Postcards became a central mass medium at the end of the 19th century, offering views of distant and nearby landscapes, villages, and cities, as well as depictions of people. Buyers and senders as well as recipients and collectors used the popular cards to get a picture of the world and its populations. As part of mass culture, the small-format media formed ideas of a world organized according to peoples. In this context, they had a politically important significance in the course of the emerging nationalism, which simultaneously gained relevance in the multi-ethnic border regions of the Habsburg Empire, the German Empire and the Russian Empire. On the one hand, postcards were (communication) media that constructed categories and values, but on the other hand, above all, they were products around which new business fields and acquisition opportunities arose with the beginning of the “visual age” (Paul). The lecture is dedicated to the history of postcard production in Eastern Europe around 1900 at the interface of politics and economy.
Maren Röger Studied Cultural Studies, Media Studies, and History at the Universities of Lüneburg, Wrocław, and Gießen. Between 2010 and 2015, she was a Research associate at the DHI Warsaw, and a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg. Between 2015 and 2021 she was a junior professor of intertwined history with Eastern Europe at the University of Augsburg, between 2017 and 2021, she was a director of the Bukovina Institute, also based there. Since 11/2021, she is a Director of the GWZO and Professor of the History of Eastern Europe/East Central Europe at the University of Leipzig. She is a co-editor (with Vincent Hoyer) of Völker verkaufen. Politik und Ökonomie der Postkartenproduktion im östlichen Europa um 1900. Dresden 2023, and author of Wartime Relations. Intimacy, Violence, and Prostitution in Occupied Poland, 1939-1945: Oxford 2021.
Vincent Hoyer studied from 2014 to 2021 History and History of Art and Culture at the University of Augsburg with study visits to Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta. Starting in 2021, he became a Research assistant at GWZO in the project “Selling Ethnicity. Visual Media Producers in Eastern Europe around 1900 between Nationalism and Economy”. He is writing a dissertation on the topic: Leisure under control? - The Politicisation of Pleasure Cultures in the Multiethnic Cities of Warsaw, Poznan and Lviv 1890-1914 and is the co-editor of the book Völker verkaufen. Politik und Ökonomie der Postkartenproduktion im östlichen Europa um 1900.
9. Januar 2024, 17:00 Uhr
Veranstaltungsort: Valentinská 1, 3. Stock
Prof. Maren Röger, Vincent Hoyer, M. A. (Leipzig):
Postcarding People(s). Postcard Production in Eastern Europe around 1900 between Politics and Economy
