Curt pond

Greetings from Los Angeles, James R. Powell Route 66 Collection

Curt Otto Teich (born March 23, 1877 in Greiz ; † January 12, 1974 in Indian Rocks Beach ) was a German-American printer , publicist and entrepreneur . The German immigrant was active in the postcard business from 1905 until his death , which he revolutionized through new production methods and mass production.

His company Curt Teich & Company made a name for itself with the first small runs of postcards. “And although they produced thousands of designs highlighting hotels, motels, restaurants and tourist attractions across America, it became best known for its 'big letters.' These charming and colorful postcards are in great demand these days, also because the unique combination of talent and technology with which they were made can hardly be copied even with the most sophisticated tools. ”They also represent the North American postcard market in the first half of the 20th century. Century.

family

ancestors

Curt Teich Sr. with wife and Curt jun., ca.1910

Curt Teich in the year of his immigration, 1895

Although the files of the Teich family were lost in the air raids on Dresden during World War II, his prehistory has been documented by him. At the age of 80, Curt Teich felt it was necessary to write down his memories and experiences. The Teich family lived in northern Germany in the 18th century, the "land of windmills", as he called it. His ancestors, namely his father and grandfather, were already busy with the printing company. He was the fifth of seven children - five of them sons - of Christian Teich (1843–1920) and Elise, née Tamm (1848–1919), born in the Russian capital of Greiz. The family soon moved to Lobenstein , where his great-grandfather Johann Karl Teich (1760–1845) passed away from his friend, probably Heinrich Reuss LXXII. (1797-1853), had received a family property. This Russian branch of the family (Reuss zu Lobenstein and Ebersdorf) died out in 1853. The branch of great-grandfather Johann had a family coat of arms on which the double-headed eagle holds the insignia of the printing trade in its claws.

Both Curt's grandfather Friederich Karl Wilhelm Teich (1819–1890), who also wrote poems and historical treatises for various newspapers, and his father, who worked as a printer, newspaper publisher and bookseller, can still be understood today through the family records. He attended grammar school in Dresden until he was 15, after which he joined the trade of his forefathers and learned the printing trade in Lobenstein. In 1893, his father and older brother Max (1873–1964) traveled to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago . Because Max stayed there and was to work in the hotel business from now on, Christian encouraged his son to try his luck in America too. In addition to Curt, all five other siblings emigrated to the United States over the years .

After entering the USA in May 1895, he completed the printer apprenticeship there again, for which he was actually overqualified. But he had to earn money and wanted to learn the craft from scratch on site. At the beginning of 1898 he moved to Chicago - the center of the printing industry in the USA - and opened his own print shop at Clybourn Avenue 59-61 (now 1258 N.). The building no longer exists today. On November 24, 1899, he was naturalized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service .

progeny

On July 15, 1909, he married Anna Louise, née Niether (1889–1959). They had five children together: Curt (1910–1980), Walter Ernst (1912–1972), Louise Teich Chmelik (1913–2005), Lawrence Edward (1918–1942) and Ralph Donald (1925–2000). Their home address for 1920 is Malden Street, but five years later the family moved to the northern suburb of Glencoe and lived in a sizable estate at 535 Longwood Avenue with several employees. The extensive gardens extended to the shores of Lake Michigan . The Victorian villa is still standing today, but it is heavily enclosed in the dense development, and the ambience of that time has therefore disappeared.

In 1939, Curt Teich had to cope with two heart attacks , which prompted him to slow down and lay the responsibility on the shoulders of his firstborn. Died / fell in World War II? in April 1942 her son Lawrence on the island of Corregidor during the conquest by enemy Japanese troops . Since he was never found and was pronounced dead in 1946, there is no grave of him and only a plaque in the Manila American Cemetery reminds of him today.

In the mid-1950s, the Teich couple decided to move to Florida for health reasons . Her new home was west of Tampa on Belleair Shore with direct access to the Gulf of Mexico . In 1958, Curt kept his promise to his descendants and created the family chronicle Teich Family Tree , which largely replaced the documents lost in the war. In 1959 Curt's wife Anna died at the age of 69.

Curt Teich died at the age of 96 and is now lying with his wife in the mausoleum of the Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie .

Professional commitment

His brother Max's Kaiserhof Hotel , around 1914.

Curt's company founding in 1898 was financially supported by his brother Max, who at that time had already established himself with the Kaiserhof Hotel and was independent. When the company was founded, Curt owned 80 shares and his uncle Alfred (1880–1931), who had recently immigrated to the USA, owned 40 shares. Postcard printing was a niche that he only found over time, because at the beginning the company's goal was much broader. Regarding the scope of activities, the commercial register states: printing and lithography, publishing, importing art prints, manufacturing and importing souvenir items. After the World's Fair, many visitors who wanted to try their luck had settled in Chicago. "The general conditions were bad and all professions were overcrowded" noted Teich in his family chronicle Teich Family Tree for this period.

