Das Auto, part 1

 

It was the new age of machines.
Modern electric motors and petrol engines
promised more energy and greater power
to propel people faster and farther than ever before.

It was 1908 and people needed a new fashion
to cope with the speed.

This bizarre cartoon shows a family of three, dressed head to toe in exaggerated costumes of long fur-trimmed coats with faces shrouded and masked. Their eyes peer through hazy glass googles.  The postcard was sent from Stuttgart, Germany on 21 December 1908. The caption reads:

40 H. P.

 

 

 

This unusual image is the work of German postcard artist Carl Robert Arthur Thiele (1860 – 1936), who created hundreds of clever postcards lampooning German society from the 1900s to the 1920s. He usually signed his artwork: Arth. Thiele – Lpzg  for Arthur Thiele – Leipzig, his hometown. This comical trio of father, mother, and child came from his observation of the nutty garments worn by motorists to protect themselves from dust, wind, cold, and inclement weather.

 

The first practical motorized vehicle was a three-wheeled carriage patented in 1886 by the German automotive engineer, Carl Benz.  By 1899 his Benz & Cie. company  in Mannheim was the largest manufacturer of petrol/gasoline engines and vehicles. Benz competed with several German automobile designers like Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach who also produced passenger cars powered by petrol engines. But in November 1909 it was Benz's 200 hp race car, the Blitzen Benz, that set a land speed record of 141.94 mph (226.91 km/h) that was said to be "faster than any plane, train, or automobile" at the time.

 

During the first decade of the 20th century magazines and newspapers around the world were filled with all kinds of reports and advertisements about automobiles. New words about engines, tires, and auto performance entered the common vocabulary. Travel by automobile was an exciting novelty, thrilling even, and auto manufacturers wanted to exploit the public's mania for this new marvel. Even enterprising clothing companies tried to take advantage of the motoring fad and convince consumers they needed to dress in a practical, yet stylish, fashion. This page from a 1906 British magazine, Motor, describes the latest English ideas in motoring costumes, dust coats, veils and hoods. There was even a recommendation for a child's garment not unlike the little girl in Arthur Thiele's postcard.

 

 

1906 Motor, the National Monthly Magazine of Motoring

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of Thiele's cartoons were produced in series of postcards on a humorous subject. In the 1900s the wacky clothing and peculiar mishaps of the early motorists presented unlimited opportunities for satirists like Thiele. In this postcard a car barrels down a road toward a young couple who are momentarily distracted and blissfully unaware of the noisy warnings from the motorcar occupants. The chauffeur and navigator blow horns while a bulldog stands on the car's radiator. The caption reads: Alle mühe umsonst ~ All effort in vain. The postcard was sent on 11 August 1910.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 January 1906 Life magazine

 

American magazines employed illustrators to depict the same kind of automobile humor. This image of a young woman at the wheel of an open car, bundled up in a stiff waterproof coat and with a translucent scarf wrapped around her hat and face, appeared on the cover of Life magazine in January 1906. She does not look happy. The entire issue was devoted to automobile articles, reports and advertisements.

 

 

 

 

 

The nature of rural roadways in the 19th and early 20th century had not improved much from ancient times. The dirt and gravel road surface produced los of dust and mud, and motorists regularly encountered challenging obstacles. In this cartoon entitled Automobilistenfreuden ~ Automobilist's delight, a car is stopped in a village at a barricade that looks like a rail crossing but is, I think, a ladder. A group of angry villagers, upset that the car has struck their pig, have taken up flails and pitchforks to exact recompense. A stout constable hurries to the accident. This postcard dates from 7 September 1910.

 

 

 

 

 

12 July 1906 Life magazine

This life magazine cartoon from July 1906 shows an open top roadster broken down on a country road. A pair of legs, not a casualty I think, pokes out from under the engine while two other men deal with the car's flat tire. A farmer watches from his field. The caption reads:  The Idle Rich.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Automobile accidents gave many caricature artists like Thiele the liberty to imagine all kinds of ludicrous blunders. Here a car has crashed into an outhouse and its startled occupant makes a narrow escape. A pair of pigs contemplate this sudden intrusion into their pigsty. The caption reads: Die unterbrochene Sitzung ~ The Interrupted Session. This postcard was posted from Chemnitz, in Saxony, eastern Germany on 23 September 1910.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 1909 Life magazine

Skipping ahead to our present century when car companies are increasingly focused on electric vehicles to solve the global problems of pollution and waste from gasoline engines, it seems strange to find advertisements offering this same technology in 1906. The promotion of a battery powered car's simplicity of controls and low-cost operation for urban transport could have come from a 2022 ad. Even more ironic is the way early electric automobile companies marketed their cars to women. In an era when women were constrained by social rules and laws, the automobile, both petrol and electric powered,  offered women a new freedom to travel by themselves without the need of a male chaperone to do the heavy lifting.

 

 

September 1906 Life magazine

 

 

For many years I've been fascinated by how people reacted to new technology when they first encountered it. What was it like to see a zeppelin floating in the sky for the first time? How awesome was it to witness the Wright brothers flying their airplane? And why would  people laugh at a cartoon about 40 horse power instead of wondering why the postcard didn't show forty horses pulling a carriage?

 

 

I plan to continue featuring
Arthur Thiele's humorous observations
on automobiles and "modern" life
as I collect more of his imaginative postcards.
To read my previous stories with Thiele's artwork
follow this < link  >.

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
which always showcases
the best photographs of family life
in the good old days.