Antique & Vintage Postcards

Real photo postcard of the summit snowfields of Stuhleck (1,783 m) in the Styrian Alps — wind-tortured conifers bent under heavy snow loads, a vast white slope dropping away under a grey alpine sky, one of those bleak and beautiful high-mountain scenes that no tinted card could capture. Stuhleck, above Spital am Semmering, was one of the early ski mountains accessible from Vienna by rail and a popular destination from the 1920s onward; the Alois Güntherhaus hut at the summit, whose rubber stamp appears on this card's reverse, served generations of skiers and hikers. Someone mailed this down from the mountain to a young woman named Gerlinde in the valley town of Langenwang, sending warm greetings and the mountain air by proxy.