Street view of the L&L Motel in Bloomington on Route 66 , before 1966.

At the turn of the century, a postcard frenzy seized the nation that had been evident in Europe for around 25 to 30 years. At the world exhibition, picture postcards were shown that were issued for the first time by the United States Postal Service , even if they may not have been the first cards in the USA. The post office carried these at half the price of letters and many private printing companies began to print postcards as well. In addition, by 1906 most of the postal delivery routes in rural areas of the United States were finally in place, which increased the standard for this service enormously. Postcard writing became popular. Teich was infected by this fashion and he researched how this new interest in the postcard could be successfully handled. That is why he drove back to Germany in 1904, where the postcard had been flourishing very successfully for over a decade. There he studied the new lithography and printing methods. He was probably also inspired by the emerging tourist postcard industry and especially the postcard phenomenon "Greetings from ...", which originated in Germany in the early 1890s.

In 1905 Curt Teich traveled by train from Chicago to Saint Petersburg , Florida, and from there 2,500 miles to the west coast. On the way there he got off the train with the camera in hand at every stop, walked the main streets and photographed the shops that were numerous in the small towns. These images were the basis for his first large edition of illustrated postcards. With a dollar selling price per thousand tickets, Teich was hugely successful, closing for an astonishing $ 30,000 during that trip. This laid the foundation for its focus on the postcard printing industry. While the first American postcard printing companies were printing their materials abroad, Curt Teich endeavored to print his own postcards. As a result, it became one of the most productive postcard printers in America by the first half of the 20th century, selling up to 250 million cards a year.

To protect the domestic printing market, the protectionist Payne-Aldrich Customs Act was enacted in 1909, which made postcards printed abroad more expensive by $ 1.28 per 1,000. Teich, who had relied on production in their own country from the start, had an advantage and increased its production considerably. In 1912 his annual postcard production had risen to 150 million.

This positive development went hand in hand with the development of the auto industry , road construction and tourism . In 1916 the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 was passed, which provided the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), founded in December 1914, with the contractual basis and the financial means. The planning basis for the higher-level road network was laid down in the Pershing Map in 1921 , which laid down the construction of 126,000 km of roads. After the standards for road construction were regulated, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 was a road construction subsidy program. With the implementation of these measures, distant goals were suddenly achievable for many people. Conversely, the massive number of postcards encouraged wanderlust. Many cards, such as those of Niagara Falls , which were among the bestsellers, were appropriately printed: “I was here (and you did not)”. By the end of his business activity, Teich had motifs and customers from over 100 countries in his order books.

Lake Quinsigamond, 1900s

Around the 1920s, Teich saw it as necessary to invest in its machinery. Before he had always had to increase production with the numerous changes in his production facilities, but now he had a machine in mind that would print 32 postcards at the same time. After he had already moved in 1907 from the too cramped Clybourn Building to a building on the corner of N. LaSalle Drive / W Ohio St., he moved in 1911 to 1733-55 W Irving Park Road. The brick building with the striking corner tower was expanded to include a square, seven-axis, four-story building by 1929. His brother Frederick designed the new building. In contrast to the tower of the old part of the building, the stairwell, shaped into a corner tower, was not designed in a historicizing manner, but characterized by a new objectivity . After many years of decline, the building has housed 67 residential units since 1990 under the name Chicago Post Card Place Lofts .

Teich wanted to get started with the offset printing process that had emerged in Germany since the early 1910s. He needed format class 6 (38 × 52 inches ) for 32 postcards on one printed sheet , but this dimension was not yet available on the American market. At the company Scott Printing Press from New York , he had success. Scott presses were the first to successfully produce color postcards on a large offset press. For the black tones he used halftone plates and only with the color was offset printing used in a lithographic process. Teich commissioned Otto Büttner, who was born in Lobenstein, to head the department for lithographic art.

In the early 1920s the unions grew stronger and demanded more money for less work. Teich believed he was immune to this because he was already paying well above average and rewarding his employees with shares in the company. But with the exception of five foremen, his people also joined the strike, which lasted a total of nine months. To keep production running, he hired and trained new workers and laid off the old ones. In its heyday, which lasted around 20 years until the mid-1940s, the company had 30 presses, each ten meters long and three and a half meters wide and three and a half meters high. These machines could print 2.5 million postcards an hour, more than those of its competitors. During this golden age, the company employed over 1000 people, including many German immigrants.

