I suppose everyone must remember some of the games they played as children. Tag, hide-and-seek, hopscotch, red rover, marbles, jacks, etc., etc. Some games involved lots of kids while others only needed two or three to be fun. What you played depended on the size of your family or neighborhood as well as your location. Wikipedia has a very long list of children's games that makes me feel very left out for all the ones I never played.
Today I feature some of the charming artwork of Hermann Torggler, (1878-1939), an Austrian artist whose postcards I have been collecting for his lighthearted pictures. One of his popular themes were illustrations of children published in series. Back in January 2021 I featured a set called Children at Play, and today I add some more of his clever cards.
This first one shows two girls and a boy playing a game outdoors. The boy is blindfolded and has 'captured' a girl in an embrace. Torggler's title reads Blindekuh ~ Blindman's Buff. The second girl looks back with a look of surprise, maybe envy. I'm not sure of the sender's language. It looks a bit like Italian. But it was sent to a Signurina Babina Serchi in St Moritz, Switzerland from Schuls, (now Scuol) in the Canton of Graubünden in eastern Switzerland. The official language in Scuol is Romansh, one of the four national languages of Switzerland, but spoken only in this part of the country. It currently is the native language of just 40,000 people.
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This postcard shows three youngsters, two boys and a girl, dressed in a very formal style and singing as if they are in an opera. They are roughly the same age as in the previous drawing, five to eight but Torggler has a knack for making them seem much more mature. The children are very convincing as opera singers complete with dramatic gestures and facial expressions as if they really are performing on a stage.
The title of this is Terzett ~ Trio. It's an Italian musical term that I have rarely heard or used in my musical career. It's odd that in English musical compositions written in separate parts can refer to a duet, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet, etc. but for three players it's always a trio. Languages are funny.
This postcard has a long message written around half the card as in this era the back of postcards could only be used for the address. In this case it was sent on 27 March 1900 to Fräulein Annei Kolb at the simple address known to the postoffice of hier ~ here, as in Muenchen, Bayern an alternate spelling of München ~ Munich, Bavaria.
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In this drawing Herman Torggeler creates a singular moment just before some children are about to unleash chaos. Three children, again two boys and a girl, are dressed in period costumes for an opera or play. In the background is a forest or woodland garden. The girl carries a tray with a tall cake when a boy grabs hold of her arms. She is pleasantly distracted and the upset cake is about to fall onto another boy who seems unaware of the impending accident. Torggler entitled this drawing: Blinder Eifer ~ Blind Ardor. Both boys carry swords on their costume belts which seems an indication that this is a scene in some theatrical story.
This postcard was also sent from Muenchen ~ München ~ Munich with a postmark of 3 March 1900 but this time to a Fräulein Fanny Rumpf of Eichstätt, a city north of Munich about half way to Nürnberg ~ Nuremberg. The Germanic Umlaut diacritical mark is a very useful and efficient mark for the German language. But I don't think English translation improved anything by adding two letters or even new pronunciations to common placenames.
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My final postcard of Herman Torggler is one that I used before in my 2021 story on his children series. But that one was covered in a length message and had a postmark of 1901. This one has a message on the back and a postmark of 1909, so it is an example of the long popularity of Torggler's illustrations. Here another trio or Terzett of children, two girls and one boy, are whirling about in a kind of dance. A doll looks a bit alarmed at being pulled apart in the frenzy. One girl looks directly at us as she and her friends take delight at being in motion. The title here is Ringel-Reihe! ~ Ringelet turn!, but in Torggler's identical card in 1901 the title was Kinderlust ~ Childhood.
This card was sent from Stuttgart on 22 July 1909 to another Fräulein. It's very curious that a significant number all of the German postcards in my collection, maybe 80-90% were addressed to young women using the traditional German honorific Fräulein. However since the 1970s many Germans began to feel this term was expressing a "diminutive of woman", and that it implied a Fräulein was not-quite-a-woman. As modern feminism advanced in Germany usage of the word Fräulein was increasingly seen as patronizing and in 1972 it was banned from official government use in West Germany. Now all women in Germany are addressed as Frau regardless of their marital status.
Similarly the same thing happened in France when in 2012 the honorific Mademoiselle was banned in all official documents. Now the courtesy title of "Madame" is accorded women where their marital status is unknown.
It is said that children are our future. But they are also our past, too. One might say that the essence of what childhood is comes from adult hindsight, reminiscing on the years when we were younger and immature. Children learn to recognize the difference between themselves and adults. After all every kid strives to grow up one day. And sometimes we older folk get admonished to act our age. But to a child, time is neither past nor future but always in the present.
Herman Torggler's illustration of these lively cute children were made in an era when, compared to modern times, most children were considered mature at a very young age. Many children left school and went to work at age 10, 12, or 14. Marriage at 16 was common as was pregnancy. And of course in previous centuries, many, many more children succumbed to death caused by industrial accidents and infectious diseases than are killed in the 21st century.
I think Torggler was drawing on a romantic notion of an innocent childhood filled with wonder and delight. It was a fantasy that clearly appealed to Germans and Austrians since Torggler created so many of them that have been preserved for over a century. What intrigues me is how he slyly drew children with faces that show subtle adult emotions of worry, cunning, and desire.
In 1900 it was a kind of caricature of childhood that perfectly fit the new medium of the postcard. I don't know that Herman Torggler was the first artist to create this style but a lot of people bought his cards in order to share a novel sentiment or moment of lighthearted humor. In a way it is no different than how in our time people share a meme video or an emoji when sending a text or email. But in 125 years I don't think anyone will be collecting things like that.
This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where things may get a bit sticky this weekend.
