions and could be, therefore, an excellent starting point for the study of the European economic and social conditions and the life of that time. As a matter of fact, the radical social changes and the accelerated technical development instigated at the end of the 18th century the destruction of old restrictions and the advent of early industrialization. Commoners started gaining fundamental civil rights and taking over civic obligations. The main character of our story belongs to the strata of such people, those who have emerged from the stratum of the common people. The first rise from the anonymous masses has been made by his, many people say, illiterate but rich father, who had made it possible for his son to get a good education in Vienna, to be able to achieve a social ascent and European breakthrough. Adamić is definitely a good example of the elevation of the middle-class class and the development of a new sort of merchants and entrepreneurs who started continuously specializing and defining a narrower scope of their activities – they started changing into wholesale merchants, industrialists, stock exchange speculators or bankers, growing from the lower middle-class into the big business class. This new moving force would soon completely oust the old feudal aristocracy and overtake the leading social role. Naturally, even the liberally organized big business could not do without the support of the political circles. On the contrary, Adamić preferred making business with governments and ministries, and he tended to use direct political activity which was the reason for his building up contacts with the Austrian court circles. He was a friend of the Austrian field-marshal Laval Nugent and the Hungarian nobleman Szecheny. On several occasions he led municipal delegations on their visits to the Austrian Emperor, he was also the town’s representative at the Hungarian parliament in Pozsony, present-day Bratislava, where he was also member of the Hungarian parliamentary economic commission. The majority of his political activity was directed at the development of economy and building of traffic lines towards Rijeka. At that time it was precisely his merchant firm which was not only the biggest in Rijeka but also very influential in the Mediterranean, reaching from Central and Eastern Europe to Great Britain, with occasional exports across the Atlantic – all the way to Central America and Brazil. Adamić’s subsidiary, for example, was the biggest merchant firm on Malta at the time when this island was one of the most important mercantile points of the Mediterranean. He had agents on the African coast, too, in several distant ports, and he used to enter new business undertakings with the greatest possible speed that was made possible by the fact that he was always excellently informed, and he also had exceptional abilities of creating business and political acquaintances. Furthermore, he used to regularly keep up correspondence not only with merchants and influential personages from the Hapsburg countries but with the English and French authorities, too, as well as with Italian merchants.

Above everything else, Adamić was a merchant involved in the trade of tobacco, oak-timber and salt, and as an entrepreneur he was the owner of the manufactures of the liquor Rosolio, of sails, paper, glass and rope. He was the man representing the transitory, still pre-industrial and “non-specialized” era. His firms were mostly manufactures, factories not yet big enough or founded on new technologies. For a next step in Rijeka it was necessary to wait for the advent of the English and the introduction of the first steam engine, which took place exactly in Adamić’s former paper factory. Adamić’s example is quite topical nowadays. He was Rijeka-born, liked his native country, was of Croatian origin but acquired the features of the Italian culture, a citizen of Hungary and subject to the Austrian Emperor, but first and foremost a European and a pragmatist, a person speaking six languages – Italian, Croatian, German, French, English and Latin – and who, despite the sluggishness of communications, ran his business across the wide European space, and his merchant firm effectuated big, often monopole business with the governments of several countries. For many years he used to export to Britain oak-timber from the Croatian forests in the environment of Karlovac for the building of war ships, and he was also the chief supplier of salt for Napoleon’s Italian part of the later established Illyrian provinces. Andrija Ljudevit Adamić was the main hero of the history of Rijeka in his time, the turning point in time and era on the path to the final democratization and industrialization that would, somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, bring to the majority of continental Europe a new wave of middle-class revolutions and an equally unstoppable spread of railways, as well as the development of steel production.

Fragments from the text written by Ervin Dubrović, Ma.Sc.

