Category: Postcards

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Even in Postcard Collecting, Records and Firsts Can Be Challenged

Figure 1. The world’s first official postcard was issued by Austria on 1 October 1869.

By Mike Smith

Although I was impressed when Alexander Ovechkin surpassed Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goal record by scoring his 895th in April, I must admit I wasn’t overjoyed. To put it bluntly, I would have been much happier had a Canadian-born hockey star beat Gretzky’s record. After all, despite some sports historians claiming that hockey was spawned outside of Canada, from the Irish sport of hurling for example, the game that the world knows and loves today originated in Canada, not Ireland, Russia or anywhere else.

Although Canada can rightly claim to be the birthplace of hockey, the origin of the world’s first official postcard was not even on this side of the Atlantic. Known to most collectors today as postal stationery or postal cards, the first official postcards were produced by governments and distributed through post offices. By “official,” postal historians mean that the cards were recognized as a category of mail with its own postage rate, generally half of the prevailing letter rate. The story begins in 1869 when Dr. Emanuel Herrmann, an economics professor at the Wiener Neustadt Military Academy in Vienna, persuaded the Austrian post office to accept his proposal to issue postal cards as a novel way of relaying messages through the post without an envelope. On the first day of October of that year, the first Correspondenz-Karte was born (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. The world’s first official postcard was issued by Austria on 1 October 1869.
Figure 1. The world’s first official postcard was issued by Austria on 1 October 1869.

For the record, what must be the world’s most famous “unofficial precursor” postcard was discovered in England about 20 years ago. The card was handmade and mailed on 14 July 1840 with a 1¢ adhesive stamp. The stamp, by the way, was none other than the famous “Penny Black,” which was issued by Britain on 1 May 1840 and is the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. Thus, in addition to automatically being dubbed the world’s oldest postcard, with its very early use of a Penny Black stamp the card also became an important item in the philatelic community. Now because government-issued (official) postcards weren’t issued by the British post until 1870, and private postcards weren’t authorized until 1894, some postcard experts in Britain hold the view that the 1840 card (see Figure 2) is not a true postcard. Nevertheless, this is the type of discovery that both stamp and postcard collectors dream about.

Figure 2. This British handmade “postcard” was mailed in July 1840 and is franked on the back with the famous Penny Black adhesive stamp.
Figure 2. This British handmade “postcard” was mailed in July 1840 and is franked on the back with the famous Penny Black adhesive stamp.

For years, many collectors and postal historians considered the world’s first official picture postcard to be the Eiffel Tower card issued to celebrate the opening of this famous landmark at the 1889 Paris Exposition. These cards have a vignette of the tower drawn by artist Léon-Charles Libonis and are signed “La Libonis” (see Figure 3). Approximately 300,000 copies were printed, with a few variations in the vignette, mainly in the quantity and location of the birds in flight. As part of the card’s marketing, they could be purchased, stamped and mailed at the tower’s summit. And if posted at that sky-high location, the cards would receive a special summit postmark.

Figure 3. A vignette of the Eiffel Tower, drawn by Léon-Charles Libonis, is shown on this postcard issued at the 1889 Paris Exposition.
Figure 3. A vignette of the Eiffel Tower, drawn by Léon-Charles Libonis, is shown on this postcard issued at the 1889 Paris Exposition.

Although the Eiffel Tower postcard is an important item in the history of the picture postcard, several postcards printed in Germany with earlier postmarks have surfaced over the years to challenge the Eiffel Tower card’s status. For example, in the recent past the Toronto Postcard Club’s (TPC’s) Andrew Cunningham has unearthed some terrific German-published picture postcards with clear postmarks earlier than 1889 (see Figure 4). And after corresponding with German publisher expert Helmfried Luers, creator and editor of The Postcard Album magazine and website, it looks like Cunningham’s finds were just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to pre-1889 German picture postcards. Wow!

Figure 4. This very early Gruss aus München (Greetings from Munich) postcard, from the Andrew Cunningham collection, card has a 4 July 1888 postmark.
Figure 4. This very early Gruss aus München (Greetings from Munich) postcard, from the Andrew Cunningham collection, card has a 4 July 1888 postmark.

In case you’re wondering why the Figure 3 & 4 postcard images look so clean, I took the liberty of removing their handwritten messages to accentuate the artwork.

Finally, most of the information in this article was paraphrased from The Toronto Postcard Club Guide to Canadian Antique Postcards 1871–1945, which I’m helping to compile along with the TPC’s Win Boyd, Barb Henderson and Andrew Cunningham. This publication will be launched as part of the club’s 50 anniversary celebrations in 2027, and is receiving card images and publisher-printer-photographer histories from collectors across Canada. When completed, this guide will be an important reference for Canadian postcard collectors from Victoria to St. John’s.