ABSTRACT
The March 1900 issue of the Centralblatt für Ansichtkarten-Sammler, a journal for picture postcard collectors, includes an article that predicts a change in the pictorial world: “We are swimming in pictures!” It announces the dawning of a new “illustrated age” and honors the new monarch responsible for this development: “The century of the picture postcard [ . . . ] has apparently arrived. It rules and reigns everywhere and is omnipresent. It has become a force to be reckoned with.”1