• Data di emissione: April 3, 2006
• Valore: € 0,62
• Tiratura: tre milioni e cinquecentomila esemplari
• Vignetta: rappresenta, in grafica stilizzata, un globo terrestre composto da tante schede che idealmente si inseriscono in un’urna elettorale, sulla quale sono riprodotti i colori della bandiera e lo stemma della Repubblica Italiana.
  Completano il francobollo la leggenda “PRIMO VOTO DEI CITTADINI ITALIANI ALL’ESTERO”, la scritta “ITALIA” ed il valore “€ 0,62”
• Bozzettista: Luca Vangelli
• Stampa: Officina Carte Valori dell’Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato S.p.A., in rotocalcografia
• Colori: cinque più inchiostro interferenziale trasparente-oro
• Carta: bianca patinata neutra, non fluorescente, non filigranata
• Formato carta: mm 30 x 40
• Formato stampa: mm 26 x 36
• Dentellatura: 13 ¼ x 13
• Foglio: cinquanta esemplari, valore “€ 31,00”
• Caratteristiche dell’etichetta: L’etichetta, stampata con il sistema autoadesivo, di formato mm 40 x 14, reca in negativo le scritte “postaprioritaria” e “Priority Mail” su campitura di colore bleu ed è raccolta su un foglio a parte. Essa presenta la fustellatura al vivo (senza margini bianchi) in tutti e quattro i lati.
• Il foglio, di formato cm 20,1 x 30,5, contiene 76 etichette, fustellate e sfridate a simulazione di dentellatura 11, recanti tracciature orizzontali e verticali del supporto siliconato per il distacco facilitato di ciascuna etichetta dal proprio supporto
• Carta: bianca, patinata neutra, autoadesiva non fluorescente
• Grammatura: 90 gr/mq
• Supporto: carta bianca, tipo Kraft monosiliconata da 60 gr/mq
• Adesivo: tipo acrilico ad acqua, distribuito in quantità di 20 gr/mq (secco)
• Stampa: Officina Carte Valori dell’Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato S.p.A., tipografica di colore bleu

Emissione di un francobollo celebrativo del primo voto dei cittadini italiani residenti all’estero.

• Date of issue: May 23, 2006
• Value: 5 kn
• Author: Danijel Popović, designer from Zagreb
• Size: 35,5 x 29,82 mm
• Paper: white 102g, gummed
• Perforation: Comb,14
• Tehnique: Multicoloured Offsetprint
• Printed by: "Zrinski" - Čakovec
• Quantity: 200000
• Motif: Little Tern (Sterna albifrons)

The Croatian Post has issued four commemorative postage stamps with the motif of the Little Tern in cooperation with the Worldwide Fund for Nature – WWF, and the sign of the panda - the logotype WWF, is printed on the stamps with the permission of the registered owner of the protected sign. Rivers with their shingle and sandy shoals and islands, shallows and limans, rapids and silence, whirlpools and beams, backwaters and pools, land-slide sloped river banks and many other shapes that are produced by rivers, all these belong to the most beautiful, most attractive and most endangered landscape riches in Croatia and Europe.

In Croatia, the little terns settle just in such habitats and in many ways share their destiny: they belong to the most beautiful, most attractive and most endangered bird species. Little terns are the smallest, but at the same time the most elegant and adroit of our terns. Their body is slender (22 to 24cm in length from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail), so they are very light – weighing only 40 to 60 grams. Their wings are very long (the wing-span is from 50 to 55cm). This is the reason their flight is very easy, dexterous and harmonious. This way of flying is very important for the little terns because they feed on small fish, crustaceans and insects, all of which demands a continuous flight above the river, particularly above the river shallows and backwaters. While catching them they fly low above the river, between 2 to 3m, up to 10 to 20m high above the water surface. When they spot a fish or crab they plunge through the air and dive into the water to catch their prey. If they cannot see their prey properly, they vibrate above it before plunge-diving for it (vibrating is a special type of flying when birds moving their wings “stand” or keep still in one place) in order to see better. Doing this they make sure that the sunlight should be behind their backs in order to see their prey better and for their prey to fail seeing them. The success in their hunt, depending on the visibility (visibility is decreased by the muddiness of the water, the wavy surface, etc.) varies from 60 to 20 percent. The small fish they feed on are usually 4 to 6cm in length, the biggest are not longer than 10cm. Except for hunting in the water, little terns hunt for insects while they are flying, usually low above the water surface.