In addition to Teich's keen sense of the needs of the market, his sales model was particularly decisive for his business success. Despite the recession the country found itself in in the 1930s, when frugality and frugality were important principles, its sales force continued to write jobs. They traveled around the country with large-format cameras in order to take a picture of the object in question, knocked on doors and presented the concept. It wasn't until 1956 that the company hired its own photographer to take professional photos for more demanding customers. Teich had drawn up rules of conduct and sales manuals especially for the appearance of these employees, which began with the sentence “Customers are the most enduring gold mine”. There were also industry-specific manuals to give the sellers tips on how to use the postcards in practice. Apart from these people, the customers usually had no contact with the company, which meant a minimal administrative effort and which was decisive for the competitiveness with the “fraction-penny calculation” in this market.

After producing the black and white photos for the respective shop, the seller visited the owner again to select the right photo with the best angle and to arrange for the coloring and, if necessary, retouching , which the artists then implemented in the head office. The pond postcard should not show the viewer reality, but an idealized world. The changes to the picture with the bright, bright colors were all too obvious and were part of the pond's trademark from the start. For example, it often looked like a hotel was right on the beach, even though there were several blocks in between. But if the customer wanted this "romanticizing version", it was done that way.

With the stock market crash in October 1929 , many companies were forced to lay off workers or close their operations. The United States suffered for many years, and the domestic printing industry was also affected. But Teich saw the opportunity for growth during this time by traveling abroad, receiving orders from foreign customers and finding out about new printing methods in order to further improve his products and thus discover new, creative and entrepreneurial opportunities. He visited countries like Cuba, Argentina, Peru and Brazil. In the early 1930s he traveled by air to Hawaii, Panama, Mexico and several islands in the Caribbean, where he received print jobs. Amazingly, it made a profit during the deflationary years.

In 1935 he was back in Germany. In his memoir Teich Family Tree , he describes this visit as extremely productive, where he was able to study new printing techniques and acquire specialist publications. One publication by Adolf Köpf is entitled Manual of Modern Reproduction Technology Volume III: Photolithography and Offset Reproduction , others with Transfer Versus Direct Copy? and Film Editing and the Direct Copy in the Copying Frame . Compared to his competitors on the American market, his knowledge of German gave him a big head start in accessing this current information. Teich took the position that one should not be negligent in research and development even in difficult times, and he filed numerous patents.

Handling the expensive lithography stones was a particular problem. After his trip to Europe in 1904, he came up with an invention, which he named after his initials CT American Art , and with which he substituted the lithographic stones with metal plates set with small stones. He found this procedure so complicated that he feared no imitation and therefore did not have it protected. With another invention - CT Art Colortone - he made in 1935 and another one called Curteichcolor ten years later, he didn't risk the same mistake again. With the entry of the United States into World War II , which he expressly welcomed and supported, the range of production changed. He now also printed manuals and invasion maps, apparently very much to the satisfaction of his client, the US Army. In August 1943 he received a letter from an officer:

“The Army Map Service is greatly pleased with your excellent work in the recent reproduction of the Maps of Italy. Your splendid co-operation made it possible to ship these maps two days in advance of the anticipated date. It is gratifying to know that you can be depended upon when confronted with an urgent and imperative requirement. It will be appreciated if you will extend this commendation to all those of your personnel who had any connection with this work. "

“The Army Map Service is delighted with your excellent work on the most recent reproduction of the maps of Italy. Your great collaboration made it possible to send these cards out two days before the expected date. It is good to know that one can rely on an urgent and imperative requirement. We would be very grateful if you would express your praise to all employees who had anything to do with this work. "

- Colonel WA Johnson, Corps of Engineers : Pond Postcard Archives

From 1942 to 1945, Curt Teich & Company's contract with the Army Map Service accounted for 90% of the company's production, as Ralph Teich reports.

The death of their son Lawrence tormented the family and especially the Patriarch Curt. After receiving the terrible news in 1946, he resigned as head of Curt Teich & Company, Inc. and handed it over to Frank Hochegger and Curt Teich junior. Teich valued him as a "very talented and promising young man". Curt Teich also had a heart attack, which he suffered around the same time.

Although Curt Teich handed over the management of the company to his son, he remained active in the company management throughout the entire period. Legal successor after Teich's death in 1974 was Regensteiner Verlag , which continued to print postcards at the Chicago plant until 1978. Thereafter the rights to the company name and the lawsuits were transferred to the Irish company John Hinde Ltd. sold. Its California subsidiary prints the cards under the name John Hinde Curteich, Inc.

