German Landscapes

Increasingly Americans began to seek antidotes to modernity, and start shifting towards leisure activities. To further promote smaller towns and villages, modern heritage tours began to heavily employ landscape postcards. As a result, these postcards become a part of the tourist experience, allowing a traveller to no longer have to remember places visited but instead bring these home to remember.

These particular tours emphasized the notion of the sublime, that is, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation that is experienced in nature. Additionally, artists like Emerson and Thoreau greatly influence the notion of the sublime.

Urbanites looking to find renewal of mind, body, spirit heavily influence transportation technology and expansion. This increase access to national parks, spas, and smaller towns and regions. Smaller German villages in the Saxony region, as shown in this collection became popular destinations for this sort of traveller.

River cruises were particularly popular along the Elbe River, occurring between Dresden and the picturesque “Saxon Switzerland” to the south. One can still get a sense of the relaxed elegance of such cruises since the Stadt Wehlen, the oldest dating from 1879,

Situated along the Polenz River, and near the Saxon Switzerland National Park, the small village features the church and idyllic houses. As stated before, a landscape postcard served to advertise. It can be shown on a postcard, and automatically anyone who looks at it wants to go there.