In Circulation: Modern Literature, Philosophy, Art, and the Medium of the Postcard

Weissberg’s Academy project focuses on the “Golden Age” of the postcard, ca. 1890-1930. During this period, the postcard medium developed from a simple correspondence card to the familiar picture postcard that left space for short handwritten messages and combined text and image. Postcard writing differed from letter writing by insisting on brevity, and it questioned the privacy of communication. Beginning with the Dreyfus Affair, the postcard became an important means of political propaganda; with the Expressionist movement, it offered surfaces for artistic exchange. Drawing on archival sources in Berlin’s Akademie der Künste and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, among others, Weissberg plans to sketch the history of the postcard and its use by important figures. Franz Rosenzweig wrote his major work on postcards, a form that in turn structured his philosophical oeuvre. Sigmund Freud explained his psychoanalytic theory with the help of picture postcards sent to his colleague Sándor Ferenczi. Walter Benjamin was inspired by a Paris postcard series called “Flaneur” and used them as models for his descriptions of Ibiza or Marseilles. Today, as Weissberg notes, the postcard is associated with the tourist industry and mainly cherished by collectors. “In the early twentieth century, however, it was regarded as a truly ‘modern’ medium,” she writes, “and I would like to discuss its significance for the work of writers, artists, and philosophers of that time.”