The philatelist Helmut Schretz has a clear opinion: “For me, this stamp is one of the most beautiful Christmas stamps ever issued by German Post Office in their history,” he tells DW. The 76-year-old German also highlights another aspect: “I am impressed by the fact that the pattern was designed by a Muslim artist.” It is also interesting that never in the 55 year history of the Christmas stamp has this been designed by a woman.

Her lab Mahbuba Maksodi is located in the north of Munich. The stamp depicts one of her works. “I’m excited, I feel very honored,” the artist tells DW. She emphasizes that in her works she “always tries to elicit ideas and encourage the viewer to think, even to search. The same happens with the work in question, with the subject of the Nativity.

The 67-year-old Afghan woman was born in western Herat Afghanistan and worked there as a secondary school teacher. After the death of her sister, who ran the largest local girls’ school, at the hands of an Islamist in 1979, Mahbooba Maksodi fled the country with her husband and children. After artistic studies in Russia, she requested asylum in Germany, since due to the civil war a return to her homeland was impossible.

He paints for everyone, regardless of religious beliefs

In Munich, glass workshops discovered her art and encouraged her to design church windows. In Tolai, in the state of Saarland, is her oldest monastery Germanya Benedictine Abbey. The monks are proud of three abstract windows created for the renovated monastery church by Gerhard Richter, the most important contemporary German artist in the world. Mahbooba Maksodi contributed a total of 29 stained glass windows to the renovation of the temple. Their colors define its interior.

The official issuer of the holiday stamps has been the Federal Ministry of Finance since 1995. About two years ago, the Protestant Church proposed to the ministry Maksodi’s pattern for the Christmas stamp. Ministry officials contacted the artist asking her if she would like to participate in the competition for the Christmas stamp with the particular stained glass window from the monastery church.

Mahbooba Maksodi is a Muslim and a self-proclaimed humanitarian. As he says, he paints for all people, regardless of religious beliefs. For her, the barely five-year-old “Christmas stained glass window” in the church of the Tolai monastery is an image of “heavenly light”. This motif has now been included in the special edition of the stamp.

A source of inspiration for young artists

In the last ten years the circulation of the special edition for Christmas numbers between two and four million stamps. “It would be wonderful if this stamp makes people engage with this heavenly light again,” says the German-Afghan artist. “Perhaps they will travel to Tolai to experience the full cycle of the project up close, to see the stained glass windows in all their glory and be affected.”

Mahbouba Maksodi believes that the acceptance of her work in her second homeland could also act as a motivation for young artists who come to Germany even from conflict areas. “Art is my medium and my way of expressing myself, so I never gave up,” he tells DW: “To include different cultures and be open to them is a unique enrichment.”

Editor: Stefanos Georgakopoulos