Greetings from “Hungarian Pittsburgh”. Resicza on picture postcards between 1898 and 1918

Abstract

The illustrated postcard as a new medium, which spread rapidly in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy from 1880 onwards, was not only used for faster communication. It was also a means of self-representation for the communities, which were called upon to visually express and consolidate their self-narrative both internally and externally. In Resicza, one of the largest industrial centers of the Kingdom of Hungary, the smokestacks, industrial plants and machines of the StEG Company became the identity-creating landmark of the small town. The postcards of Resicza that were published and circulated until the end of the First World War prove the importance of the StEG Company as one of the central places of representation of high industrialization and modernity in the collective perception. At the same time, the more village-like small town, actually an appendage of the StEG, attempted to statify the growing aestheric demands of an urban culture by means of image montage.