Es ist wahrschenilich wenigen bekannt, dass die Amerikanische Philosophin und Autorin Ayn Rand ebenfalls eine begeisterte Breifmarkensammlerin war. Sie hat einen Artikel "Why I Like Stamp Collecting" geschrieben der im Minkus Stamp Journal in 1971 erschienen ist. Dieser Artikel ist vielleicht das literarisch beste, was zum Thema Briefmarkensammeln je geschrieben wurde. Die Uebersetzung dieses Textes ist eines meiner Projekte, dass schon ewig dauert und wahrscheinlich auch noch ewig dauern wird. Ayn Rand's Sprache ist so literarisch, Ihre Darstellung und Beschreibung von Briefmarkensammeln als "Karriere" sind so klar, dass ich mit meinen stuemperhaften Versuchen Ihre Gedanken ebenso schoen auf deutsch auszudruecken vermutlich nie zufrieden sein werde. Ich fuege einige Auszuege aus dem Artikel unten ein. Ich weiss, es ist auf englisch und nicht jeder hat die Geduld oder Kenntnis eine ganze Seite auf englisch zu lesen. Denjenigen, die es tun, kann ich versprechen, dass es sich lohnt. Ich hoffe, ihr denkt genauso. Lasst es mich wissen. Vielleicht kann auch jemand noch etwas biographische Information zu Ayn Rand hinzufuegen. Ich fuege unten ein Bild der USA Marke Nr. 3115 ein (wenn's klappt). Ich finde die Marke im uebrigen sehr gut gelungen. An dem Art Deco Design haette Ayn wahrscheinlich Freude gehabt. Aber lasst uns in diesem Thema/Thread nicht ueber Markendesign diskutieren ....
I am often asked why people like stamp collecting. So widespread a hobby can obviously have many different motives. I can answer only in regard to my own motives, which I have observed also in some of the stamps collectors I have met.
The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people - because, in patterns, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world... A career requires the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression to a goal... Purposeful people cannot rest by doing nothing... They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further consequences.
The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They are accustomed to working long-range... Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant, single tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train - that is, a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning. Stamp collecting fulfills that need.
The course of a career depends on one's own action predominantly, but not exclusively. A career requires a struggle; it involves tensions, disappointments, obstacles which are challenging, at times, but are often ugly, painful, senseless - particularly, in an age like the present, when one has to fight too frequently against the dishonesty, the evasion, the irrationality of the people one deals with.
In stamp collecting, one experiences the rare pleasure of independent action without irrelevant burdens or impositions. Nobody can interfere with one's collection, nobody need to be considered or questioned or worried about. The choices, the work, the responsibility - and the enjoyment - are one's own. So is the great sense of freedom and privacy.
For this very reason, when one deals with people as a stamp collector, it is on a cheerful, benevolent basis. People cannot interfere, but they can be very helpful and generous. There is a sense of "brotherhood" among stamp collectors, of a kind that is very unusual today: the brotherhood of holding the same values...
The pursuit of the unique, the unusual, the different, the rare is the motive power of stamp collecting. It endows the hobby with the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt - even on the more modest level of collecting, where the treasure may be simply an unexpected gift from a friend, which fills the one blank spot, completing a set...
There is a constant change in the world of stamps, and constant motion, and a brilliant flow of color, and a spectacular display of human imagination... Speaking esthetically, I should like to mention the enormous amount of talent displayed on stamps - more than one can find in today 's art galleries. Ignoring the mug shots of some of the world's ugliest faces (a sin of which the stamps of most countries are guilty), one find real masterpieces of the art of painting..."