Antique & Vintage Postcards

Lindau's iconic Diebsturm — the "Thieves' Tower," a medieval round watchtower crowned with four jaunty spires — looms over the island town's rooftops alongside the steeple of the Peterskirche in this crisp Heliocolorkarte issued by Munich's master color printer Ottmar Ziemer, likely around 1905–1910, when the lakeside Bavarian resort of Lindau on the Bodensee was at the height of its appeal to wealthy Belle Époque tourists. Two tiny figures in period dress lend scale to the tower's imposing bulk, and the hand-applied color gives the scene a luminous, almost watercolor quality that Ziemer's Munich shop was renowned for across the German-speaking world. The reverse is clean and unused.