Postcard

History of the postcard

If the England were the cradle of the postage stamp (in 1837), the Austria was that of the postcard. Doctor Stéphan, in 1865, proposes for the first time a report on the postcard with the postal conference of Karlsruhe. The idea is not taken up immediately and on October 1st, 1869 should be waited, with Vienna, so that professor Emmanuel Hermann convinces the postal administration Austrian of the interest of this support.

In France, the postcard makes its first appearance in 1870 in a Strasbourg besieged by the Prussian army . A chart carrying the stamp of the Croix-Rouge is indeed put in circulation by the Company of helps at wounded in order to making it possible the civil population to communicate with outside. It is about a discreetly illustrated chart of a Red Cross, which does not need to be freed. One forwards it not only for France but also to the Suisse.

December 20th, 1872, the Finance law, on a proposal from the deputy Louis Wolowski, introduced in France in an official way the postcard.

The use of the official postcard intervened in France only on January 15th, 1873. Two types of postcards were put on sale in the post offices. One, of yellow color, freed with 10 centimes, was intended to circulate with discovered in France and Algérie, in the interior of the same city or in the district of the same office. The other, freed with 15 centimes, could circulate of office at office. The only illustration (if one can say) this official postcard is a 4 mm thickness plank framing the part reserved for the address of the recipient and carrying the stamp of stamping and the administrative indications. The public made with this first chart a favorable reception. Seven million specimens ran out in one week.

Until 1875, the postcard remained a monopoly of the administration of the stations, which does not mean that tradesmen and industrialists did not make use of it, on a purely advertizing basis, before this date. Since 1873, the stores of the Beautiful Flower stand made reproduce with the recto of the official charts of small illustrations representing their buildings of the street of the Pont-Neuf, with Paris.

The postcard quickly acquires its noble letters at the time of the World Fair of 1889, where a drawn chart representing the Eiffel Tower was sold with: 300000 specimens. Since, this monument is represented the most in the world on the charts, with an estimate of 5 billion specimens.

The Marseillais Dominique Piazza seems to be to have marketed first, in France, of the photographic charts in 1891. Since 1892, other cities of the south of France encase the step followed by Paris. However, the printed photographic charts remain excessively rare before 1897. It is at that time that the Neurdein printer will publish charts for each important city of France.

Until the beginning of the year 1904, the back (recto) of the postcard was not divided into two parts. Three or four horizontal lines over all the width of the chart made it possible to register the only address of the recipient. Photography (with the back) did not recover the totality of space to allow the correspondence on the side of the image. One speaks then about “chart cloud” or “cloudy chart”.

So in the beginning, the postcard is a document almost exclusively postal printed by the administration, at that time, of the Photographe S, benefitting from the new technical projections, sell their production to easy customers on the principal tourist spot. It is only at the end of the 19th century that the postcard will help photography to diffuse itself throughout the world and in all the social layers.

The postcard then takes a considerable rise especially with the World Fair of Paris in 1900. It will know a golden age until the end of the Second world war. At that time, the newspapers do not comprise a Photographie S. the postcard can be used like new media: a species of television before the letter. Beside the large national editors, small local photographers will fix for the posterity the big events, the typical scenes of the daily life, political life etc Of the hotels, coffees, restaurants, of the trade in all kinds, use the postcard like average advertizing executive: the owner poses with his employees and his family in front of the window. All these small moments of the local history are invaluable and very required today.

As from the years the 1920 productions are of less quality insofar as the requirements of profitability make that the editors prefer the general sights with the scenes of the daily life more typified, but also more quickly obsolete.

According to an investigation carried out for Internet site itv.com near: 2000 British, the postcard would be from now on in lose speed, supplanted in particular by the Courriel S. This investigation shows thus that the number of postcards sent these ten last years would have fallen of 75%, and more of the three quarters of the young people would find these means of communication obsolete.

Dependant collections

In the middle of the years 1970, the collectors include/understand the interest of the postcard quickly. We are at the end of “the Thirty Glorious ones” (according to the expression of Jean Fourastié): thirty years of economic growth without precedent which follow the Second world war. An allowed growth at the time like the remedy for all the evils. A growth which put moving the social elevator. But a growth which required a rural migration and moved away most of the population from its roots. When the machine is seized up, it is necessary to return to the true values. The interest for the postcard lies within this scope there. They are the last witnesses of a disappeared world because they knew to stop, one moment, the time which passes really too quickly.

In 1975, Gerard Neudin, a polytechnician amateur of postcards, will publish for the first time a directory which will become with the wire of time the reference of the cartophiles. Clubs of collection neurs will be constituted and the postcard hitherto a41dernier $c-b1, e,10 $c-b26 ce $c-b16 $c-b43, bn,84 will reach prices unknown in the public sales. It will be a new golden age for the postcard. Today, the collection seeks a new breath…

The illustrations of the postcards cause to them Collection by topics (trades, villages of a department etc), by use (sent by the soldiers since the face).

During years 1900-1920, in France, the practice of the collection of the postcards takes a great rise, and very many family albums are filled. Found after the death of their owners and introduced in the vacuum-attics and fairs to all, they provide to the new collectors years 1980, an important research field of often cheap charts. The French impassion themselves then for the history of their native village or of adoption (Périurbanisation and Rurbanisation); the postcards of the beginning of the 20th century illustrate this past.

Catalogs are published, giving quotations. Specialized merchants open their trade and of the auctions amplify the phenomenon, thus raising the prices. After a score of years of popular passion, the collection of postcards undergoes today a new phase of fold.

The collectors of postcards are called cartophiles.

The philatelists are interested sometimes in the charts for the postage stamps which are printed tops (cf postal Entier), or which were used for stamping (cf also international Charts answers).

The maximaphiles try to constitute postal documents which superimpose around the same topic a postcard, a postage stamp and a Oblitération.

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