Antique & Vintage Postcards

A blonde girl in a red-and-blue dirndl twirls down a Rhine hillside, bouquet raised high and a goose scampering at her heels, greeting cards from the legendary Rolandsbogen — the ruined Romanesque arch above Rolandseck on the Rhine where, according to medieval legend, the paladin Roland watched for his beloved Hildegunde from the convent below. "Gruß vom Rolandsbogen" is printed beneath her feet, and unfolding the hidden pocket reveals a cascade of tiny black-and-white Rhine Valley panoramas: Drachenfels, Boppard, Bacharach, Bingen, Niederlahnstein, and Mainz — a miniature tour of the Romantic Rhine that German and international tourists had been making since the Romantic era. The bold, slightly stylized illustration technique and the "Import Nr. 816" printer's reference on the reverse suggest production for the export souvenir trade, likely mid-to-late 1930s. Rhine Valley material with multiple named towns on a single leporello is particularly useful to topographic collectors.