Famous Visitors

The four stamps on this FDC were issued by Liechtenstein on 6.12.1982 to commemorate famous visitors to that country. These personalities were:-

(40ct) Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519), the son of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Eleanor of Portugal, was King of the Romans (also known as King of the Germans) from 1486 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death, though he was never in fact crowned by the Pope, the journey to Rome always being too risky. He had ruled jointly with his father for the last ten years of his father's reign, from c. 1483. He expanded the influence of the House of Habsburg through war and his marriage in 1477 to Mary of Burgundy, the heiress to the Duchy of Burgundy, but he also lost the Austrian territories in today's Switzerland to the Swiss Confederacy.

Through marriage of his son Philip the Handsome to eventual queen Joanna of Castile in 1498, Maximilian helped to establish the Habsburg dynasty in Spain which allowed his grandson Charles to hold the throne of both León-Castile and Aragon, thus making Charles V the first de jure King of Spain. Since his father Philip died in 1506, Charles succeeded Maximilian as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, and thus ruled both the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire simultaneously.

(70ct) Jörg Jenatsch, also called Jürg or Georg Jenatsch (1596 - January 24, 1639), was a Swiss political leader during the Thirty Years' War, one of the most striking figures in the troubled history of the Grisons in the 17th century.

(80ct) Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann RA (30 October 1741 – 5 November 1807), usually known in English asAngelika Kauffman, was a Swiss-born Austrian Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. She was one of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.

(1.00 Fr) Fidelis of Sigmaringen, O.F.M. Cap. (1577 - 1622), was a Capuchin friar who was a major figure in the Counter-Reformation, and was murdered by his opponents at Seewis im Prättigau, now part of Switzerland. Fidelis was canonized in 1746.