Photo: dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/Hendrik Schmidt
Postcards are becoming a rarity as travellers tend to snap pictures and share them with friends online, rather than seek out a post office and buy stamps, sometimes in a different currency.
Just 39% of people surveyed say they never send postcards when travelling, while 21% say while they used to send postcards to their loved ones, but don’t anymore, a British survey found.
Just 18% of Brits still send a postcard home each time they go away, according to 2023 data.
It is not a generational shift, though, the pollsters say.
While older generations grew up using analogue forms of communication, it is millennials who send the most postcards, according to the poll by Britain’s insurandgo, an online provider.
More than half of millennials (53%) send postcards when they travel, followed by Gen Z, aged 16-26, of whom 47% send postcards while away. After that came Gen X, aged 43 to 58, with 34% sending postcards.
Many who send postcards say it’s due to a family tradition or a personal habit, or wanting to connect with loved ones by sharing experiences of travel.
Most postcards are sent during the summer while some collectors track them down at all times of the year. Here, a postcard from southern Germany from 1900. Photo: dpa/Silas Stein
Though fewer people may be sending postcards, some 41% like receiving them, the survey said, citing feeling “happy”, “remembered”, and “loved” as the three emotions most frequently mentioned on receiving one.Postcard museum?People also often keep the postcards they receive, sometimes for a very long time.
One is Jurgen Hartwig, a German collector who has half a million from decades of collecting them.
Kept in shoe boxes, some are pretty unusual. One is a portrait of a woman covered with real hair. Another greeting card from Lake Constance is decorated with dried edelweiss.
Some are made of wood, silver foil or even cork. Hartwig, reasoning he “can’t take the cards to heaven and I can’t take them to hell, because they would burn”, is now searching for a museum.
Germany has no plans yet for a postcard museum though the Altonaer Museum in Hamburg has the largest collection of postcards as a public institution, with some 1.5 million postcards.
Postcards have a special place in Germany, after an idea by postal reformer Heinrich von Stephan.
In 1865, he proposed the introduction of an “open post sheet” as a simple and inexpensive alternative to the letter. The time was ripe and while he realised his idea in Germany five years later, the Austro-Hungarian postal service introduced the innovation on Oct 1, 1869.
A few years later, the plain postcard without images was spruced up with pictures resembling the cards we know today.
“Because printing technology was so well developed in Germany, cards were produced for the whole world. Everyone was enthusiastic about it, there was a real picture postcard mania,” says historian Veit Didczuneit, head of collections at Berlin’s Communication Museum.
Collecting was widespread at the time and there was hardly a motif that didn’t end up on a card. Wars and disasters were also often depicted. In times without television, postcards were also an important way to share information.
Postcard collector Jurgen Hartwig shows an early example of a postcard. He has some 100,000 cards from the former East Germany in his collection. Photo: dpa/Soeren Stache
While collectors remain passionate about the cards, postal operator Deutsche Post is not very optimistic in its outlook when it comes to postcards.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing a similar trend with postcards as with letters. Volumes have been falling for years and we expect them to continue to decline in the coming years,” says spokesman Alexander Edenhofer.
In 2023, Deutsche Post transported around 95 million postcards. Most in the summer, especially within Germany, as schools break up and families go on holiday. “In 2023, most cards came from Italy, Austria, Spain, France and the Netherlands,” he says.
Didczuweit, meanwhile, is excited about new approaches to postcards, citing Postcrossing, whereby strangers around the world use a platform to send cards to others.
It has drawn some 800,000 members from more than 200 countries, Postcrossing says.
One is a woman from the United States who wrote, “After medical discharged from the military, I struggled to transition back into civilian life, and bounced from job to job. The camaraderie I had in the armed forces was lost. I hated the daily grind among selfish people, constantly competing and unable to trust. Depression overcame me and I lost hope in humanity. Discovering this Postcrossing Project has been more effective than all my meds at improving my health by introducing me to kind people around the globe! Thank you!!!!!”
Another fan, from Portugal, says sending the cards is more than just a hobby. “It’s a wonderful way to stay connected and to keep afloat. And it’s definitely my favourite part of the day!:)” – dpa/Anja Sokolow