Little terns nest in colonies on barren or slightly overgrown, usually gravel islands, mostly in co-habitation with the larger and more numerous red-billed common terns. They make up pairs at the time of the spring migrations or upon coming to their nesting places in the course of May, and the pair usually remains together for a number of nesting seasons. The nest is a shallow cavity, usually covered with some grassy material. They usually lay two to three eggs, and both partners sit on the eggs, though the female does it for longer periods. The chicks hatch after 21 day, and both parents alternate in feeding them and caring for them. While the chicks are small, the female remains in the nest all day and keeps them warm. During that time the male hunts on its own and feeds the chicks and the female. When the young little terns are 5 or 6 days old or older, both parents feed them and the chicks are temporarily left on their own. The young start flying in about twenty days’ time, and the parents continue feeding them for a bit longer, until they become independent. Many birds also remain in family flights in the course of the autumn migrations (the family flight consists of parents and their already independent chicks). Approximately two weeks after their first flying attempt, little terns abandon their nest and disperse in the wider surroundings. They start the autumn migration at the end of August and in September. The wintering habitat of the little tern spreads from the Atlantic coast of western Africa all to its extreme south and further on along the coast of the Indian Ocean to the north of Kenya, including the islands on the western part of the Indian Ocean. This makes the little terns real globe-trotters who fly during their migrations over distances of thousands of kilometres along the Mediterranean coastal line, across the Atlantic all to the Indian Ocean. They repeat this huge travelling distance twice a year, in autumn and in spring. Such a demanding migratory system together with the insecure, changeable habitat like the river, asks for lots of skill and experience to secure survival. This makes the little terns, compared to other small birds, long-lived. Those that survive the first few years gain sufficient experience and skill to be able to reach the age of 30 or even more years of life. In the continental part of Croatia little terns nest only in the upper course of the Drava river (two small colonies with a total of 5 or 6 pairs) and on the Sava river, downstream from Zagreb (one colony with some 20 pairs). This is why we consider the species highly endangered and there is an immediate threat of their extinction in the continental part of Croatia. They are mostly threatened by the permanent river regulation and canalization of the river courses or the flooding of rivers by artificial lakes.

Along with the population of the little terns nesting by the rivers in northern Croatia, there is a smaller population that nests in the area of the northern part of the islands of the Zadar area up to the island Pag. On these small, bare islands there are 4 to 6 colonies (depending on the year) with a total of 30 to 40 pairs. These birds hunt for food in the shallows and bays in the same way as those by the rivers. Unfortunately, this population, too, is threatened, mostly on account of the ever growing pressure of tourism, recreational activities and fishing trade.

Dragan Radović

• Date of issue:  June 5,.2006
• Value: 2,3 kn; 2,8 kn;
• Author: Vladimir Buzolić - Stegu, designer, Zagreb
• Size: 35,5 x 29,82 mm
• Paper: white 102g, gummed
• Perforation: Comb,14
• Tehnique: Multicoloured Offsetprint
• Printed by: "Zrinski" - Čakovec
• Quantity: 200000

White water lily (Nymphaea alba L.)

Family Nymphaeaceae English white water lily, white lotus German Weiße Seerose, Wasserrose French nénuphar blanc Italian ninfea comune The white water lily is a freshwater earth-like perennial without a stem. The rhizome spreading wide into several hard roots is laid horizontally in the muddy underwater soil and sends up shoots from which large, leathery and egg-shaped to circular leaves grow up some 30cm in length. All the mature leaves have shiny dark-green blades, purplish on the bottom and they float on the water surface (sometimes they may stand a bit above the water) split to long, tenacious stalks, round in cross section. Their subtly sweet-scented radially symmetric flowers are hermaphrodite (they have both male and female organs), individually they are large (up to 20 cm in diameter), open almost the whole day and often rise out of the water. Four greenish sepals are insignificant-looking compared to the 20-odd shiny white (rarely pink or reddish) petals that keep decreasing toward the centre, gradually turning into many stamens with yellow anthers and filaments. The ovary is sunken into the receptacle and is built of 12 to 20 ovules. The fruit with a multitude of seeds, nutlike and some 3 cm long ripens under water, and the elliptical seeds get distributed in the water where they are often food for fish. The water lily prefers sunny positions in stagnant and slow-moving waters of Europe, north-western Africa and the Middle East, where it blossoms from June to September. It can endure great yearly oscillations of the water depth and can survive in almost all entirely drained borders of marshes. Te water lily rhizome is sometimes used as food, boiled or fried (as it is rich in starch), and in the First World War it was used as the source of the anaesthetic nymphein. However, this plant has for a very long time been considered to be a highly appreciated decorative plant, so a great number of cultivars have been developed, in various colours and with different sizes of the flowers. Similarly to the yellow pond-lily, the water lily can also be found in watery habitats of Croatia, but by the drainage of these areas both species keep slowly vanishing.

Yellow pond-lily (Nuphar lutea (L.) Sm., in Sibth. et Sm.)

Family Nymphaeaceae English yellow pond-lily, spatterdock German Gelbe Teichrose French nénuphar jaune Italian ninfea gialla The yellow pond-lily or spatterdock is a freshwater earth-like perennial embedded in the muddy soil by the widely spread thick rhizome (8 cm in diameter), which is the favourite food for many animals. It has no real stem, but the elongated heart-like leaves grow out directly from the long stalk attached to the rhizome. The leathery surface leaves are up to 30 cm in length, green to almost dark brown, and they grow on long stalks (sometimes up to 3m long) with a triangular cross section. The underwater leaves are on short stalks and are almost translucent. The flowers with their faintly alcoholic fragrance are hermaphrodite (they have both male and female organs), they grow individually and are large (up to 6 cm in diameter), with protruding calyxes with circularly spread-out floral parts. Five yellowish-green sepals are bigger (up to 3cm) and live longer than the numerous yellow petals adhering below the pistil. The stamens are numerous and yellow and the ovary is in superior position to the receptacle and is built of 5 to 20 ovules. The fruit are large pods (3 to 4 cm long), which ripen on the water surface and are filled with numerous smooth seeds that get distributed in the water. In various cultures the rhizome of the spatterdock was used for medicinal purposes (as poultice to treat boils and abscesses and as an anaphrodisiac) and more rarely as food. The plant likes sunny places in stagnant of slow-moving freshwater. It is spread along the warm and temperate zone of the whole of the Northern Hemisphere (except for its coldest parts), where it blossoms from April to September. In Croatia it is still a relatively frequent plant, though it is getting more endangered by the diminishing of the marshland, like all other species of the aquatic vegetation.

Buckbean or bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata L.)

