Author: Bruno Crevato Wild

In the second half of the nineteenth century, political absolutism was coming to the end of its long existence in the Western world, and at the same time the expansion of industry and commerce was increasing the need for rapid, secure, efficient and direct communication. To satisfy this need, users had only the postal and telegraph services available, but the latter was considerably expensive and was therefore reserved for very important communications that required great speed. The postal service, on the other hand, had by now reached a high degree of efficiency in the most developed countries, and allowed the sending and receiving of letters almost everywhere. Of course, writing a letter presupposed the application of a set of rules that had developed over the centuries and, although simplified after the Napoleonic era, were quite strict: a sheet of good quality paper, possibly double; an envelope (which was coming into widespread use precisely in this period); composition of the address with the correct indication of the titles that belonged to the recipient; polite formulas in the opening and closing of the text. At times, all these rules clashed with the need for speed, brevity and frankness of communications that business correspondence, or even the increasingly frequent correspondence between friends, insistently required. The time was ripe for a revolution in the communications system, which in fact occurred in 1869. It was Austria that, on the proposal of its postal manager Emmanuel Hermann, was the first in the world to market a “Korrespondenz-Karte” on 1 October of that year. It was a rectangular card, which on one side had the imprint of a postage stamp and space for the address; on the other there was nothing, and the space was all available for the text. This was a truly revolutionary innovation from several points of view. First of all the cost: a postcard cost 2 cents, while a letter cost 5 cents, that is, more than double; in addition, one also saved on the cost of writing paper and the envelope (in an era in which even a few cents made a difference). Then there was the simplification of the written text: given the limited space, all the cumbersome opening and closing formulas could be eliminated, and the message could be limited to essential communications, business communications or brief greetings. Of course, there was a price to pay, namely the loss of epistolary secrecy, which had been the main characteristic of the letter for centuries. The public, however, soon got used to it, selecting the texts that could be sent by postcard and those for which it was necessary to continue using the letter. Revolutionary idea, then. Of course, it didn't come out of nowhere. For some years in Europe, privately produced printed cards had been circulating by mail, with advertisements for various products, or short standardized communications; but the postcard, with the epistolary possibilities of private individuals, was something else. Hermann's proposal was not the first either; it had been preceded a few years earlier by a similar one from the postmaster general of the North German Confederation, Heinrich von Stephan, which had been rejected precisely because it scandalized the idea of ​​the lack of epistolary secrecy. The new correspondence object was very well received by the public, who began to use this new economical means of correspondence en masse. Even those who normally didn't write, because they couldn't afford it or weren't very good, took advantage of the cheapness and simplicity of the new medium to do so. If you want, you can draw a parallel with today's world: young Westerners used to write less and less (if ever) to their friends, but since SMS technology became available, and at low cost, writing (in new and more synthetic forms) has regained enormous strength. Given its great success, other states adopted it as early as 1870. In Great Britain, the most advanced country at the time from this point of view, 2 million of them were sold a week, and Prime Minister Gladstone later confessed that they had played a significant role in saving his government's financial policy. In Italian, the “Korrespondenz-Karte” was initially called “carta da condividere” (correspondence card), literally translating the Austrian name, but the name soon changed to “cartolina di condividere” (correspondence postcard) in the Italian territories of Austria, and “cartolina postale” (postal card) in Italy, where the new object came into use on 1 January 1874. In Italy it cost 10 cents, compared to 20 for the letter, that is, half, and therefore a little more than in Austria. At this point, given the undeniable convenience of the new service, even private industry began to produce and market cards to be sent by post, similar in size to those of state postcards, naturally without the stamp imprint. Pioneering examples (without subsequent follow-up) come from France and Prussia. At the end of the 1880s, the diffusion of cards with one side occupied by illustrations, especially drawings of locations, began: those objects that today we call “illustrated postcards”. Their circulation was limited because at that time the postal regulations admitted only government postcards at the reduced rate; those of private industry, if they bore any writing other