Bidspirit auction | Early Greeting Postcards Decorated with

Early Greeting Postcards Decorated with Swastikas. United States, Early 20th Century - 10 decorated greeting postcards featuring swastikas. A rare example of the use of the swastika prior to the rise of the Nazis. United States. Early 20th Century. Art Nouveau-style postcards with prominent embossed gold decoration, richly detailed floral motifs (including roses, pansies, and chrysanthemums), and ornamental panels bearing English greetings such as: ”A Long Life and a Happy One, ” ”Greetings Cordial, Wishes True, ” ”May You Have Peace and Plenty, ” and ”Though Far Apart yet Joined by Love.” In the corners of each postcard appears a prominent gold swastika. Before the Nazi Party appropriated, distorted, and transformed the swastika into a symbol of racism, destruction, and terror during the 1920s and 1930s, it held an entirely different meaning in the Western world. The symbol originates from the Sanskrit word svastika, meaning ”well-being, ” ”good health, ” or ”that which is good.” For thousands of years, it served as an auspicious symbol in the Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Following archaeological discoveries revealing the symbol's widespread use in antiquity, it gained remarkable popularity in Europe and North America. It was enthusiastically adopted as the ultimate emblem of good luck, prosperity, health, and happiness. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement sought a powerful symbol that would both capture the public imagination and embody the core of their ideology. The decision to adopt the swastika took shape during the summer of 1920, the year in which the German Workers' Party became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). Hitler did not discover the symbol himself; rather, he was influenced by radical nationalist and antisemitic groups in Germany and Austria (the Völkisch movements), which had already begun appropriating the swastika in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These groups relied on pseudo-scientific theories and distorted archaeological interpretations claiming that the swastika was an ancient symbol of the Aryan race, thereby transforming its original meaning—from a universal emblem of light and good fortune—into a sign of racial supremacy and blood purity. For Hitler, the swastika represented ”the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man.” After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the swastika gradually evolved from a party emblem into the official symbol of the German state. In 1935, as part of the Nuremberg Laws, it was formally adopted as the sole national flag of the Third Reich. Through Joseph Goebbels's propaganda apparatus, the symbol became embedded in every aspect of public and private life in Germany and in the territories under its control, irrevocably sealing its place in global consciousness as the symbol most closely associated with Nazi war crimes, the Holocaust, and absolute evil. 10 postcards. Five of them were mailed within the United States C. 1910. Very good condition.