Antique & Vintage Postcards

A charming Black Forest watermill turns lazily beside a babbling stream while yellow ducklings waddle below a ribbon of German verse—"Es steht eine Mühle im Schwarzwäldeetal"—on this delightful fold-out souvenir card sent as a "Gruß aus Baden-Baden," a greeting from one of Germany's grandest spa towns. Lift the printed flap on the front and a long accordion strip of crisp black-and-white photographs unfolds, revealing Baden-Baden's celebrated landmarks: the sweeping panorama toward Friesenberg, the colonnaded Kurhaus, the glittering Spielbank (casino) chandelier hall, the Gönneranlagen gardens, the elegant Lichtenthaler Allee promenade, and the romantic ruin of Ebersteinburg with Alt-Eberstein castle beyond. Published by Ansichtskartenfabrik Schöning & Co. of Lübeck—one of Germany's premier postcard manufacturers—the card carries the catalog reference "Rück 18-f" and features German postal instructions on the reverse. The mill poem and pastoral illustration echo the Romantic tradition of Schwarzwald imagery that made Baden-Baden postcards among the most collected of the Weimar and early Third Reich eras.