Original Item: One-Of-A-Kind. The postcard was "invented" in Austria in 1869, as a way of increasing post office business by reducing the time and postage of letter-writing, and their popularity quickly spread throughout Europe. At first only pre-stamped, plain cardboard postcards were used, but soon they carried all manner of artwork and photographs besides their personal message. The postcard industry reached its peak during World War I as millions of civilians and soldiers sent hasty messages back and forth. Soldiers at the front could only send brief, pre-printed cards from the trenches ("I am well", "I am wounded", "I am in receipt of your letter", etc.), but they could easily find commercial postcards in the villages just behind the front lines. The civilians on the Home Front had a vast array of sentimental, humorous or patriotic postcards to send to the fighting men.

This beautiful Artillery Shell shaped picture features a 1914 Iron Cross at the top and the text “durch kampf zum sieg” (Victory Through Struggle) at the bottom. It measures about 8 1/2"H x 4"W, and looks to be made from cast iron. The German postcard is a real photo, printed directly onto a blank card pre-marked with message and address lines. This was a common technique for sending personal photographs to loved ones, and was probably taken by an enterprising photographer, wandering among the holiday makers.

The picture was sent to a loved one by a young German soldier in the III Army Corps / III AK of Imperial Germany in 1916. The text appears to have been written in a variation of Kurrent. Kurrent is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift ("cursive script"), deutsche Schrift ("German script") and German cursive. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms.

German writers used both cursive styles, Kurrent and Latin cursive, in parallel: location, contents, and context of the text determined which script style to use.

Sütterlin is a modern script based on Kurrent that is characterized by simplified letters and vertical strokes. It was developed in 1911 and taught in all German schools as the primary script from 1935 until the beginning of January 1941. Then it was replaced with deutsche Normalschrift ("normal German handwriting"), which is sometimes referred to as "Latin writing".

The picture appears to be a German soldier standing in front of a memorial commemorating Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden. Unfortunately we cannot find exactly which statue this is and the location of it.

This is a beautiful example of WWI Imperial German Patriotica and comes ready to display!