#silvia gredenberg

Poor Austria, land of lederhausen and edelweiss, lonely goatherds and singing nuns: Rogers and Hammerstein sliced off your balls and made you the eunuch of Europe, at least as seen through North American eyes.

Crossing the ocean to pay homage to the musical, pilgrims will soon discover they were mislead. Austria is virile. The hills are alive with the sounds of orgasms. Sex work is legal (though regulated) in most Austrian provinces and the country has a lively sauna culture, usually with no gender segregation. Spas, pools and lakeside beaches often have “free body culture” zones–invitations to go skinny dipping–and television commercials may feature naked people selling coffee or cars. An academic study concluded that women in Austria are the most sexually-satisfied in the world.

Now, exporting sex- and body-positive values might get a country in trouble (even if those are things badly needed in most places.) Austria’s Post Office, however, has come up with a subtle way of sharing the pleasures of sexual freedom and equality in the bedroom: issuing stamps decorated with artistic erotica.

Both of those stamps are gorgeous and the artists, Dina Larot (top) and Silvia Gredenberg, deserve the recognition. Highlighting art by women seems appropriately Austrian, too–but perhaps the greatest painter in the erotic genre, Gustav Klimt, is not ignored.

What’s that I hear? You prefer your stamp nudity to be more masculine? Well, Austria really does have something for everyone. You can even see penis.

Both models, by the way, are rendered by women: Cornelia Schlesinger (top) and Astrid Bernhart.

So, have Austrians always appreciated the nude in art? That’s hard to know. We can only go back about 27,000 years. As you would probably expect by now, yes, that item is featured on one of the country’s stamps, too: