Philocartie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A collection of postcards

Philocartie is collecting and researching postcards , including very often postcards .

The term can be found in a French specialist publication with the title “Le Philocartiste” that was published periodically from April 1, 1898. A roughly synonymous term is postcard customer . Post and view Card collectors are called or -kundler Philokartisten referred. The Greek prefix philo- or philo- means “loving”, “friendly” or “friend”; a philocartist is a "friend of cards".

The first collective wave of postcards existed until around 1918, and a notable market for old postcards emerged from around the late 1970s. Most collectors are so-called home collectors; they prefer to collect postcards from their hometown and their home region.

Often the Philokartie is seen as a branch of the Philately , although there are many collectors who only collect picture postcards and not stamps. Postcards are philatelic receipts if they are sent by post or if they are postal stationery cards .

history

Cover of a magazine for postcard collectors from 1896
Logo of the world association cosmopolitan
US postal stationery postcard from 1881

Postcards had a big boom shortly before 1900.

Reasons for the upswing were

  • the use of more modern, more attractive printing processes,
  • the low distribution of other visual media such as magazines or photography and
  • the lack of better alternative forms of communication - hardly anyone had a telephone and telegrams were expensive.
  • In addition, there was a strong increase in the number of trips due to new means of transport, and many postcards were written here.

In Germany and the other German-speaking countries in particular, there was an early tendency to write postcards and postcards and to collect postcards. The card collecting fever was also referred to abroad as the German epidemic , until they themselves fell into the passion for collecting.

At that time there were picture postcard albums in many households; Numerous stylish albums from this period have been preserved.

First wave of collecting until around 1918

In May 1894 the "Collectors' Association for Illustrated Postcards in Hamburg" was founded as the first German philo-cartographic association.

The Alfred Mello publishing house in Göggingen near Augsburg was published on February 15, 1895 as the oldest German trade journal, the “monthly for postcard collectors”. On May 1, 1898, the first major German “International Exhibition of Illustrated Postcards” took place in the Grassi Museum in Leipzig .

In 1899 the “world sport of collecting postcards” had a number of followers that put other types of collecting far in the shade. Among other things, there was also a “General Central Association of Postcard Collectors” and specialist magazines such as “International Postcard Review” and “The Postcard Collector”.

By 1900, the circle of postcard information sheets expanded by more than 40 and between 1896 and 1902 there were at least eleven specialist journals in Germany.

In the United States , the Post Card Union of America had nearly 10,000 members around 1910. In 1914, the long-defunct world association Cosmopolitan had 13,000 members and had more than 100 consulates on five continents . German and Austrian postcard publishers played an internationally leading role in the production of cards during the time when chromolithographs were still the most widely printed cards and maintained this role until the outbreak of the First World War . In addition, the English postcard publisher “ Raphael Tuck & Sons ” was of international importance for a long time.

The period from 1897 to 1918 is also known as the “golden age of the postcard”. After that, the number of collectors fell.

There was a smaller wave of collectors in the 1920s when it became fashionable to portray film actors and celebrities on postcards. In the 1920s and 1930s, Ross-Verlag was considered to be the leading publisher in Europe for postcards with portraits of well-known film actors and postcards with film scenes - initially only for Germany, later also for international filmmaking.

Retrospective collecting

Starting in 1961, with the publication of the “Postcard Collector's Letter” by the then founded “Philokartists Union of Europe”, collecting and exchanging picture postcards through private advertisements in this sheet slowly began to move beyond Germany. A larger market for old postcards emerged from around the mid to late 1970s. Shortly before that, there was a price increase that made the cards interesting for retailers.

The first German postcard auction was organized by Willi Bernhard on December 29, 1973 in Hamburg. In the course of this development, postcard shops also emerged, from 1976 there were the first German postcard exchanges in Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main , and a German-language specialist magazine for postcard collectors was able to re-establish itself.

There are now a number of local collectors' associations and a few national associations. Philately and numismatics , however, are much more popular collecting areas.

Collections

Collecting areas

In addition to old postcards, new cards are also collected. Collecting postcards according to geographical criteria is very common. Philocartists refer to images of cities, towns or landscapes as topographic maps.

Others collect certain subjects ( French for themes , motifs ), cards from individual artists or artist groups. Many collectors have preferred publishers or printing processes such as lithographs or real photo cards.

