1 July

presentations by Kenneth Andresen, University of Agder, Norway; Aneta Pavlenko, University of York; Petr Wohlmuth, Charles University, Czechia; Stephan Sander-Faes, University of Bergen, Norway

Four ten-minute presentations followed by q & a plus discussion

The first social medium: postcards and narratives of history
Postcards, with the combination of images in the front and short messages on the back offers a discovery of what some call an early social medium. In less than one hundred years, the postcard has shifted from a ubiquitous part of daily life to an obscure and occasional academic footnote and is only now beginning to re-emerge as a valuable documentary form for researchers of communication history. This presentation addresses study of a historical collection of postcards as an early social media in the Western Balkans. The data for the current study is from image analysis and text analysis of a unique private collection of over 1,800 historical postcards from Kosovo, dated from 1900 to 1999. The analysis of the collection focuses how multimodal narratives present a history of social order and disorder in an area undergoing multiple dramatic transitions. The presentation seeks to discuss a typology of the postcards as communication (social medium, direct communication, multimodal narration, and historical documentation).
Since the late 1800s, Kosovo was occupied by the Ottoman Empire, the Austro- Hungarian Empire, Nazi Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, and Serbia. Military and civilian personnel left their mark in an, until today, unseen, and unwritten part of history through sending postcards from Kosovo to their loved ones back home. Along with that, they sent personalised but still very important stories that represent a time capsule from the past events and accounts. Additionally, these postcards carry images of Kosovo and the representation of exclusive, unpublished images of Kosovo.

This presentation looks at how Kosovo’s history is represented through the postcards’ images of people, landscapes, architecture, and other visual content from 1900 to 1999. These images were either taken by external photographers or local photographers and were meant to show living conditions and developments of notable events in Kosovo. The images represent a multitude of ethnic, religious, and national significance and they communicate fragments of the historic images that were used as direct communication through an early social. The postcards were sent form soldiers based in Kosovo, but also from students, tourists, businesspeople and from people living in Kosovo with relatives elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. They show tourists landscapes with now non- existing architecture and infrastructure showing the old market, old mosques, and churches. These historical postcards represent aesthetic and visual value, and a study of an early social medium providing narrations of troubled pasts.

Kenneth Andresen is Professor of Media studies at University of Agder in Norway. He holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Oslo. His research and publications over 25 years has been the fields of international journalism and media development, especially in relation to historical conflicts in Europe. He also conduct research on his hobby; collecting historical postcards from Kosovo.

Contested multilingualism in vintage postcards from Central and Eastern Europe
Vintage postcards from Central and Eastern Europe are a valuable source of information about multilingualism in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires and their successor states, especially when used in combination with other data (Almasy, K. 'The linguistic landscape of Lower Styria on picture postcards (1890-1920).' Prispevki za Novejšo Zgodovino, 59, 3, 2019; Sicherman, C. 'A Galician family in peace and war: The Sicherman/Schiff postcard collection, 1905-1921.' East European Jewish Affairs, 49, 2, 153-173., 2019). In this presentation I will use postcards from my personal collection to discuss (a) language choice in printed captions and greetings as a means of city-branding and a marker of language status and changing power relations and market demands; (b) linguistic landscapes (public signage) as an index of visibility and social stratification of individual languages and scripts (Jaworski, A. 'Linguistic landscapes on postcards: Tourist mediation and the sociolinguistic communities of contact.' Sociolinguistic Studies, 4, 3, 569-594, 2010), (c) language slogans as a means of nationalist propaganda, (d) hand-written messages as evidence of local linguistic repertoires, communicative conventions in informal writing, and language learning and crosslinguistic influence; (e) linguistic erasure, that is crossing-out of the text in one language as evidence of language conflicts and expression of identity politics. If time allows, I will mention language policies as reflected in postmarks and postage stamps.

Aneta Pavlenko (University of York) is a scholar of multilingualism. Her most recent book, with a vintage postcard on the cover, is Multilingualism and History (2023, Cambridge University Press).

Postcard collecting in the Czech Republic

Postcard collecting is a popular hobby in the Czech Republic. There is a distinct sub-community that attempts to collect postcards from all countries in the world. This sub-community is primarily centred around the Czech Postcrossing fandom. Postcard collecting is still a totally unresearched topic in the humanities in the Czech Republic. My paper will attempt to provide initial insights into the 'All countries of the world' sub-community from a historical anthropological perspective.
Petr Wohlmuth, Ph.D. is a historian and anthropologist, affiliated with Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Humanities.

Posted Fragments: Marvellous Sights and Ordinary People, 1890s-1980s

My book project offers a different account of the twentieth century: instead of a focus on any one place, person, or country, the history of the grand upheavals is told through the lens of a previously mostly overlooked source category, picture postcards. While it was only fairly recently that scholars working across the humanities and social sciences have begun to systematically analyse these seemingly trivial pieces of printed cardboard, most available studies focus one or the other aspect, such as their propagandistic values (akin to propaganda posters), a specific region or area, and/or restrict themselves to what scholars have dubbed the ‘Golden Age’ of postcards (c. 1880-c.1920). Moreover, most postcard collections are, in their very own and often bewildering ways, rather eclectic hotchpotches that reflect the collector’s interests and, if viewed across longer periods of time, also reveal insights into technological changes related to their production. The Erich Sonntag Postcard Collection’s approximately 40,000 postcards—covering the period from the 1890s through the 1980s—offer a very different point of view of the twentieth century.

