World War I Postcards from the Bowman Gray Collection

Postcards of the First World War

As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, Americans will mark significant anniversaries of the Civil War and the First World War, the last war fought on American soil and the end of American isolationist policies. While technologies such as the telegraph and photography were used to report, document, and promote these wars, they were among the last conflicts in the days before mass media. Today, communication is instantaneous and omnipresent but for these wars those on the battle line and those on the home front, depended on print sources such as newspapers and posters, and on handwritten correspondence to learn the news of the world and the condition of their loved ones.

Postcards were among the existing forms of print communications drafted into the war effort. Already popular as a means of correspondence and as collectible objects, postal cards made a rapid transition to serve the communication and propaganda agendas of the nations at war. For those hors de combat, photographic postcards provided documentation of fighting and devastation while stereotyped cards offered political satire, reflections of valor, and comforting scenes of relief stations and benevolent aid. For the collector, these cards were uniform in format and relatively inexpensive. For many printing shops postcards paid the bills and anxious businessmen issued regular postcard series, such as the "Official War Photographs" or the "Lonsdale 'Crowd Around' Series," less for correspondence than for consumption by deltiologists [postcard collectors].

Gray Postcards

The Gray postcard site features a collection of war-themed cards produced in Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and the U.S. during World War One (1914-1918). More than 6,400 cards will eventually be displayed in a CONTENTdm collection. These will be searchable and browsable by different categories. The cards were collected as mementos of a world at war during the second decade of the 20th century.

The Gray website will serve students, researchers and postcard collectors with an interest in the period of World War One in general or the propaganda and documentation of the "Great War" in particular. These cards are historical artifacts that are not only often beautiful examples of the lithographer's art but are also of interest to students of art, military, and political history. They are early manifestations of general photographic documentation and important evidence from the golden era of postal cards.

Other Resources Relating to World War I Postcards

Allyson Booth. Postcards from the Trenches: Negotiating the Space between Modernism and the First World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Thomas Flemming. Grüsse aus dem Schützgraben: Feldpostkarten im Ersten Weltkrieg aus der Sammlung Ulf Heinrich. Berlin-Brandenburg: Be.bra, 2004.
Tonie & Valmai Holt. Till the Boys Come Home: The Picture Postcards of the First World War. Newtown Square, Pa.: Deltiologists of America, 1977.
Sepp Linhart. "Neider Japaner" oder Gelbe Gehahr? Westliche Kriegspostkarten, 1900-1945. Wien; Münster: Lit Verlag; London: Distributed by Global Marketing: Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2005.
François Pairault. Images de Poilus: La Grande Guerre en Cartes Postales. Pris: Tallandier, c2002.
La Plume et la Faux: 1914-1918. Paris: Intensité Editions, 2001.
Postcards from the Trenches: Images from the First World War. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2008.
Hans Weigel. Jeder Schuss ein Russ, Jeder Stoss ein Franzos: Literarische und Graphische Kriegspropaganda in Deutschland und Österreich, 1914-1918. Wein: C. Brandstätter, c1983.