A new exhibition at Berlin's Museum for Communication celebrates the 150-year history of postcards. Here's how Germans enthusiastically adopted the medium to share important news — and the latest gossip.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
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150 years of postcards
A Berlin exhibition revisits the 150-year history of postcards in Germany. Here's a selection from the turn of the 20th century.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
The world's first official postcard
German postal reformer Heinrich von Stephan had suggested to introduce the "Postblatt," or open post sheet, as a cheap alternative to letters in 1865. But critics weren't ready to lose the privacy of their correspondence. Similar cards had already been sent in the US and the UK, but the "correspondence card" format was officially introduced by the Austro-Hungarians on October 1, 1869.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
Flooded by postcards
Despite the critics' worries, the German public enthusiastically adopted the postcard. On the day they were introduced in Berlin, on June 25, 1870, over 45,000 copies were sold. In 1885, images were officially allowed on postcards. This postcard from 1900 depicts how the new medium was all the rage: Nearly a billion postcards were sent from the German Empire that year.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
An actual snapshot
This postcard from 1905 shows a postboy delivering mail to a post box, accompanied by his delivery bike. Not only lithographic drawings served as templates for postcards, but also photographs. The standardized format also incited people to collect them in albums — especially when they came from an admirer, such as this card, written to a woman with whom the author spent "hours in love."
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
Quick delivery
This card was sent from Egypt's Port Said in 1899. A week later, traveling by steamboat and by train, it had already reached its destination, the northern German city of Schwerin. The first images on postcards were designed to leave space for the message. In 1905, the address side of the card was divided in two: From then on, the message was written on the left side and the address on the right.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
Brave new world
Remember how the media spread the Millennium Bug hysteria as we approached the year 2000? Instead of such anxiety, this postcard from 1900 celebrated with quasi-surreal optimism the turn of the century: Shown in the background of this sunny new age is a telegraph line, a train, a steamboat and smoking factory chimneys, while the young prophetic character holds a palm branch, a symbol of peace.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
Military echoes
As we however know, it wouldn't be a century of peace. In 1898, it was a privilege to watch a military parade led by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and that was something to write home about. The author of this card mentions that he even had the chance to meet the emperor himself.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
News from the field
This picture postcard from 1906 shows the happy reactions of soldiers as they receive a package or a letter. It also provides a form to quickly fill out news on one's heath / hunger / thirst / wallet. Postcards were already extremely popular during the Franco-German War in 1870-71, and soldiers sent some 10 billion field postcards during the First World War — all free of charge.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
The latest crash
Just like we might share photos of tragedies we've witnessed or that affect us on social media today, picture postcards of dramatic events were also quickly printed to be sent out to the world. This one shows the site of the accident of a "terrible catastrophe on an elevated railway in Berlin on September 26, 1908."
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
Building myths
Wilhelm Voigt was a conman who dressed up as a Prussian military officer and convinced a group of soldiers to follow his command and rob a municipal treasury in Köpenick. Even the kaiser found his caper so impressive that he pardoned him before the end of his prison sentence. "The Captain of Köpenick" became a folk hero through plays, a figure in the wax museum — and postcards such as this one.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
Beyond Art Nouveau
Austrian artist Raphael Kirchner was renowned for his Art Nouveau works, such as this one from 1904. But with his depictions of women in erotic poses, he was also an influential painter in the pin-up genre. European and American soldiers would collect such postcards during World War I. During World War II, people increasingly preferred to send their news in sealed letters instead of postcards.
Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
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The world's oldest known postcard was sent in 1840, long before the format was made official by the Austrians in 1869, 150 years ago.
The hand-painted card that pokes fun at post office scribes was sent to a writer called Theodore Hook. Since he was also known for his practical jokes, it is believed that he actually sent it to himself.
In 2002, shortly after the postcard was discovered in a stamp collection, it was sold at auction for a record £31,750 (€35,000, $38,500).
The oldest known postcard, sent in July 1840Image: Getty Images/S. Touhig
Nevertheless, the exhibition "More than words. Celebrating 150 years of postcards," held from August 21, 2019 to January 5, 2020 at the Museum for Communication in Berlin focuses on the 150-year history of the postcard in German-speaking countries.
Heinrich von Stephan, who'd later become the founder of that museum, was an early proponent of the format. The German postal reformer had proposed at the Austro-German Postal Conference in 1865 to establish what he called the "Postblatt" (open post sheet). His idea was however initially rejected.
It was the Austro-Hungarian postal authorities who adopted the concept first; the governmental "correspondence card" was introduced there in 1869, marking the official beginning of a new form of communication.
In 1872, the fee to send a postcard in Germany was set at just half the rate of a normal letter, which contributed to the popularity of the postcard. It was also possible to send a double card that included a prepaid answer card, which is how it became a widespread format for quick greetings and conveying appointments, like today's text messages.
And just like people nowadays post impressions of daily life on Instagram or Facebook, picture postcards at the turn of the century covered travel highlights, holiday and wedding greetings, various topics of gossip, as well as excitement for the latest technological developments or natural disasters.
Touristic highlights of West BerlinImage: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
The museum's foundation owns one of Germany's largest postcard collections, and the exhibition presents a selection of over 500 postcards reflecting how society ticked at the time.
The show covers how the medium bloomed from 1895 to 1914 and looks into the popularity of field postcards to obtain news from soldiers during wars. The exhibition also explores how postcards conveyed anti-Semitic propaganda, even before the Nazis came to power, as well as how mail was tightly regulated in concentration camps.
In divided Germany, postcards transmitted different perspectives from the East and the West. One example provided by the exhibition shows the Berlin Wall, visible by Brandenburg Gate, on cards featuring West Berlin's landmarks, while the East Berlin version transforms the former no man's land into a green and cheery space.
Then, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the post card containing a small piece of the wall became an absolute classic.
Brandenburg Gate is turned into an attractive meeting space without the Berlin Wall on this GDR postcard from 1989Image: Museum für Kommunikation Berlin