Some collectors collect postcards of a certain type (e.g. stop-against-the-light cards or moonlight cards ). Usually the cards are valued for their documentary or artistic value. Some collectors also pay attention to the text of the cards, for example collectors of field postcards or postcards from wartime. Also free postcards are collected.

Home collections

The vast majority of postcard collectors are home collectors who mainly collect views of their regional surroundings. The goal of many home collectors is to collect as many postcards from their home town as possible or a historically meaningful cross-section of them. Big city collectors often only collect maps from one district. Home collectors often set thematic priorities within their collections (e.g. transport, gastronomy, associations).

Local collectors often have a keen interest in local history; Many of them collect other things that are related to their home country, such as relevant literature (e.g. so-called home books or other home documents such as photos , correspondence , address books, travel brochures, company documents, emergency money , enamel signs or advertisements).

Home collections in particular are often bequeathed by their owners to public institutions such as museums or archives or donated during their lifetime; they are often important sources for research into local history.

Thematic collections

Instead of a home collection or as a supplement to it, many philocartists collect one or more thematic areas or motifs. The topics range from A for Nobility to Z for Zeche. There are collectors for practically everything that was printed on postcards. Popular collection topics are, for example, planes, the military, advertising or portraits of actors. A thematic collection can also contain “topographical” maps, for example if views of train stations, theater buildings or churches are collected. When it comes to collective topics, there is often an overlap with other hobbies and interests.

philately

Some collectors are primarily stamp collectors and tend to focus on philatelic aspects such as the particularity of the shipping method or special stamps. These collectors prefer items sent by post.

Postal stationery cards such as the so-called picture postcards are mostly collected by philatelists . When Maximaphily there are other similarities with the philately.

Important collections

Collections of museums

  • The Altonaer Museum in Hamburg has collected and inventoried 1.5 million picture postcards .
  • One of the largest collections of postcards (around 900,000 copies) can be viewed in the Hungarian town of Szerencs at the Rákóczi Castle.
  • Another very large international collection with 600,000 documented copies is that of Nikolai Tagrin in Saint Petersburg .
  • The Museum for Communication in Berlin owns the second largest museum collection in Germany with around 300,000 copies .
  • The Musée des Civilizations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée in Marseille has a collection of 140,000 historically important postcards, the majority of which have been transferred from the former Musée national des Arts et Traditions populaires in Paris.

Collections from publishers' holdings

  • Some old company archives have been preserved.  More than 30,000 digital copies were sent to Wikimedia Commons from the archive of the Brück & Sohn publishing house in Meißen .
  • The archive of the former postcard publisher Metz in Tübingen is located with 4,000 negatives (many glass plates) in the House of History Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart. For decades the publisher was considered the most important producer of postcards from Baden and Württemberg. He collected recordings over several generations and employed over 100 people in production and sales.

Collections of Individuals

  • A British Queen and a Grand Duchess of Oldenburg were avid postcard collectors.
  • Archbishop Johannes Dyba , Bishop of Fulda , owned a very extensive and very valuable collection of lithographic postcards from all over Germany .
  • Until his death in 1931, the Zurich industrialist Adolf Feller compiled a collection of around 54,000 cards with mostly Swiss motifs, which were bequeathed to the image archive of the library of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich .
  • Sabine Giesbrecht collected thousands of cards on the subjects of music, propaganda and women from the beginnings to around 1945. In 2010 the collection was transferred to the Osnabrück University Foundation and is kept in the university library. The Sabine Giesbrecht picture postcard archive has meanwhile grown to over 17,000 cards.
  • Captain Jochen Pahl has collected over 10,000 postcards from his home island of Norderney (from the period 1880–1970) with over 100 individual subjects.
  • British photographer Martin Parr owns a collection of more than 20,000 postcards, many of which are from the 1970s or even younger. He has documented his collection in several books.
  • The Munich collector Karl Stehle (1939–2013) has been collecting a unique collection of postcards since his student days with the focus on "The postcard as a mirror of politics in everyday life". The collection, consisting of almost 600,000 postcards, was auctioned at an auction house after his death, including a unique, hardly collapsible sub-collection on the subject of National Socialism consisting of 24,000 cards for € 280,000 sold to Russia. Another part of this collection were 2500 copies on the history of the picture postcard.
  • The Munich comedian Karl Valentin was a big collector of postcards. His preferences were old Munich views and popular personalities. In 1928 he organized a postcard exhibition in Munich.

research

Although many philocartists limit themselves to collecting, there are some among them who also conduct research in this field. Important sources of information on the current state of research are philocartistic club journals and specialist journals. In addition, there is occasionally something on the subject in philatelic journals.

