The Uprooted Oak Emblem of UN's World Refugee Year

This is a case of an artwork that incorporates an oak in its design, but its inclusion in a series on Oak Artists is questionable, as I have not been able to identify the artist responsible. It is a symbol that was used to promote the United Nations World Refugee Year, proclaimed in December 1958 to run from July 1, 1959 to June 30, 1960. The designer of the emblem chose to represent the plight of refugees with a stylized uprooted oak tree. The symbol was used especially on stamps issued to commemorate the year, in many cases what is termed semi-postals, with surtaxes that raised money for the United Nations to aid the cause of the displaced peoples.

However, the symbol of the uprooted oak tree seems to have been soon replaced by another one, showing a refugee sheltered by two hands. This emblem was the one used by United Nations on their own stamps marking World Refugee Year, issued on December 10, 1959. In the case of the sheltering hands symbol, we know it was designed by Danish artist Olav S. Mathiesen. But there seems to be no record of who designed the uprooted oak emblem.

There is a precedent for using an uprooted oak to represent displaced persons. In the novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, set in medieval England, the protagonist has been disinherited by his father. He returns from the Crusades incognito and participates in a tournament, using a shield bearing the device of “a young oak-tree pulled up by the roots, with the Spanish word Desdichado, signifying Disinherited.”¹ (It seems Sir Walter needed to polish up his Spanish: desdichado means sad, unfortunate, from dicha = “happiness, good fortune”. “Disinherited” in Spanish is desheredado.)

The emblem of the uprooted oak was widely used on stamps commemorating World Refugee Year, issued by some 70 countries. Most of them were released 64 years ago, on April 7, 1960. Of the 70 countries, 50 used the uprooted oak emblem, either in the design of the stamp, or in an overprint. The other 20 did not use the emblem, or used the protecting hands emblem instead. In some cases, when the uprooted oak emblem was not used on the stamps, it was used on the First Day Cover envelopes or postmarks.

The uprooted tree is so stylized that it would be excusable to question whether it is an oak rather than another tree genus. Contemporary publications, however, unequivocally identify it as an oak, for example a March 13, 1960 article in the New York Times, that states: “Many of the postal designs will depict an uprooted oak tree, agreed on as the symbol of the status of the world’s masses of homeless persons.” Given the oak’s intimate relationship with humans since the birth of civilization or even before, it is apt it should be used in this design. Being transplanted from your homeland against your will, to be uprooted, or to have lost your roots, is certainly an aspect of being a refugee that most of us can relate to. According to Gerard Daniel Cohen,² "more than any other feature, 'uprootedness' encapsulated the displaced condition." The image of the uprooted oak is an eloquent symbol of refugees throughout history. Whoever designed the World Refugee Year emblem made an inspired choice and their art was for a time borne on envelopes around the world. It would be worth determining the identity of this artist. If anyone has any leads or knows more, please write to me here.

¹ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (London, 1819; Project Gutenberg, September 1993), Chapter VIII, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/82/82-h/82-h.htm

² Gerard Daniel Cohen, "Epilogue: The Golden Age of European Refugees, 1945–60", In War's Wake: Europe's Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, Oxford Studies in International History (2011; online edn, Oxford Academic, 19 Jan. 2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195399684.003.0008, accessed 13 Apr. 2024.