Family Menyanthaceae English buckbean, bogbean German Sumf-Bitterklee, Fieberklee French trefle-d’eau Italian trifoglio fibrino The buckbean, also called marsh trefoil, is an aquatic or marsh perennial plant with creeping stems overgrown with scaly sheaths of the leaves which turn into a raised leafstalk (batvo) 50 cm high. The leaves are basal, alternate and trifoliate, on long stalks wider down at the base. The individual leaflets of the leaf are 10 cm long and 5 cm wide, reversely oblong in shape, rounded or pointed. The flowers are regular and hermaphrodite (they have both male and female organs), 10 to 20 in a vertical bloom cluster on top of a stalk. The calyx has 5 sepals that are free in the upper part, and the corolla has five white or pink petals. The petals have grown into a tube with their lower part, while the free lobes are bent backwards, 5 mm long and inwardly covered with fleshy hairs. Five stamens with purple anthers are adhering to the corolla tube. The pistil is made up of two ovules, has a thin style and a double-tattered snout that protrudes from the corolla. The fruit is a round pouch with numerous small, shiny seeds. The buckbean is the only species of its genus in the European flora, spread over the cold and temperate Northern Hemisphere. It blossoms in May and June, and grows on moist and marshy habitats deficient in air, in sunny patches. The medicinal properties of the buckbean were highly appreciated in the past as a remedy for scurvy, the dangerous disease which is the consequence of shortage of vitamin C. In Croatia the buckbean is on the list of endangered herbal genera (EN), but is not protected by law. It can be found in some fifteen localities only, and even there its survival is threatened, primarily on account of the draining of their habitat.

Sanja Kovačić

• Date of issue: July 10, 2006
• Value: 3,5 kn
• Author: Danijel Popović, designer from Zagreb
• Size: 42,60 x 29,82 mm
• Paper: white 102g, gummed
• Perforation: Comb,14
• Tehnique: Multicoloured Offsetprint
• Printed by: "Zrinski" - Čakovec
• Quantity: 200000
• Motif: George Grantham Bain’s photo «Nikola Tesla with Ruđer Bošković’s book in front of the spiral secondary of the high-frequency transformer in his laboratory in No. 46 East Houston Street in New York”, on the 4th of May 1901, from his inheritance, saved and kept at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, The Republic of Serbia.

NIKOLA TESLA – INVENTOR WITH A VIEW TO THE FUTURE

The progress and development of man essentially depends on ingenuity. The most important product of the creative mind is an invention. Its final goal is an overall mastering of the mind over the nature and the exploitation of all its forces for the needs of humankind. This is the difficult task of the inventor which is often misunderstood and insufficiently awarded. He, however, finds enormous compensation in the satisfaction that his work offers to him and the perception that he is an individual of exceptional ability without which the species would have died out long ago in its hard battle against the merciless elements. (Quotation from his autobiography My Inventions, New York, Century 1919).

Nikola Tesla is one of the greatest scientists and inventors in the history of the technological development of humankind. His patents and theoretical work created conditions for the electrification of the world by his system of the poly-phase alternating current, and the work in the field of high-frequency currents and wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves made the development of radio-technique and telecommunications possible. Tesla’s research also helped towards the invention of the radar, and in many ways brought about the development of lighting. Tesla had a rather unusual way of arriving at an invention. He first worked out the whole idea of the way a device should work to the smallest detail in his mind and he would “see” how it works, and then he would proceed to prove it theoretically, sketch it and finally make the device itself that would then work without any problem. Nikola Tesla was born at midnight between the 9th and 10th July 1856 in Smiljan, a small village near Gospić.

As a young child he had already shown a feature of innovativeness, and according to his words he had inherited it from his mother. He attended elementary school and high school in Smiljan and Gospić, and graduated from high school at the Great Science Gymnasium in Rakovac near Karlovac. He studied from 1875 to 1878 at the Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Graz, but when his scholarship was stopped, and on account of lack of funds he had to interrupt his course of study. Three years later, in 1881 he went to Budapest to work there for a Telegraph Company. Next year, while walking along the streets of Budapest, he hit upon the idea of rotating magnetic fields and electro-motors that are would be fed by the alternating current. After working for some time in Paris and Strasbourg, he went to the USA in 1884.

