The article analyzes the German soldiers’ postcards of the 1914– 1918 World War I, epistolary practices of front-line soldiers, as well as the place and functions of postcards in the field mail of the German Empire. The war created a new situation in communication, transforming everyday verbal communication into written one. The field mail was the most important psychological resource for the soldier, asserting his identity and allowing him to withstand military trials. The German field mail service had an efficient branched structure, letters and postcards were quickly delivered free of charge. Control over the field mail was performed through two types of censorship — army and post office censorships. The use of quantitative methods has made it possible to determine such a feature of field mail correspondence as obvious predominance of postcards over letters sent from the front to the rear and circulated in the rear. A larger number of letters from the rear to the front was interpreted, inter alia, by the public requirement of giving active moral support to the soldiers. A frequent use of postcards by the soldiers themselves was due to the fact that the latter provided faster and more frequent communication than the letters, and made possible to maintain its rhythm. In addition, postcards were more practical in front-line life and required less moral, material and time costs for writing. At the same time, a soldier sometimes preferred a postcard to a letter due to the censorship requirements or the necessity to decrease pressure on postal services. Despite their widespread employment, postcards were regarded lower by the soldiers than letters that were considered more meaningful. Nevertheless, during the World War I, postcards in Germany formed the basis of the field mail. Primarily, they served as providers of the postal main function, namely, maintaining a continuous and intensive connection between the front and rear.

Postcards as a reflection of German-Czech contradictions in the period of the Badeni crisis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries have more than once been the subject of study. The research novelty of this article lies in the fact that the problem is examined not through postcard images themselves, but from the point of view of the primary functionality of postcards as a means of communication and a commercial product. The author focuses on commercial, postal-technical, consumer practices, institutional and legal aspects, as well as the reception of postcard messages, both individual and public. Various national associations and private entrepreneurs, main producers of postcards, often deliberately radicalized their content in their political or commercial interests. The specificity of the postcard as a means of postal communication and its mass appeal served as the basis for unique practices in mobilizing supporters and criticizing opponents by “cartographical attacks”. Even the design of postcard forms was a means of national struggle and expression of personal position. Publishers of the respective orientations designed them in the “German” or “Czech” spirit, while the official position was to refuse any name for this postal product. At the same time, the numerous variants of handwritten edits concerning all the constituent parts of the postcard (technical design of the form, address, and stamp) allowed users to state their position on the national question. The legal side of postcards’ production, functioning and existence was determined, on the one hand, by conditions which were common to other types of printed matter, in particular, by the liberal press law of 1868, and, on the other hand, by postal regulations that periodically withdrew certain postcards from circulation. All this became the subject of litigations and debates in parliament and thus provided a way for postcards to enter the public sphere and, accordingly, served to attract further public attention to the national conflict and its aggravation.