In a recent article, Maurice G. Elton describes how he managed with the help of French stamps and slides to acquaint students with French civilization and culture.' While it may be interesting and motivating to be able to juxtapose slide and stamp in the actual teaching situation, not all foreign language teachers will be in a position to visit on a regular basis the country whose language they teach and to take pictures along the way. They will either have to rely on commercial publishers and other distributors of expensive slide series or make do without the slides. A third option is to rely on stamps, since they are easily and inexpensively available.2 Stamps have several functions. Quite obviously, they serve as a receipt for money collected by the postal services from the sender (Wertzeichenfunktion). They function as wares, too, (Warenfunktion) as every philatelist who has been to stamp auctions knows only too well. To these, Heinrich Bongers in his essay Die der Deutschen Bundespost3 adds a third function: Reprdsentationsfunktion. Speaking for the postal services of the Federal Republic, he says: Briefmarken sollen ein gfiltiges Bild davon geben, wie die Mehrheit der Bfirger unseres Landes oder reprisentative Gruppen sich und ihren Staat sehen, durch Wfirdigung von in weiterem Sinne kulturell und politisch bedeutenden Personen und Sachverhalten der Geschichte und Ereignissen der Gegenwart.4 From the same source we learn that an estimated ten out of sixty million citizens of the Federal Republic consciously perceive and form an opinion of postage stamps in use. Up to fifteen million stamps are daily pasted on letters, cards and parcels. Because of the influence these stamps can exert on the citizens, some of the stamps have to be approved by a Programmbeirat of politicians, both state and federal, philatelists, and representatives of the press. It would be wrong, however, to see the Reprasentationsfunktion as working only in one direction. Stamps influence the image that an addressee abroad forms of the sender's country, and governments have been aware of this propaganda effect from the early days of stamp design. During World War II no less than during any other war since the invention of the postage stamp, the governments of warfaring states have greatly exerted themselves to counterfeit enemy stamps in an attempt to do damage to the enemy economy. The intelligence services of the war and defense ministries were also well aware of the demoralizing effects to be achieved by letters and postcards bearing stamps with the portraits of kings, queens and statesmen whose facial expression had been changed almost beyond recognition. A case in point is the Adolf Hitler death's head stamp issued by the Allies. The Ffihrer's