Lovrenc Košir

Lovrenc Košir, also Laurenz Koschier (29 July 1804 – 7 August 1879) was a Slovenian accountant and civil servant in the Austrian Empire, who worked in Ljubljana.

His claim was widely supported in Austria and Yugoslavia, and he was recognized as undisputed "conceptual inventor" of postage stamps in those two countries.

However, because he had contact with England, it is presumed that he got the idea from James Chalmers, who had already made stamp designs one year earlier than Košir.

[3] In 1869, Košir asked the Ministry of Finance to propose him for the Order of Franz Joseph for his "merits in the introduction of postage stamps".

[7][8] Despite the lack of critical analysis of those documents, Schweiger-Lerchenfeld became the main source for those who supported Košir as the inventor of the postage stamp.

According to Sokol, those documents do not speak about postage stamps but about some more general ideas on the "reform of the postal service" which Košir proposed in 1830s.

[7] Based on Sokol's research, in 1979, the Philatelic Association of Slovenia took official position that Košir was not the inventor nor pioneer of postage stamps.

For example, Edward Gobetz, founder of the Slovenian Research Center of America, proposed in 1984 that the United States Postal Service issue a stamp dedicated to Košir.

In the same year, the Yugoslav postal system issued an airmail stamp depicting Košir, his birth house in Spodnja Luša, and an aeroplane.