2012 is going to be a tough year for those of you who are superstitious – today is only the first of three occurrences in the calendar of the infamous Friday the 13th! A good luck postcard seems in order, therefore, so here's a very fine example of an artist signed vintage postcard featuring work by the master of scissors and silhouettes Georg Plischke.
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Georg Plischke's signature logo |
This postally used postcard was sent as an Easter greeting from Lübeck, Germany to Canterbury in the United Kingdom on 14 April 1938. It carries a Deutsche Reichspost 5 Pfennig stamp with a portrait of Paul von Hindenburg, which had been issued some four years earlier in 1934, rather than a more recent portrait of Hitler whose grim scowl had started appearing on stamps in 1937. The stamp has luckily been placed slightly high allowing us to see the bottom of the distinctive Plischke Karte stamp box and the number of this design – 59. There is also a clear postmark advertising overseas telegrams and German cable routes, in a similar gothic font to that used elsewhere on the postcard.
As is often the case with vintage postcards, the jolly good luck message seems at odds with the historical events of the day - the card was posted a month after the Anschluß (Anschluss), when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and as we now know, the outbreak of World War II was looming.
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4 comments:
THREE occurrences! Oh dear. :)
I love the card, simple and effective. I see he employed clover leaves too.
I love silhouettes. Great card. As to Friday the 13th and their being 3 more in 2012 ... I find them to be quite lucky! Happy PFF!
Great card. It reminds me of the ones my grandmother used to send us. It's interesting that the cancellation urges people to only use German radio and cable lines, perhaps as a way of reducing foreign influence?
Beautiful card. Germany seems to be the country for silhouette art. We have a dvd of a German film of the 1920's, which was made completely with silhouettes. The director was a woman, Lotte Reiniger. Happy PFF.
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