A quiet morning on the Steilestrasse in Essen's celebrated Margaretenhöhe estate — Germany's first garden city — where two elegantly dressed figures pause on a broad, unpaved boulevard flanked by steep-roofed Arts and Crafts cottages with window boxes still blooming. Commissioned by Margarethe Krupp in 1906 and designed by Georg Metzendorf, this model workers' village was built to house Krupp factory employees in dignity and beauty; the postcard captures it at its earliest and most pristine, before the upheaval of two world wars. The right-hand building with its deep columned arcade served as a small commercial block, its shuttered upper windows and tiled gable perfectly representative of Metzendorf's vernacular revival style. Published by Cramers Kunstanstalt of Dortmund (catalogue p 312), this unused card retains sharp photographic detail and a clean, unbent reverse with stamp box numbered "12."