When Things Go Wrong

 

From time to time
everyone suffers an accident.
It's bad luck. It's fate.
It's life.

And after every accident
we are forced to puzzle over
how it happened.
Did something break?
Was some idiot not looking? 
Could it be my fault? 

Nahhh!
Sometimes it's just

Panne désespérée
~ 
Desperate failure

In this colorful picture an automobile appears to have struck something that has left its front wheels askew. The driver and two male companions mull over the cause while in the back seat a female passenger nonchalantly checks her hair and hat.  

The artist is Fritz Schönpflug (1873–1951), an Austrian postcard illustrator whose keen eye painted hundreds of clever caricatures of the people living in his native city of Wien (Vienna) during the last years of the Hapsburg Empire. Check this Schönpflug link for more of my stories on his postcards.

His playful cartoon was poking fun at a relatively new recreation in Wien at the time, riding around town in a motorcar. In the 1900s the automobile was a luxury vehicle designed to compete with horse-drawn carriages that for centuries had conveyed wealthy people around city streets. But, like any novel invention, as soon as people adopt a new thing, they figure out ways to get into trouble. The breakdown or crash of an automobile was not unlike similar accidents with horses and wagons. But for Schönpflug the fun was watching people try to figure out what went wrong.

This postcard was sent on 3 July 1913 from Glons, a village of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium.

* * *

Sometimes a mishap
thankfully involves
no one else but ourselves.
The accident then produces
a moment of quiet reflection
as we contemplate our brush with destiny. 
What is our purpose in life?
Or,

Kdybych jen věděl, co ten uzel má znamenat! 

~
If only I knew what that knot was supposed to mean!

A poor fellow is hung up in a tree branch after crashing his car into it. Since he is speaking Czech there may something lost in the translation of the punchline, but I think it refers to the way some people used to tie a knot in a handkerchief to remind them of some task or appointment.  

The artist of this postcard is Carl Robert Arthur Thiele (1860 – 1936), also known as Arthur Thiele. He was a contemporary of Fritz Schönpflug but came from Leipzig, Germany. I've featured a lot of his humorous postcards on this blog. Check out more under the Thiele label. Thiele (pronounced "Tee-la") was very prolific and produced thousands of different scenes in series with different themes. This card is part of a set made in the late 1920s or early 30s. This particular card has a typewritten address and handwritten message in Czech but no postmark. However the writer did include date numbers 1/10-30 for 1 October 1930. 

* * *

Typically it's the bumps in the road
that trip us up most often.
In those instances
it's always best to keep
a firm hold on the situation. 

One reason I love Fritz Schönpflug's illustrations is that his pictures beautifully capture motion which photographs at the time were unable to do. In this postcard an open-top motorcar has just hit a stone road marker tossing the driver and his passengers into the air. Like the previous cartoon, Schönpflug and Thiele do not portray car accidents as horrific as they became in our modern era. Of course the speed and weight of vehicles was then much lower than it is today resulting in more injuries than deaths.

This card was never posted but Schönpflug's signature has 904 after it which stands for 1904. 

* * *

It's a universal truth
that the best lessons in life 

come when we have a narrow escape
from a terrible accident.
This is especially true
when a close friend is involved.

Quel bonheur!  Tu as échappé au massacre! 

~

What a joy! You escaped the massacre!

This illustration shows a pretty young lady on the roadway after her automobile has slammed into a utility pole. As she struggles to get up, she sees that her teddy bear is dazed but unharmed. The person who sent the card added a little stick figure and caption to the picture but I couldn't translate the word. 

This postcard was also painted by Arthur Thiele and is possibly a companion to the previous one in the same series. The card was sent from Brussel~Bruxelles, Belgium on 29 June 1934. 

To demonstrate how civil authorities in other parts of the world
responded to the increasing problems of automobile accidents
here is a British Pathé road safety film entitled
The Other Man Reel 2 (1950-1959).

It begins with a rather officious British constable and halfway through
changes to children in toy cars and an example of a careless driver.

For more entertainment value, again courtesy of British Pathé,

here is an American 1949 public service short
filmed in Los Angeles, California.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where something old is always something new.