The product

Teich's numerous inventions also included the printing medium on which the printing ink was applied. During the economic crisis, he found that sales for products with bold colors were better than cards with more monochrome colors. From then on, he was concerned with the possibilities of increasing the application of paint in order to create more brilliance and color intensity. He found that profiled paper with a larger surface area can hold more ink and this achieved the desired effect. Because of its characteristic appearance of a linen structure, it was called Linen paper or Linen postcard , although no linen was used in it. While in the early years around 1907 only 5 percent of the orders were with color postcards, by 1930 the proportion rose to 50 percent. With the introduction of the linen postcard in 1931, he practically left black and white printing behind.

Curt Teich Postcard Archives

Newberry Library, 1910s

The Curt-Teich-Produktion collection includes more than 2.5 million individual items, which in addition to the almost 500,000 postcards also contain the original photos, drafts and correspondence between customers and agents as well as between agents and headquarters. In this way, the company's workflow can be tracked seamlessly. The Curt Teich Postcard Donation with over 358,000 pieces of part in which stumbled by Curt Teich junior after the sale of the company has been saved from the paper container. These were the company's specimen copies , which were initially added to the Lake County Discovery Museum in Illinois in 1982 and became part of the permanent exhibition. In 2016/17 the collection was transferred to the Newberry Library , where it is now being scientifically evaluated. There are around 17,000 uploads of these postcards on Wikimedia Commons .

Appreciation

Curt Teich's life story is one of the typical American success stories. He benefited from his good language skills and intercultural knowledge. Both together enabled him to always be one step ahead of the competition and thus build an empire that gave him the nickname King of postcards . He imported and adapted the German greetings from… postcard and made it the popular and proverbially used Greetings from… postcard in America. In retrospect, his work is one of the phenomena that can be summarized in a modern way in the so-called mid-century . His linen postcards are considered to be the forerunners of the Kodachrome and Ektachrome color photographs that have been emerging since the 1950s .

He was also a pioneer in conquering medium-sized businesses and small businesses, which he led into the world of advertising. Looking at his work today, one is immersed in an idealized world as the United States would have liked to be in the first half of the 20th century. His legacy has been preserved and has found its way into today's archives.

literature

• Wolfgang Wagener, Leslie Erganian: New West . Hirmer 2019, ISBN 978-3-7774-3189-5

Web links

Commons : Curt Teich  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Curt Teich Postcard Archives Digital Collection (Newberry Library) on CARLI Digital Collections, Illinois
• Guide to dating Curt Teich postcards , Newberry Library , 2016
• Curt pond in the database of Find a Grave (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gene Gable: Heavy Metal Madness: Greetings from Big Letters USA. On: Creative pro, April 8, 2004
2. ↑ ^{a b} Teich Archives Transferred to Newberry Library . Lake County Forest Preserves, Oct. 21, 2016
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} The picture postcard king, Curt Otto Teich , Under Every Tombstone , 2016.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Teich family coat of arms , Immigrant Entrepreneurship, German-American Business Biographies, Collection Curt Teich Postcard Archives.
5. ↑ Google Street View , September 2018.
6. ^ Statutory Charter, Filed with Cook County , Illinois Secretary of State, James A. Rose (1850–1912), March 15, 1904.
7. ^ Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act . Columbia Encyclopedia , Sixth Edition 2001-05 on Internet Archive , February 22, 2006.
8. ↑ Richard F. Weingroff: Public Roads . US Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration, Online Magazine on Internet Archive , Spring 1996, Issue 59, No. 4
9. ↑ ^{a b} Fresko, the magazine for art and culture lovers . Quarterly supplement to FAZ, 02/2019, page 3
10. ↑ Jeffrey L. Meikle: Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950 . University of Texas Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0-292-72661-1 , pp. 469 .
11. ^ Post Card Place, Lake View, Chicago, Illinois . on the side of a private real estate agency
12. ^ Registration Certificate , Trademark S / N 60326438, United States Patent and Trademark Office, February 27, 1935
13. ↑ Ralph Teich, Interview by Jane Ulrich, May 5, 1983, transcribed, Teich Postcard Archives
14. ↑ Pond Family Tree
15. ^ Alan Petrulis: Postcard publishers on metropostcard.com
16. ↑ Jeffrey L. Meikle: Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950 , University of Texas Press 2016, ISBN 978-0-2927-2661-1 , pp. 35-41
17. ^ Ronnie Wachter: Greetings from the Newberry Library. A world-class postcard collection opens to researchers. American Libraries Magazine , April 17, 2017.
18. ↑ Curt Teich Postcard Archives Digital Collection (Newberry Library)
19. ^ Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection Geographic Indices. The Newberry Library, Reaseearch.