than the signature, had to pay the letter rate, and this was naturally a great deterrent. By the end of the 1889s, this restriction was lifted in almost all countries (in Italy in XNUMX, in Austria more or less in the same period) and the illustrated postcard experienced a great development. Indeed, there was another limitation imposed by postal regulations, which did not block the diffusion of postcards but conditioned their form: international rules required that the back of the card be completely reserved for the address, without being able to add anything to it. The sender's greetings and texts had to be written on the side of the illustration, which therefore did not cover the entire surface, but left a little white space at the bottom and to the right, so that the sender could write (in small handwriting!) whatever he wanted. Around 1895, drawings of localities, often in colour, were accompanied by photographic views of cities, monuments, villages and landscapes, and thus the classic illustrated postcard was born. The differences compared to today's were the format (on average 9x14 centimetres, compared to today's 10x15), the black and white photograph instead of colour, one side reserved only for the address and the image which did not fill the entire space of the card but left white spaces for the text. Illustrated postcards of this kind were distributed and produced in all countries, but especially in Germany and Austria. They almost always bore the indication “Gruss aus...” (i.e. “greetings from...”) followed by the name of the place, and today “Gruss aus” is the name by which postcard enthusiasts refer to these models. For those of Italian production the indication was “Greetings from...”. Photographs were obtained with the techniques of the time, which required long exposure times; “snapshots” were rare and difficult, and for this reason postcards from this era almost never depict people. The few that do exist are called “animated” and are highly prized by collectors. The success of the new correspondence object was enormous everywhere; many publishers, even local ones, devoted themselves to it, with a great variety of subjects (not only views) especially from 1898 to the end of the First World War: it has been calculated that in that period in the Western world 140 billion postcards circulated. A flourishing collecting movement also developed, with extensive international relations, which reached its peak between 1899 and 1905. This is certainly the golden age of illustrated postcards. At the beginning of the twentieth century the postal regime for postcards changed again. Around the world, the public often used to just sign and mail them as prints, rather than postcards, paying only 2c. or 5 c. (the rate of domestic or foreign prints) instead of 10 c. (the rate of postcards for both destinations; the rates were almost identical everywhere). Between 1904 and 1907 – but especially in 1905 – the various postal administrations decided to intervene, establishing a new ad hoc tariff, of intermediate value (normally 5 c.) for postcards with only greetings and signature (those with epistolary text would continue to pay 10 c.). As a quid pro quo for users, they allowed the address side to be split vertically in half, leaving the left space for text and the right space for the address, as it is now. This had two important consequences. The first was that the image on the other side could occupy all the available space, rather than leaving a little empty space for the text, and thus we arrived at postcards completely similar to today's, except for the slightly smaller format and the use of black and white instead of color. The second was that the great boom in illustrated postcards exchanged between collectors, which had seen their prices more than double, was waning somewhat. This decline, combined with the physiological decline in collecting, led to a reduction, certainly not dramatic, in the diffusion of postcards which, like many things, saw their golden age end with the Great War. After the war, production naturally continued, although with different quantities than those of the boom period before. Furthermore, illustrated magazines were beginning to spread, and thus the public also had other possibilities of enjoying images of people, events and landscapes (a taste that previously had only been satisfied with postcards). For this reason, contrary to what one might think, there was no particular production or diffusion of postcards from Trentino, Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia. The presentation of the “redeemed lands” to the Italian public took place through other means, and postcards of these regions were produced and marketed for tourist purposes, like those of all other parts of Italy. The last great revolution in the field of illustrated postcards occurred around 1930, when new international agreements allowed the production and use by mail of postcards of a larger format: instead of the 9x14 centimetres, the current 10x15. We arrived at the postcard as it is today, especially when, starting in the 1960s, colour came into widespread use. The following decade also saw the experimentation of new formats and techniques: round postcards, larger, longer, made with particular techniques. It's yesterday's history, which doesn't apply here.