Centenary of the “King Peter in the Battlefield in 1914” Stamp Issue.
The stamp “King Peter in the Battlefield in1914” was issued in 1915, in the memory of the victory of the Serbian army in the battles fought against the Austro-Hungarian army in the autumn of 1914. On 17 November 1914, when the Serbian soldiers were visited by King Peter I, the then government decided to issue a stamp in honour of this event. The stamp template was made according to a photo of a war photographer Sampson Tchernoff which was made in the battlefield in Garevica near the village of Darosava (Kolubara County). There are King Peter I, Duke Stepa Stepanović, Prince George and the King’s aide, Colonel Knežević in the photo. The Tchernoff’s photo attracted a great publicity – it was first published in a French magazine “Illustration” (L’Illustration), and afterwards on a war postcard of the French issue.
The stamp “King Peter in the Battlefield in 1914” is the first Serbian stamp where the portrait of a sovereign isn’t presented as a classical portrait from the waist up. This stamp is unique in the world partly because King Peter was the only king at the time to have a photo from the front line.
There is an inscription “Srbija” (“Serbia”) on the upper right side of the stamp, and “Kralj Petar na bojištu 1914. godine” (“King Peter in the Battlefield in 1914”) on the lower side. Engraving and making of cliches for the stamps printing were done in Paris, and the stamps, in seven values (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 50 pa), were printed at the Serbian Government Printing Works in Niš only in early October 1915, due to difficult communication in the war circumstances.
The stamps were then transported from the Printig Works to the central Stamps Depot for distribution which was in Kruševac at the time. Due to the weak postal traffic, the stamps were only sent to post offices in Gornji Milanovac, Ribarska Spa, Podujevo and Kriva Palanka, and when the offensive of the Austro-Hungarian and German armies ensued, post offices and the Stamps Depot in Kruševac had to be evacuated. In Priština in early November, the Post issued these stamps to citizens to use them instead of coins, and that was also done in Prizren, where the Depot was transferred. In Peć, before the retreat of the Serbian army across Albania in late November 1915, these stamps were destroyed – burned.
