The postcard below is from my own collection. It was stamped in Sopron in the fall of 1956 with the inscription “Hazádnak rendületlenül...”
One of the most unique mementos in Hungarian philately came into being during the days of the 1956 Revolution, thanks to an initiative by students at the University of Forestry and Wood Sciences in Sopron. As a symbol of the struggle for independence and national unity, the Sopron No. 1 post office began overstamping letters and postage stamps with a hand-applied postmark featuring a quote from Vörösmarty: “Unwaveringly for your homeland…” During the revolution, Sopron became the western gateway to the country and, at the same time, one of the intellectual centers of the uprising; thus, the inscription stamped on postal items was not only a creed of local citizens and students but also a message to the wider world and to the nation standing up for freedom.
The history of the stamp became truly tragic—and at the same time legendary—after the revolution was crushed. Due to its proximity to the border, Sopron was one of the main gathering points for those fleeing to the West, and for the tens of thousands of emigrants leaving the country—including the entire faculty, professors, and students of the University of Sopron—the exhortation “Be steadfast to your homeland…” took on a particularly poignant meaning. Many carried these stamped envelopes and letters deep in their bags across the border as their last tangible mementos of home, and the mail sent from the first stops of their new lives remained symbols of solidarity even in their statelessness. During the Kádár-era crackdown, the authorities systematically collected and destroyed documents left behind at home; thus, the copies preserved by the refugees are today priceless treasures of Hungarian emigration history and domestic philately.