Conceptually and methodically, I shall approach the topic via a combination of quantitative analyses and strong human-centric elements. As regards the former, enquiries into the imagery, the addressees, and the destinations are the obvious way to go; as regards the latter, I shall make use of biographical fragments revealed by both those ‘bundles’ with the same addressees, such as the two above mentioned examples, the many mailed postcards sent by/to staff members of the Neulandschule (a private Catholic school in Vienna), and the personal papers of the collector, Erich Sonntag. By using the entire postcard collection to study the twentieth century, this book offers a contribution in the burgeoning field of ‘Postcard Studies’ with emphases paid to technological change, popular culture, and mass tourism. In doing so from the points of view of ‘everyman’—in the sense alluded to by C.S. Lewis in his Weight of Glory, i.e., that ‘there are no ordinary people’ (at p. 47)—the envisioned book offers a very distinct perspective on contemporary history.

Stephan Sander-Faes is a historian of early modern and modern European civilisation, with geographical emphases on the Mediterranean as well as Central and Eastern Europe. Thematically, his focus is on urban-rural interrelationships, social and economic history, including the history of everyday life and crime. He has worked extensively on state transformation, the administrative history of the Habsburg Monarchy, and Austrian history. Methodologically, he combines qualitative information from manuscript sources with their quantitative analysis to embed individuals and events in their larger contexts.  All his activities in research, supervision, and teaching are based on an interregional comparative and transnational approach, which is complemented by extensive international visibility and work experience in Switzerland, the USA and, since 2020, Norway. Please visit his weblog at https://espc.substack.com.

28 October

lecture

25 November

presentation by Helmut Scharpf, virtual museum, Ottobeuren

guided tour of 20 minutes followed by q & a plus discussion

Local history in the digital age: Ottobeuren's virtual museum
A museum open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? And from which everyone can download what they like? This is possible in the virtual museum of the market town of Ottobeuren in southern Germany. After four years of preparatory work, the first pages of the purely internet-based museum went online in March 2013. By the beginning of 2017, the number of accessible topics had already exceeded 500, by mid-2025, this figure had risen to almost 900. The history of the town is divided into 160 categories, the keyword search currently includes 4,684 keywords. Chronological sorting is possible, as are thematic searches. An extensive list of links leading to newspaper archives, associations, old encyclopedias, and public archives further enriches what’s on offer. The advantages of the internet can be fully utilised: The museum is open 24/7 and is accessible worldwide.
For example, most volumes of the Ottobeurer Wochenblatt (Ottobeurer Weekly Newspaper), published between 1820 and 1909, have been scanned and uploaded as text-searchable PDF files. Numerous high-resolution images are available for download.
While many museums and online resources often restrict the use of their images and texts, Ottobeuren deliberately takes a different approach: With the exception of just a few items, such as those from the State Archives or where copyright restrictions make this necessary, the materials offered may be reused in the public domain – even commercially.
On the contrary: any reuse is welcomed, as it encourages engaging in local history and generates historical awareness. A small budget is available for transcriptions or professional scans – after all, this is a municipal website. The work on site is done by volunteers, with a few specialists helping transcribe old manuscripts and image processing. People are happy to share their ideas and make documents available. .
The internet also plays its trump cards when it comes to research.
The longest entry contains over 32,000 words and up to 60 images. Of course, the storage requirements and the data volume to be transferred cannot be expanded indefinitely, but with 100 GB a great deal is possible. What should be included in the virtual museum requires careful consideration: What is newsworthy and what is not? It is not just about pretty, colourful pictures; even controversial topics – like of issues related to National Socialism – are not excluded. Unlike print media, the articles can be subsequently updated and expanded. In general, the continuation of cultural heritage requires a focus on history and attention to contemporary changes. Therefore, the project includes not only events from long ago, but also recent topics from 2025.

As a teenager, Helmut Scharpf, collected stamps, and eventually built a local picture postcard collection for Bad Wörishofen (in southwest Bavaria), and exhibited his collection. After accepting a position as a music and English teacher at the Ottobeuren secondary school in 1993, he was certain he would not start collecting again. But unlike Bad Wörishofen, his current hometown of Ottobeuren, with its long monastic history, offers entirely different opportunities. Ultimately, lectures at the local history society sparked his interest to delve deeper into this history, which dates back to 764. Initially, he developed English basilica tours with his students, and later, he acquired his first exhibits at local flea markets. Then, the internet became increasingly popular. It were precisely these technical possibilities, offered today by image processing and the Internet, that prompted him to resume collecting.