Have researched in this area z. B. Claus-Thorsten Schmidt (about: Franz Scheiner , Weltverband Kosmopolit), Gerhard Stumpp (about: Hans Pernat , Karl Liebhardt ) or Otto May , Arnold Linke (about: Alleged inventor of the picture postcard and the history of the picture postcard) .. There were degree theses (e.g. on Eugen Felle ) that belong to this field.

The picture postcard archive Sabine Giesbrecht of the University of Osnabrück mainly researches picture and motif cards in their cultural context. The collector and professor of music history Sabine Giesbrecht has written numerous works on the subject.

Research areas

  • Researching postcard publishers, artists or photographers
  • History and postal history of postcards and picture postcards
  • Researching certain types of postcards
  • Examination of printing techniques and history

Postcards are sometimes used as evidence and aids in other research areas. There are overlaps e.g. B. in the area of ​​local history, which is often done with the help of old postcards. There are also linguistic and communication studies studies and articles on communication with the postcard.

Cataloging

In the case of postcards, in contrast to postage stamps , telephone cards or coins , cards are only cataloged for very few defined collecting areas, which is understandable given the enormous number of different cards. There are often hundreds of different postcards from smaller places. This is precisely what makes the attraction for many collectors to keep making new discoveries in order to complete the collection areas. There are catalogs with prices for postal stationery cards and so-called picture postcards .

As a guide to prices, auction catalogs from specialized postcard auctions can be used, or online auction houses on the Internet can be used to see which prices are fetching similar cards. Since copyrights expire in the course of time, more and more places, cities, regions or different subject areas are now bringing out new books with old postcards or publishing them on the Internet.

Prices and market

As a rule, postcards from big cities are cheaper than from smaller towns. In general, there is a lower price level in places with a lot of tourism and day trippers, as many postcards are written there. There has always been a lot of tourism in large cities, and there are practically more and more cards on the supply side of health resorts or popular sights , and the average prices are correspondingly lower. Old individual cards usually cost between 50 cents and just over 20 euros in specialist shops.

Wanted and therefore often more expensive postcards

Many old postcards are now sold either over the Internet or via so-called postcard exchanges. There are more important postcard fairs in various major cities; they usually take place several times a year in the same place. There are also occasional shops with old postcards, which mostly also sell stamps, coins, banknotes or other small antiques.

Record prices

Front and back of what is probably the oldest postcard in the world, auctioned in London in 2002 for over £ 31,000

Probably the oldest postcard in the world was auctioned in London on March 8, 2002 for a total of 31,758.75 British pounds (around 50,000 euros at that time) . The auction was conducted by the London Stamp Exchange and the winning bid, excluding VAT and premium, was £ 27,000. It was a hand-painted, humorous postcard from 1840 with the rare Penny Black stamp. A Latvian collector named Eugene Gomberg from Riga bought them.

Previously, the record price was held by a postcard from the Titanic , which was auctioned for around £ 20,000 by the London auction house Sotheby’s . The map was written during the passage of the sunken luxury ship.

At the 109th auction of the Württemberg auction house from April 16 to 17, 2010, a field postcard from the Boxer Rebellion with a stamp from the field post station No. 6 auctioned for a final price of 30,000 euros.

Artist postcards from the Wiener Werkstätte or the Bauhaus also fetch high prices . Rare top pieces of this type almost regularly reach prices of over 10,000 euros at auctions. Once a Bauhaus card from Paul Klee reached a price of 22,000 euros.

In June 2015, a picture postcard was auctioned for 166,000 euros (plus commission for over 200,000 euros). The map contains a cityscape of Pau in the south of France. It was sent by Pablo Picasso as a greeting to the poet and friend Guillaume Apollinaire in Paris on September 5, 1918 . Instead of a text, Picasso provided the postcard with a drawing that can be assigned to his cubist series “La nature morte”.

High-priced rarities are often auctioned off via specialized postcard auction houses.

