Johann Sebastian Bach Crest Stamps

This post features the Johann Sebastian Bach crest stamps from West Germany in 1950. Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 and died on July 28, 1750. He is one of the most famous of all composers and millions of people still love his music. Both his birth and death anniversaries have been the occasion for international celebrations of his work. Postage stamps often celebrate such major anniversaries. The first stamps of Bach commemorating one of his anniversaries were from Germany in 1935. It was part of a set celebrating the birth anniversaries of Bach, Handel, and Schütz. Read more about those stamps here.

In 1950, the 200th anniversary of Bach’s death, both East and West Germany celebrated by issuing postage stamps in his honor. The West Germany issue is particularly interesting as it features the Bach crestl that was the creation of the composer himself.

The Crest

Above, you can see the detail from the center of the 1950 stamp featuring Bach’s seal. It has two parts, a geometrical design and above that a crown. Bach used it in the latter decades of his life when he was in Leipzig. The crown, perhaps, is an allusion to his honorary appointment at the court of the Elector Frederick Augustus in Dresden. On first glance, the geometrical design appears to be merely decorative and leaves around the edges make it appear to be something vegetal. However, the seal actually contains Bach’s initials: JSB. In reality, the design is made from the use of his initials twice. Once, written normally, and the second time written backwards. Bach superimposed the two versions of his initials to create his seal. You can see below where I have highlighted the two sets of initials on two separate versions of the seal.

Bach did things like this in his music too. Famously, he wrote pieces using the letters of his name, the so-called “Bach motif.” In German music script, the letter B refers to the note B flat. The note B natural is written in script using the letter h. Therefore, all four letters of Bach’s last name can refer to musical pitches: B (B flat), A, C, H (B natural). The most famous use of this motif is probably as a fugue subject in his Art of the Fugue. Bach’s son Johann Christian Bach also wrote the motif into his works. Beginning in the 19th century, with the revival of popularity in Bach, other composers paid homage to Bach by also using this motif, including Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms.

The Stamps

West Germany made two versions of the Bach seal stamp. One in an olive green with the denomination of 10+2 pfennigs. The second stamp is a dark carmine with the denomination 20+3 pfennigs. Written below the seal on each stamp is “Siegel von Joh. Seb. Bach,” or the seal of Johann Sebastian Bach. Then there is his death date written as the date, month, year: 28-VII-1750 (July, 28, 1750). The two stamps were issued on July 28th 1950, the actual 200th anniversary of Bach’s death. The last name of the stamp designer was Bruckmann.

Other

Interestingly, this 1950 stamp set is not the only time the seal has been in use on postal material. In 1985, when the composers 300th anniversary was celebrated, two souvenir sheets in honor of the composer also use the Bach crest. These two seals from Grenada and Turks & Caicos also feature the seal.

And, for anyone that may be interested in the BACH motif, here is one piece written using those four notes as a tribute to the composer. This is a particularly good example to hear the four note theme that starts in the bass and then moves through all the strings.