Every age has crazy fads and baffling trends. That's how culture works. People become slowly bored with an old thing and then suddenly get excited about a new thing. When picture postcards were introduced in the late 1890s they quickly became a novel and inexpensive method for people to communicate with each other. The public's enthusiasm for "postals" became such a big business for publishing firms that every week they produced thousands of new colorful postcards for shopkeepers and news agents to promote this new social network.
One of the more popular German postcard artists was Carl Robert Arthur Thiele (1860 – 1936), known as Arthur Thiele from Leipzig, whose comic cartoons and witty characters poked fun at German society from the 1900s to the 1920s. I first encountered his work on a set of humorous postcards about a German soldier and his family, Auf Urlaub — On Leave, and then discovered his funny cards on the 1910 craze for airships, Zeppelin Kommt! and Halley's comet, Der Komet Kommt!.
Thiele also created several series mocking the German mania for the automobile, and this post is a sequel to one I started in March 2022, Das Auto, part 1. That story started with a bizarre postcard similar to this one. Here a gentleman and lady are about to go "motoring" and both are dressed in garments considered appropriate for a road trip in their auto. Both wear masks, googles and heavy coats with their hats tied on securely. It gives them a rather sinister, almost alien appearance. The man holds a large brass lantern and a jug of petrol or oil, while the woman holds onto a large Saint Bernhard dog. A bold caption reads:
10 H.P.
The postmark is auspiciously dated 1.11.11 10-11V. on a 1 cent stamp from the Netherlands but the location is smudged. It was sent to someone in Rotterdam with the word Drukwerk for "Printed Matter" penciled at the top, presumably to comply with Dutch postal rules.
In my search for motoring fashions from this pre-war era I found many of examples of what clothing manufacturers offered as the latest and most practical garments for a trip in an automobile. The advertisements' illustrations often combine strong elements of romance and adventure.
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| 1908 The British Motor Tourist |
Riding in an open touring car in 1910 seemed to require a lot of heavy gear for protection from the elements. Yet it also needed to be fashionably chic for women and ruggedly stylish for men. These ads came from a 1908 British automobile magazine and were marketed for people of wealth and high society.
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| 1908 The British Motor Tourist |
In this era city streets might have a paved or cobbled surface, but rural roadways were generally of compacted dirt and gravel called macadam if they were of good quality, or just crude rough tracks for farm wagons if they were not. Part of the appeal of automobiles was that they could cover a great distance faster and easier than in a horse-drawn carriage. So taking an auto out on a country drive became a novel recreation, though only for those people who could afford to own one. Unfortunately motorists often had to deal with dreadful road conditions, bad weather, mechanical breakdowns, or worse–accidents.
In another of his automobile series Arthur Thiele presents a disagreeable encounter between an auto and a farmer's fertilizer cart. Two couples dressed in full touring outfits hold their noses as their car is also stuck next to a worker mixing up fresh hot asphalt for a road repair. The caption reads:
Eine duftige Gegend
~
A fragrant area
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A fragrant area
The card was never posted but there is a message on the back in a language that is not German but not one I recognize. Possibly it's Slavic or Romanian?
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| LIFE magazine 28 May 1908 |
The craze for automobiles in the 1900s was not just a German or British phenomena. Just like Thiele, American cartoonists found lots of comic inspiration in this new sporty vehicle. In this 1908 illustration from LIFE magazine a roadster with a bundled-up couple speeds down a dirt road leaving a cyclist in a cloud of dust. A sign reads, "WARNING! AUTOISTS Slow Down to 5 miles."
She (enthusiastically): Oh, Isn't this fine!
He (anxiously): It will be if we don't shake that bike cop pretty soon.
He (anxiously): It will be if we don't shake that bike cop pretty soon.
Arthur Thiele painted another pair of auto enthusiasts in his auto horsepower postcard series. This couple are covered in long coats and capes with their heads encased in fur and feather helmets, so they look more like animals than humans. The gentleman holds a squeeze bulb horn which was an important accessory for drivers as they needed something to warn pedestrians, carriages, and wagons of their auto's approach. The caption reads:
20 H.P.
This postcard was sent on 7 July 1909 to a young woman living in Fouras, France, a small town south of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast from Charente, an administrative region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in southwestern France.
