Antique & Vintage Postcards

Painted in the optimistic tints of Edwardian hand-coloring, the spa village of Görbersdorf nestles beneath a great green Silesian hill in this pre-WWI panorama — its sprawling tuberculosis sanatorium complex, the first of its kind in the world (founded 1854 by Hermann Brehmer), spreading across the valley in a patchwork of red-roofed pavilions and white institutional blocks, a radio mast spiking skyward at center. A handwritten note in Gothic script above the image reads "Haus Heim" — perhaps marking a patient's building. The card was posted on 20 March 1914 from Görbersdorf itself, just months before the world changed forever, by a father ("Euer Vater") writing to his children in Vienna XXI: "I arrived fresh and cheerful at 8 o'clock this morning; my newspaper arrived, the doctor tells me my recovery is going very well — everything is getting better; it is beautiful weather here. Warmest greetings to all of you, your loving father." A single Deutsches Reich 5 Pfennig green Germania stamp, postmarked Görbersdorf (Kr.) 7.3.14, carries it to Nordmanngasse 119, Wien XXI.