The introduction of "correspondence cards" by Austrian Post in October 1869 was a big hit. After just four weeks, the millionth copy was sold and less than a year later they were approved in Switzerland.
The card was a truly democratic communication tool: no expensive paper, no envelope, stamp already pre-printed and the text short and without empty phrases, an analog version of the SMS, so to speak.
This postcard was in keeping with the general surge in innovation and acceleration in the second half of the 19th century, which also included travel. The need arose to send greetings to those back home and thus make them envious. The now widespread use of photography made it possible to send pictures from the vacation destination, which could be purchased there: "Look, it's so beautiful here!"
Gold medal for a Zurich invention
However, these postcards were not entirely authentic, as they lacked color. A color image process suitable for mass production had not yet been invented. Photo postcards were colored by hand, print by print, often using stencils to speed things up.
The Zurich lithographer Hans Jakob Schmid came onto the scene and invented the photochrome process for his employer Orell Füssli. The black and white negative was projected onto up to 16 light-sensitive stones, which were then printed in different colors. Because the color was transparent, an almost infinite number of color nuances could be generated with 16 stone plates. The process was awarded a gold medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900.
A mania threatens public health
The Photochrom prints showed the "warm life of reality", enthused the NZZ. But the pictures were more, more real than real, as it were: the blue of the rivers and lakes was bluer, the sky more dramatic, the ladies' cheeks rosier than we were used to. This lent the pictures, which were now available cheaply as picture postcards from all over the world, a very special, poetic magic.
Half of the postcards never even saw the inside of a post office, but were sold directly to collectors. Until the First World War, there was a veritable postcard mania. At its peak in 1913, 112.5 million printed postcards were sold in Switzerland.
The Austrian writer Karl Kraus expressed concern that the "monstrously degenerate sport of postcards" was detrimental to public health. The hobby was so widespread that the well-known Berlin operetta composer Paul Lincke composed a "Card Collector's March" for it in 1898.
The global hit from the Limmat
Orell Füssli, the company that triggered the hype, spun off the Photochrom business into a subsidiary in 1889, from which the joint-stock company Photoglob & Co emerged in 1895, granting licenses to London and Detroit, among others.
Photochroms from the highly productive Detroit Publishing fell into the hands of a young boy called Walker Evans, for example. He ate it up and amassed a collection of 9000 Photochroms by the time of his death in 1975. Evans went down in photographic history, however, with his own black and white works: the iconic shots he took during the Great Depression of the mid-1930s.
Evans was one of many famous philocartists, postcard lovers. Another was the German comedian Karl Valentin, for example.
Short but magnificent flowering period
While Evans was shooting his epoch-making photo reportages, Zurich-based Photoglob had long since withdrawn from the world markets. The company now restricted itself to Europe, and later Switzerland. Thanks to tourism, the picture postcard business was still running at full speed - from 1930 no longer with photochrome, but with real color photos.
Photoglob has repeatedly merged with smaller companies and diversified. It now also sells figurative souvenirs, for example, but still claims to be the largest publisher of postcards.
The photochrome postcard has not died either. After a temporary wave of collecting from the 1970s to the 1990s, the trade has slumped somewhat, but there are still associations and fan clubs such as the "Swiss Postcard Collectors' Association". Historic Photochroms - recognizable by the golden "P.Z." (Photoglob Zurich) in the caption - are available for as little as 5 francs. (SDA)