Not surprisingly, early automobile journals and magazines catered to masculine interests with an endless stream of reports on the latest vehicle designs, mechanical innovations, and improvements in engine horsepower. But women read these magazines too and some articles presented a feminine review of automotive fashions. This report from the 1912 Automobile Journal, an American magazine, is typical with its title, "Women's Motoring Coats and Bonnets. Garments designed for driving, or for combination purposes, of substantial materials and in models that have the approval of authorities on dress."
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| The Automobile Journal 12 July 1912 |
The article included a model showing off several variations on a dust coat and hair bonnet. The choice of material seemed to be the most important consideration. It had to be "serviceable" and "durable" and suitable for the season. Since these were overcoats the fitting was also critical as women were already wrapped like an onion in several layers of fabric. For the mechanical-minded women the garments also needed to provide protection from all the grease, oils, and gasoline used in operating an automobile. And of course any dust and rainproof coat required big pockets for gloves, googles, and maybe a spare wrench or screwdriver.
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| The Automobile Journal 12 July 1912 |
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| LIFE magazine 4 June 1908 |
A cartoon from another 1908 issue of LIFE shows an open car moving in a jittery blur along a rural road. A small child sits on a woman's lap.
"Gee Whiz, Grandma. You make a dandy shock absorber!"
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| LIFE magazine April 1908 |
It is the nature of humorists, whether they are clowns, cartoonists, or comedians to recognize the follies of mankind and find the joke in any human endeavor. Arthur Thiele's witty illustrations were a comment on the absurd fashions of his time but they also described how people were adjusting to a new human experience.
Prior to the invention of the automobile fast speeds were measured by the pace of a running man or the beat of a galloping horse. People could appreciate the power of a team of horses at the front of a carriage or in a steam engine pulling a train, but they were not used to an automobile's noisy petrol motor. It took some time for businesses, industries, and governments to recognize the practical value of the combustion engine but it was motorists like Thiele's who discovered that driving a car was FUN! And for the thrill of moving faster than anyone had ever moved before, people were more than willing to suffer some inconvenient discomfort and minor annoyances.
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| LIFE magazine 16 April 1908 |
I can't help but include this last 1908 advert for the Baker Motor Vehicle Company of Cleveland, Ohio, whose motto was "Simplicity means Reliability." This now forgotten automobile company was established in 1899 as a manufacturer of electric vehicles. The advert shows five models but they actually offered 17 different automobiles and several trucks, all were equipped with battery powered electric motors. The promotion of cars "simple to operate—the safest to drive" and "the automobile without a repair bill" could apply to EV cars of the 21st century. The Baker company merged with another car company in 1914 and stopped producing electric vehicles in 1916.
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| Baker Motor Vehicle Company 1911 advertisement |
This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where sometimes a Sunday drive
does not involve a car.
3 comments:
All those fancy, sometimes slightly ridiculous, automobile fashions for women and men and not a seatbelt in sight. How times change in more ways than one. The electric autos were ahead of their time, but they've made a pretty good re-entry onto the scene. Sometime back I saw an article about a future where just about everything - including any type of vehicle - runs on solar power gained from roads and highways paved in solar collectors. What an idea! I wonder if it will ever come to pass? Meanwhile, as usual, I liked your collection of comic postcards & etc. I wonder how Mr. Thiele pronounced his name? We had a friend with the last name of Thiele and he pronounced it "Tyli" ??
Great parodies of the times...fashion is always thus. But the fun of these cards was the new autos as well as the attire needed to drive in them. I enjoyed seeing what my grandparents experienced with the change from horse drawn to motor vehicles.
Love these postcards and cartoons. They also remind me of some of my grandmother Sally's comments about cars (and their drivers) in her letters from back in the 1920s... I think she had come round to appreciating the advantages of having a car better a couple of decades later, though!
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