The philocartie in art and culture

  • The operetta composer Paul Lincke composed a march of postcard collectors in the heyday of collecting in 1898 .
  • During the Paris carnival parade in 1905, there was a separate float reserved for postcard fever.

literature

Books

  • Günter Formery: The great lexicon of postcards: an encyclopedia of the philocartie. Phil Creativ, Schwalmtal 2018, ISBN 978-3-928277-21-1 .
  • Günter Formery, Thomas Fürst: The world of postcard collecting. (= Guide for stamp collectors. Volume 7). 3rd, unchanged edition. Phil Creativ, Schwalmtal 2015, ISBN 978-3-932198-91-5 .
  • Thomas Fürst: Postcards - a bibliography. (= Guide for stamp collectors. Supplement to Volume 7). Phil Creativ, Schwalmtal 2015, ISBN 978-3-932198-02-1 .
  • Robert Lebeck, Gerhard Kaufmann: Greetings ... A cultural history of the postcard. (= The bibliophile paperbacks. No. 458). Harenberg, Dortmund 1985, ISBN 3-88379-458-9 .
  • Arnold Linke, Wolfram Richter: Guide for postcard collectors and those who want to become one. taking into account new research results. Salzwasser-Verlag , Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86741-091-5 .
  • Horst Hille: Collectible postcard. Transpress Verlag , Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-344-00401-8 .
  • Horst Hille: Collect postcards. Phil Creativ, Schwalmtal 1993, ISBN 3-928277-20-0 .
  • Wolfgang Till: Old postcards - a collector's book. 3. Edition. Weltbild, Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0793-8 .
  • Dieter Weidmann: Postcards - from picture postcards to artist cards. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-422-06183-5 .
  • Otto Wicki: history of postcards and picture postcards. Zumstein & Cie., Bern 1996, ISBN 3-909278-13-2 .

Magazines

  • AK Express. - Since 1975 the German trade journal for picture postcard, homeland, motif and research collectors; Published quarterly
  • Postcard-CollectorBrief: Bulletin of the Postcard-Interests-Community (formerly Philokartisten Union of Europe since 1961), as a working group in the Bund Deutscher Philatelisten (BDPh) and Verband Philatelistischer Arbeitsgemeinschaften (VPhA); Frequency of publication: every six months.
  • Maximaphilie & Philokartie REPORT: Journal of the Arge Maximaphilie & Philokartie, Association of the Association of German Philatelists e. V .; Frequency: three times a year
  • Horst Hille: Philocartie is on the rise. Article series. In: Collector Express. from episode 1 in issue 5/1988 to episode 15 in issue 9/1989

Web links

Wiktionary: Philokartie  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Postcards  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual references, comments