When he arrived in New York, Tesla approached Thomas A. Edison in order to start working for him. He did not work for Edison for a very long time. As they disagreed about the issue of the application of the alternating current, this disagreement later led to open enmity and was nicknamed “the war of currents”. As Tesla wished to practically apply the invention of the rotating magnetic field, he formed his own company in 1885, called Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company. The hardest time for Tesla was the period from 1886 to 1887, when he worked as a common labourer, digging canals for the laying down of cables in New York. Despite all this, he formed the firm Tesla Electric Company in 1887 with a laboratory where he could finally work on the improvement of the ways of application of the alternating current. These years are the time when he filed his patents of the electro-motor and the system of distribution of the alternating current. He held a lecture before the members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on the 15th of May 1888 and showed them the working of the induction motor fed by the alternate current. In the same year George Westinghouse bought off his patents connected with the application of the alternate current. Three years later Tesla filed a range of patents from the field of high-frequency currents, and one of the devices that produce such currents was named the Tesla coil.

He went back to Croatia on a short visit on account of his mother’s death in 1892. In the same year he held a lecture on the alternating current and electrification in Zagreb. Ever since his childhood, Tesla’s great wish was to curb the power of water, particularly that of the Niagara Falls. Westinghouse’s plan for a hydro-electric power plant was approved in 1893, which would transmit three-phase alternating current produced in generators by a power-transmission line to Buffalo. The hydro-electric power plant was completely finished in 1896, and in the process of building up the generator and the system of transmission of electrical energy nine of Tesla’s patents had been used.

In 1893 Tesla helped Westinghouse to illuminate the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago dedicated to the achievements in electro-technology by using the alternating current. Part of the exhibition was reserved for Tesla’s inventions, and by performing a number of experiments he proved the victory of the alternating current over the direct current. The perception that a high-frequency current can be transmitted by only one conductor brought about the invention of the transmission of electro-magnetic oscillations without wires. Undertaking a research into this field, our inventor discovered the basic principles of radio technology. As early as 1896, Tesla started experiments with X-rays, and he also invented the first tele-automats – devices that can be used to operate at great distances without wires.

At the end of the 19th century in Colorado Springs, Tesla performed various experiments with very high voltages and high-frequency currents. In the laboratory he conducted tests that led to the discovery of stationary waves of the Earth, and he also managed to produce artificial lightning with the voltage discharge of many million volts and the length of the lightning of up to 40 metres. Tesla also released great quantities of current into the earth, and owing to resonance he achieved greater discharges at the top of the pole. These experiments were a preparation for Tesla’s next project – the establishment of a wireless power transmission facility with the help of the tower in Wardenclyffe on Long Island. The Wardenclyffe Tower, i.e. the project of the World wireless system has never been completed, and it was dismantled for scrap in the course of World War One. After this unsuccessful project Tesla never recuperated financially, and he filed for bankruptcy in 1915. In 1906 he illustrated how a bladeless turbine, later called Tesla’s turbine, worked. In 1917 he received the highest award of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Edison’s medal. In the same year he laid down the fundamental principles of the radar that refer to the radar frequency and power, and in 1931, on his 75th birthday, Tesla appeared on the title page of the journal Time. Nikola Tesla filed a total of 112 patents in the USA only, and 156 all over the world.

He received honorary doctorates for his work at numerous universities: Columbia University, Yale University, University de Poitiers, Polytechnic Institutes of Graz, Vienna and Bucharest, and the universities of Belgrade, Brno, Grenoble, Paris, Prague, Sofia and Zagreb. Nikola Tesla never married, he left no direct heirs, and he also suffered from phobias, fear of hair, bacilli and peaches. He was fascinated by cleanliness and the number three. At the end of his life he liked to keep company with pigeons. Besides his mother tongue, Tesla fluently spoke English, French, German, Italian, Czech and Hungarian. He died on the 7th of January 1943 in a hotel in New York, room No. 3327. To honour the great inventor, the unit for magnetic induction in the SI system was named Tesla in 1960. In 1975 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) established the Nikola Tesla Award that is given to the deserving individuals in the field of electro-energetics. As commendation for Tesla’s achievements a crater on the Moon carries his name, and the Australian composer Constantine Koukias composed an opera called TESLA - Lightning in his Hand.

