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Italy pulls stamps featuring South Tyrol because of missing German text

The Italian government has pulled two stamps that depicted natural landmarks in the bilingual province of South Tyrol, located in the north, due to the lack of German inscriptions.

A spokesman from the ministry of industry said that although stamps were to be released on Tuesday, they were pulled before going on sale.

In a statement the ministry called it "an anomaly" and ordered both an investigation and a bilingual version.

The ministry has also taken down the website that displayed the stamps in question.

South Tyrol was a mountainous region bordering Austria, which once belonged the Austro-Hungarian empire. It became part of Italy following World War I.

Benito Mussolini's fascist regime "Italianised", or forced the population to become Italian, which sparked local resentment. Separatist sentiments still linger today.

The province of Alto Adige, also known as Suedtirol, is fully bilingual and enjoys high levels of autonomy. German is more common than Italian.

The stamps were withdrawn because they showed the Catinaccio mountain range, also known as Rosengarten in the Dolomites and the Latemar mountain chain, which was part of a collection dedicated to parks, mountains and lakes throughout Italy.

Stamps that have design errors may become collectible. The "Gronchi Rosa" stamp, a 1961 stamp that was withdrawn the day after it was released because the map of South America had the wrong border between Peru and Ecuador. (Reporting and editing by Giulia Segriti and Aidan Lewis.

(source: Reuters)