1st February 1941
Carlo Buerose

Carlo Buerose

From Consilium Philatelicum

Carlo Buerose, born on 28th April 1903, in Frankfurt a.M.

He attended the Wöhler-Gymnasium there, then the higher commercial school and completed an apprenticeship at the Frankfurt company Türk & Pope. From 1927 he was the owner of a general agency for Frankfurter Allianz Insurance (which was continued by his son after he retired from active professional life).

He started collecting stamps as a teenager. In 1920 he joined the 'Globus' association in Frankfurt, and in 1931 he joined the Association for Stamp Studies of 1878 e.V. Frankfurt, in which he held numerous positions. He was secretary from 1934, also a librarian and deputy chairman from 1953, for which the association later thanked him with honorary membership.

Buerose had also played a role at association level before the Second World War. He was director of the Southwest Regional Association and from 1935 held the same position at the newly founded Hesse Regional Association in the Reichsbund der Philatelisten.

Buerose continued this position after the Second World War and also took on new philatelic tasks in the German federal government. From 1957 to 1970 he was its vice president, at times treasurer and chairman of the administrative committee.

From 1966 to 1973 he was director of the Foundation for the Promotion of Philately and Postal History. He not only worked as a juror at numerous exhibitions, but also as an organiser. Buerose's own collecting interests focused on post-used stamps from Baden, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Saxony and Thurn & Taxis issues of the German Empire, as well as stamps of the Saarland.

Günther Welter wrote about Buerose's farewell from the board of the BDPh in the then 'Bundesnachrichten' in 1970:

'This pioneer from the very beginning worked in and for the federal government for 25 years; he headed, no, he embodied the federal office. …Carlo Buerose is sovereign and sovereign, a patriarch of the old school, he reacted, acted, made decisions patriarchally, always intuitively and spontaneously, always unconventionally and without concern for effects.'

Philately knew how to thank him. In 1941 he received the silver pin of the Reichsbund, in 1952 he was awarded the Baurat Luce Medal from his Frankfurt association, and in 1954 the gold pin of merit from the BDPh. Ten years later, Alois W. Bögershausen, the chairman of the Philatelists Association in North Rhine-Westphalia, thanked his board colleague - like Buerose was also Vice President of the BDPh at that time - with his association's Medal of Honor for special services to association philately and - last but not least - the Hans Wagner Medal followed four years later, in 1968.

The term 'pioneer of the first hour' was a perfect fit for Buerose, who died on 29th April 1993 at the age of 90, meaning he was only a member of the Consilium for seven years.

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