ABSTRACT
Germany’s principal engagement as a colonial power, in the epoch around 1900, coincides with the rise of postcards as a medium of communication.1 As important cultural and historical artifacts, and seen from the perspective of a post-colonial age, postcards represent a form of forgotten “collective colonial memory” that has received little critical attention in the context of German colonialism.2 As a form of perception and representation of the foreign, postcards assumed a role as witness of and instrument in the production of cultural knowledge at the period.3 Knowledge about cultures outside of Europe and the self-perception of Western European civilization as culture mutually conditioned each other, creating an interdependent binary structure between identity and alterity. Like many other contributions to the cultural history of colonialism in the Wilhelminian era, postcards supply evidence of popular images of alterity that circulated among the public, disseminated by, among others, newspapers, satirical magazines, journals, posters, museums, scientifi c societies and world fairs. Germany’s quest to become a colonial power found signifi cant support in the vast array of colonial images that were spread in postcard representations.
