Postcards

The topographical postcard is an increasingly sought-after object for both illustrative and research purposes. For more than a century, it has essentially reflected a popular image of city life, but it also has a documentary value that should not be underestimated. Postcards are often the only sources of visual information for specific Viennese streets in around 1900 or for shops or restaurants that have long since disappeared.

The Wien Museum is home to around 15,000 topographical postcards from around 1890 to the present day, with the focus of the collection being the years before the First World War.

Currently, postcards with motifs from Vienna’s outer districts and postcards from the years after 1945, which were long dismissed as "cheap offset prints", are of particular interest to the museum. At the same time, special collections are being assembled to reveal the history of the postcard as a medium and as a cultural object. These also include collector’s albums and series of postcards.

In the past few years, most of the collection has undergone data cleansing and digitization. Having been transcribed as part of a crowdsourcing campaign, the cards that were written on and sent by post now offer us new insights into the phenomenon of communication by postcard.