As said Bernadett, this postcard is part of a series published in 2009, when the city Ajka, situated in the hills of Bakony, in western Hungary, celebrated 50 years of existence. At first glance it seems a bit strange the presence of a postcard showing a horse-drawn wagon in such a series devoted to a mining town founded in 1960, even if the Hungarians are passionate about horses and have a long tradition in their breeding, but things are not so, because the settlement, named after the Ajka clan, was first mentioned in 1214, to the age of the Árpád dynasty, when it was already about a hundred years old.
The village knew the prosperity in the second half of the 19th century, when coal resources were found nearby, and grew up in the 1930s, when vast bauxite resources were found too. In 1937 the world's first krypton factory was built near Ajka. During the industrialization wave of the communist era was born the idea to build a new industrial town, which came into existence with the unification of several villages in 1960.
Unfortunately, a year after the celebration of 50 years of existence, has happened an event which affected not only the city, but a much wider area: the collapse of a waste reservoir's dam of the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant, which led to the discharge of about one million cubic metres of red mud, that flooded several nearby localities and reached the Danube river.
About the stamps
The first stamp, designed by Zita Nagy, was issued on April 15, 2010 by Magyar Posta to send Easter greetings. The main subjects of the stamp design are red Easter eggs and the bunny, set in a rich composition with bright spring colours.
The second stamp is also part of a series of Easter stamps, designed by Péter Nagy, issued on March 5, 2013 and showing painted eggs from the Decorative Egg Collection in Zengővárkony, the work of the folk artist Mrs Csilla Szendrő Bérczi. The series contain several stamps with the face values of 85 and 110 HUF (on the postcard). The original motifs of the stamps with a face value of HUF 85 are from a collection from the start of the last century, coming from Gyimes (Ghimeş-Făget), Csík (Ciuc) and Háromszék (Trei Scaune) in Transylvania, now in Romania, where lives an important community of Székely, Hungarian speaking. The main motif of the set of stamps with a face value of HUF 110 comes also from Gyimes (Ghimeş) region.
References
Ajka - Wikipedia
Ajka - National and Historical Symbols of Hungary
Easter 2010 - Magyar Posta official website
Easter 2013 - Magyar Posta official website
sender: Bernadett Bernáth (direct swap)
sent from Ajka (Veszprém / Hungary), on 15.04.2013
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