Random Saturday - Postcards

Do you remember this post about a postcard which came back to the house where it came from? After almost 50 years?

Now you may think that is just another example of nostalgia, and part of it probably is, but to me it actually means learning more about our hometown and its history. Sometimes it takes a while to find info online, sometimes there's nothing to find.
And the backs of the cards - as in the above mentioned case - can be really interesting as well, but that may be a story for another time.

The other day, it came to me that I knew absolutely nothing about the history of the postcard itself. Another rabbit hole? Actually more of a whole burrow. There are so many pages out there, and while they agree on some things, they don't on others - doesn't that sound familiar ... Who was the first one to invent the "real" postcard? Which country was the first? What even is a "real" postcard? There are postcards and picture postcards. To be honest, my brain was overwhelmed trying to make sense of it all and especially to put it in a post shorter than a thesis and I failed miserably.
So let's just say that it really seems to have started in the 19th century (staying on the safe side here) and that most sources seem to agree on these Austrian "correspondence cards" to be the first "real" postcards even though there had been cards before.
Here's the history on the "World Postcard Day" page.

Correspondence card from 1869
Public domain via Wikipedia

When Heinrich von Stephan who reorganized the German postal service suggested something similar in 1865, the "open post sheet" which was meant to avoid an envelope by having pre-printed postage if you just wanted to send a short message, the idea wasn't well received.
What if servants read their employers' mail, for example? What about preserving public morals? Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Sorry, that's a quote from "Ghostbusters".
Anyhow, after the Austrian card was such a huge success, postcards caught on in other countries as well, even in Germany. I couldn't find any information on the servant-employer crisis related to that 😉
Towards the end of the century, there were more and more picture postcards. Pictures could be lithographies, sometimes colorized, or photos. They showed individual buildings, streets, parks, but also persons.
For example, monarchy used postcards for propaganda, showing off their families as role models for their subjects and to shape a positive image of themselves - which may have worked for some people, but not others. Examples that come to mind are the Romanovs, Queen Victoria, Emperor Wilhelm II.

Early cards still looked different. Unlike the cards you probably know, one side was meant only for the address and the message was written above, below or around the picture, like in this panorama of Göppingen from 1903 made up of three postcards.
If it was just one card, the sender didn't manage to put much text on it.

Maybe that's why postcards changed later. The images took up one side completely and the back was divided in a space for the address and one for the message.
The address on this card from 1919 simply says "Umbrella shop" and the town.
Isn't the penmanship beautiful? As much as I like to look at writings in Sütterlin, it's not always easy for us today to decipher it, though.

I'm often surprised at what the senders have shared on postcards. Sometimes it's just a greeting from a short trip, a visit, a longer vacation, on occasion of a holiday, a thank you, but we have seen more than one that has been sent from a hospital and the news haven't always been very good.

Greetings for New Year's Eve. You might think the word and flowers are
drawn by hand, but they are printed on, probably after a hand drawn design.

I'm not very interested in cars in general, but look at these beauties!
I just love an nice old VW Bug. That restaurant is outside town, near an artificial lake. You just don't see VW Bugs there anymore now.
The other card shows our renaissance castle. If you look closely, you don't just see the old cars, but also - unfortunately blurry - a horse carriage in the background.

The following pictures are not postcards, but file copies which served as masters. They are actually just half the size of a card.
They were taken by a local photographer. Many of my cards were manufactured by local photographers, bookstores or stationery shops.

This is the square in front of the old train station with the post office on the right.

More old cars, but to me it was interesting to learn about the so-called "Kraftpost" (literally power post). These successors of stagecoaches were postbuses used in Germany (other countries had them as well) both for mail delivery and passenger transport. You can see a sign on the post office building. It's illegible here, but I also know a picture with a later sign that could be read easily.

Let's stop here or I might never stop again.
I hope I didn't bore you too much, but maybe you could get a idea of how postcards have illustrated history over years, no matter if you are just interested in that of your town or area or global history.
When was the last time you sent a card?