Link to Family Tree to understand family relationships. 

Postcards

Today’s postcard from June 11, 1972 got me thinking about vacation postcards in general, and then about the importance of postcards in the first half of the 20th Century. Below are several postcards written by my mother, my cousins, and me from summer vacations in 1966, 1969 and 1972. It’s lovely that Helene saved and valued these notes.

I have quite a few postcards in my family papers, many dating from the early 20th Century. Some are generic postcards of a town or landmark. But there are also many that are postcards with photos of family members – either professional studio portraits or amateur shots. The latter were known as “Real photo postcards” (RPPC) if they were made using a special camera and paper beginning in the early 1900s. I’m not sure whether that’s the case for the photos in my possession.

Below is a postcard of the Stubenring in Vienna on which my grandmother drew an arrow and pointed to her shop – the stationery shop where she sold paper goods and repaired fountain pens, and in the 1930s where Vitali had his metaphysical practice.

Below is a photo postcard from a class trip to Italy. Harry is in the front row, third from the right.