  1. ↑ a b c Postcard Collector Letter (Bulletin of the Postcard Interests Community), No. 170, March / April 2009, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Postcards Collector letter (newsletter of the postcards-interest group), no. 172, September 2009, p. 8
  3. ↑ Duden Foreign Dictionary (Volume 5 of the Duden series), 9th edition. from 2007, p. 794.
  4. ↑ Horst Hille: Collectible postcard. transpress Verlag, Berlin 1989, p. 6.
  5. ↑ Philapedia entry: Philokartie ( memento from September 6, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), accessed on September 9, 2009.
  6. ↑ a b The ABC of luxury paper , catalog for the exhibition of the Museum für Deutsche Volkskunde Berlin, p. 85.
  7. ^ Website: View cards-interests community , accessed on September 9, 2009, website operator: Alfred Kruse
  8. ↑ a b Linke / Richter: Guide for picture postcard collectors. Salzwasser Verlag 2007, p. 54.
  9. ↑ a b c postcard collector letter (bulletin of the postcard-interest community), No. 173, December 2009, p. 12.
  10. ↑ a b Peter KW joy: Greetings from Murnau. The market on old postcards. Murnau 1999, p. 94.
  11. ↑ Robert Lebeck, Gerhard Kaufmann: Many greetings… A cultural history of the postcard. 2nd Edition. Harenberg Kommunikation, Dortmund 1988, p. 411.
  12. ^ Thomas E. Range: The Book of Postcard Collecting. EP Dutton, New York 1980, p. 79.
  13. ^ Otto Wicki: History of the postcards and picture postcards. Verlag Zumstein & Cie, Bern 1996, p. 16.
  14. ^ Thomas E. Range: The Book of Postcard Collecting. EP Dutton, New York 1980, p. 93.
  15. ↑ Postcard Collector's Letter, No. 175, June 2010, p. 8.
  16. ↑ A detailed article about Willi Bernhard was published in AK Express , No. 87 of 1998
  17. ↑ Heinrich Ludwig Thrin: The history of Ansichtskartedokumentiert using historical postcards from Herbstein. May 2008, p. 25. ( Excerpt ( Memento from September 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 2.4 MB). Accessed on July 14, 2010)
  18. ^ Brain Lund: Postcard Collecting. A beginner's guide. Publishing house Reflection of a Bygone Age, Keyworth (Nottingham) 2008, p. 6.
  19. ^ Thomas E. Range: The Book of Postcard Collecting. EP Dutton, New York 1980, p. 13.
  20. ↑ Das Archiv - Magazin für Post- und Telekommunikationsgeschichte, Issue 4, 2007, Issue Title: Cards Greetings - Collections, Rarities, Documents, ISSN  1611-0838 , p. 62.
  21. ↑ a b Notes on collections. In: H. Pätzke, K. Werner: Postcards & artist cards. A cultural history documentation, Galerie Arkade, Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR, VEB Fachbuchdruck Naumburg 1979, p. 90.
  22. ^ AK - Topographie, Motive A – Z, 1876–1945, Publisher: Albrecht Kuttruff, Konstanz 1984, p. 5.
  23. ^ Postcards from the Museum for Communication in Berlin , accessed on February 12, 2011.
  24. ↑ Histoire des collections. ( Memento of November 8, 2016 in the web archive archive.today ) Musée des civilizations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée.
  25. ^ Otto Wicki: History of the postcards and picture postcards. Verlag Zumstein & Cie, Bern 1996, p. 5.
  26. ↑ commons: Commons: Brück & Sohn / de (accessed on November 7, 2016)
  27. ↑ ETH Life: Postcards - more than holiday greetings. Retrieved July 27, 2010 . (Press release from ETH Zurich on December 9, 2009)
  28. ↑ Sabine Giesbrecht picture postcard archive. In: University of Osnabrück. Retrieved August 23, 2016 .
  29. ^ Jochen Pahl: Postcards Norderney. In: kapitaen-jochen-pahl.de. Retrieved August 23, 2016 .
  30. ^ Bietigheimer Zeitung: Today the collection "Karl Stehle" is being auctioned , accessed on June 29, 2014.
  31. ^ Norbert Haidl: Obituary for Karl Stehle ( memento from November 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on June 29, 2014.
  32. ^ A b c Hannes König: Karl Valentin as a picture postcard collector. In: The picture postcard. No. 56 of May 1, 1971, bulletin of the Philokartisten Union Europa e. V. and their city groups, p. 13.
  33. ^ Hajo Diekmannshenke: The postcard as a communication medium. ( Memento from September 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  34. ^ Heiko Hausendorf: Views on the map , accessed on April 2, 2010.
  35. ↑ Anett Holzheid: The medium postcard. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-503-12252-3 .
  36. ↑ a b German Postage Stamp Review. No. 5/2002, pp. 20-22; with a detailed description
  37. ↑ Mirror, mirror, on the wall - who is the oldest in the whole country? A contribution to the history of the (picture) post (view) card (1). In: philatelie - the collector's magazine of the Association of German Philatelists, issue 308 of February 2003, pp. 49–52, with a detailed description
  38. ↑ a b c Postcard Collector Letter (Bulletin of the Postcard-Interest Community), No. 172, September 2009, p. 3.
  39. ↑ Oldest postcard in the world auctioned. (No longer available online.) In: Posttip. March 10, 2002, archived from the original on October 29, 2010 ; Retrieved September 8, 2009 .
  40. ↑ Postcards from RMS Titanic , accessed on September 8, 2009, website operator: Volker Wichmann
  41. ↑ Wolfgang Maassen: In: philatelie - the collector's magazine of the Association of German Philatelists, issue 397 from July 2010, p. 6 ff.
  42. ↑ philatelie - the collector's magazine of the Association of German Philatelists, issue 378 from December 2008, p. 8.
  43. ↑ dpa: Picasso's postcard auctioned for 166,000 euros . In: Saxon newspaper . 2015 ( Picasso's picture postcard auctioned for 166,000 euros [accessed June 22, 2015]).
  44. ↑ a b Advertising postcards , Birkhäuser Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-7643-1937-2 , p. 33.
  45. ^ Otto Wicki: History of the postcards and picture postcards. Verlag Zumstein & Cie, Bern 1996, p. 25.
  46. ↑ The actual title of the march is "Karte-Collector-March" and the text and cover of the march was also printed in the "Postcard Collector's Letter" No. 169 / December 2008.
  47. ^ Wolfgang Till: Old postcards. Weltbild Verlag, Munich 1994, p. 38.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on November 29, 2009 .