This little series has been prompted by the special anniversaries in 2011 of two important Liechtenstein institutions: the country’s oldest-established bank, the Liechtensteinische Landesbank, will be 150 years old and the Liechtenstein National Library, one of the country’s oldest cultural institutions, will be 50. The Liechtensteinische Landesbank AG (LLB) was founded on 5^th December 1861 under the name “Zins- und Credit- Landes-Anstalt im souverainen Fürstenthume Liechtenstein” (“Interest and Credit Land Bank in the Sovereign Principality of Liechtenstein”). The Bank, converted into a public limited company in 1993, quoted on the SIX Swiss Exchange, and now operating internationally with client assets totalling CHF 49.6 billion, is today one of the most important asset-management institutions in the Switzerland / Liechtenstein currency area. The stamp designed by Ewald Frick (face value CHF 1.00) embeds part of the Liechtensteinische Landesbank’s green-and-red logo in a QR code which can be read for example by a mobile phone, so taking the user to the anniversary website.

The National Library, founded in 1961 by a private initiative, has three main functions: as the national library it collects everything printed or published by Liechtensteiners or about Liechtenstein. This also includes all film, picture and audio material. As an academic library it stocks essential specialist literature or obtains it from foreign libraries. And as a public library it makes available to the people a wide-ranging stock of books, films, audio books etc. for entertainment and self-improvement. Some 4,700 users annually from Liechtenstein and the surrounding region avail themselves of this facility. The stamp marking this special anniversary has been designed by Melanie Schaper, whose design won a competition run by Liechtenstein School of Art. She used letters of the alphabet to create a “House of Knowledge” (face value CHF 1.00) in which the legend “50 Years of the National Library” is impressed in gold leaf.

Both special anniversary stamps are appearing in the self-adhesive form successfully introduced last year.