Postal History

Imagine being a Jewish person in the military, during the height of the Vietnam war. You’re risking your life in combat, and you see this postcard advocating, “Pray for Peace,” in the same breath as it says, “Restricted clientele.” Despite your sacrifice, you’re not welcome here.

Same caption/data as KolnerHof1

These two postcards are from a hotel called the Kölner Hof, in Frankfurt, Germany. They’re dated in the late 1800s, a period when Jewish people were moving into Frankfurt in large numbers, and the Kölner Hof’s owner was not a fan. Even if you can’t read German, you can tell from the Jewish caricatures on both cards — the men with the long, hooked noses being kicked out of (left) and asked to leave (right) the hotel—that the Kölner Hof didn’t welcome Jewish guests. If you can read German, you see that the postcards refer to Frankfurt as “New Jerusalem” and “Jerusalem on the Rhine,” and that they advertise the hotel as “The only Jew-Free hotel in Frankfurt.” The Kölner Hof hotel published many anti-Jewish advertisements, poster stamps and other marketing materials to the open arms of German society even in the 1930’s.

A French postcard produced in 1898 depicting anti-Jewish French journalist Edouard Drumont as a crusader eating a gross caricature of a Jew's head.

This French postcard, produced in 1898, features a grotesque representation of the Dreyfus Affair, with anti-Jewish French journalist Edouard Drumont roasting a nude, caricatured Alfred Dreyfus on a spit.