Renato Filipin

See also:  Nicolae Tesla sau “Un român venit di alt Spaţiu", AlterMedia Românian {Română)

(SLO) PAINTED BEEHIVE PANELS - A GIRL BEATING BOYS

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: September 19, 2006
• Fotografija: Tomo Jeseničnik
• Oblikovanje: Arnol + Vuga
• Motiv: A Girl Beating a Boy
• Tisk: Cetis d. d., Celje
• Tehnika: 4-colour offset
• Pola: 25 stamps
• Papir: Chancellor 102 g/m2
• Velikost: 39.76 x 28.40 mm

(SLO) ROAD VEHICLES - RACK WAGON

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: September 22, 2006
• Fotografija: Janez Bogataj
• Oblikovanje: Poanta
• Motiv: Rack Wagon
• Tisk: Cetis d. d., Celje
• Tehnika: 4-colour offset
• Pola: 25 stamps
• Papir: Chancellor, 102 g/m2
• Velikost: 39,76 x 28,40 mm

(SLO) FLORA - EUROPEAN WATER CLOVER (MARSILEA QUADRIFOLIA L.)

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: September 22, 2006
• Risba: Julija Zornik
• Oblikovanje: Julija Zornik
• Motiv: European Water Clover
• Tisk: Oriental Press, Bahrain
• Tehnika: 4-colour offset
• Blok: 1 stamp
• Papir: 102 GSM
• Velikost: stamp 27,00 x 40,00 mm, miniature sheet 60 x 70 mm

European Water Clover

European water clover is a fern, a botanical particularity and an European rarity, found also on humid and flooded ground in the North-Eastern Slovenia. It belongs to heterospores. Small and large spores mature in sporocarps just above the stem, above which the leaves rise. The surface of the leaves is divided to four small triangular leaves. When the pant is submerged in the water, the leaves float on the water surface, but the plant thrives when the water dries up as well. It grows in shallow silt banks of standing waters, but in Slovenia only in anthropogenic habitats – the banks or bottoms of ponds and water tanks. The ground soil has to be non-carbon and acid.

In Slovenia, this rare plant is found today only in the regional park Rače-Požeg in one pond and near the Kidričevo area in abandoned clay pits. Once it also thrived in Lower Carniola, White Carniola, and Styria. To preserve it, it is important that when the ponds, river banks and water tanks are cleaned, the vegetation is not entirely removed, that no steep banks are created and that no stones are put there. European water clover is one of the so-called "European important plants", which is why it is our duty to preserve it in the frame of the network Natura 2000.

Dr. Mitja Kaligarič

(SLO) FLORA - FLOATING WATER MOSS (SALVINIA NATANS (L.)All.)

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: September 22, 2006
• Risba: Julija Zornik
• Oblikovanje: Julija Zornik
• Motiv: Floating Water Moss
• Tisk: Cetis d. d., Celje
• Tehnika: 4-colour offset
• Pola: 25 stamps
• Papir: Chancellor 102 g/m2
• Velikost: 28,40 x 39,76 mm

(SLO) DEFINITIVE STAMPS FROM THE FRUITS IN SLOVENIA SERIES - KAKI (DIOSPYRUS KAKI L.)

• Datum izdaje/uporabe: November 17, 2006
• Risba: Matjaž Učakar
• Oblikovanje: Matjaž Učakar
• Motiv: Persimmon Flower, Persimmon Fruit, Flatid Planthopper (Metcalfa pruinosa Say)
• Tisk: Druck: Poštovní tiskarna Cenin, Praha
• Tehnika: 4-colour offset
• Pola: 45 stamps + 5 labels (3 se-tenant stamps)
• Papir: Tullis Russel fluo litho 100 g/m2
• Velikost: 22.00 x 26.50 mm

Bibliography:

• Croatian Post Inc. - Croatian Postage Stamps - English & Hrvatski
• Post of Slovenia - English & Slovensko
• Poste Italiane, Filatelia - http://e-filatelia.poste.it/showCataloghiProdotti.asp?id_categoria_prodotto=281