Stephan Sander-Faes

University of Bergen

Vintage Postcards as Egodocuments Snapshots in Time from the Erich Sonntag Postcard Collection

In my proposed contribution, I wish to introduce picture postcards as a distinct category of sources. Invented in the late 1860s, they became ubiquitous from the turn of the twentieth century, and, at that time, featured an ever-growing variety of images on the front side, resulting in the creation of the picture postcard known today. While their study has increased in recent years – e.g., Alison Rowley’s Open Letters (2013), Maren Röger’s Karten in the Moderne (2023) – the use of vintage picture postcards as historical evidence is still in its infancy.

Last year I came into possession of a fairly large picture postcard collection. Compiled meticulously over decades by Erich Sonntag (1922–1988), the fruits of his labour – his collection of approx. 40,000 postcards covering the period from 1902 through the mid1980s – forms the basis for my ongoing book project. Tentatively entitled “Armchair Travels Across the 20th Century”, one of the key features of the collection is that many of these picture postcards are, in fact, little egodocuments that straddle the boundaries of a public-private (self-)identity, across linguistic and national borders, as well as across time, space, and perceptions.