Saturday, June 13, 2015

Vilnius 1985 - J.S. Bach


It took me a 4 years to find a copy of this souvenir sheet cancelled in Lithuania buried among millions of Moscow CTOs

Today I saw an article on a newspaper talking about an iconic portrait of the German composer J.S. Bach being returned home to Leipzig, Germany. Conveniently, I actually do have a Bach related cover so I thought I would post here on this blog. This is a registered cover sent in 1985 from Вильнюс / Vilnius, Lithuania SSR to Warstein, West Germany. The souvenir sheet of J.S. Bach has been issued on the occasion of the 300 years anniversary of the artist's birthday. The curious thing is that the sender's last name Finkelšteinas, the Lithuanian -as ending form of the German noun Finkelstein, sounds rather more German than the recipient of the letter. I'm wondering if this person is somehow related to Ozeris Finkelšteinas, a Lithuanian Jewish politician during the prewar republic.