Maurice Burrus
Maurice Burrus (March 8, 1882 – December 5, 1959) was an Alsatian tobacco magnate who lived much of his life in Switzerland. He also served as a deputy in the French Parliament in the 1930s and became one of the world’s greatest stamp collectors.
Born in Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines to a family of tobacco industrialists, his family moved to Switzerland after Napoleonic laws affected tobacco. He studied in Dole, at Collège Stanislas in Paris, and in Hanover to learn banking and German, then returned to run the family factory. He travelled to the United States, Canada, Mexico and Asia Minor.
During World War I he refused to supply tobacco to Germany, was jailed for eight months, exiled from Alsace, and had property seized. He received the Médaille de la Fidélité, Croix de Guerre and Médaille des Proscrits d'Alsace.
From 1932 to 1942 he represented Haut-Rhin in the French Parliament, first as an independent left member and later with the Independents of Popular Action.
Burrus began stamp collecting at age seven and built one of the most famous collections in the world. He sought to complete sets and bought rare items, such as the 1886 Dominican 6 pence Victoria with a one-penny overprint and the 1850 Dreier Sachsen sheet of 20 stamps. By 1964 he had connections to a large part of the Ferrary collection; at his death he owned five Mauritius Post Office stamps. He was a member of the Académie de philatélie and signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1955. Life magazine called him one of the three truly great stamp collections worldwide, and Liechtenstein honored him in 1968 with a stamp set.
Later, the Burrus collection became tied to a Ponzi scheme run by Dr. Paul Singer. In 1959 Singer planned to buy it for $6 million; a robbery at Shanahan Stamp Auctions exposed the fraud, leading to lawsuits and the eventual sale of the Burrus material between 1962 and 1964.
Burrus died in Lausanne in 1959.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 11:36 (CET).