One Hundred Years Hence

The following samples of merchandise premium cards is an English-language version of the same art used for the set by Hildebrands Chocolate that we previously posted about. Makers of these cards - in this case likely Kuntsdruck-Friedberg of Berlin - would happily replicate art and designs for companies in different markets. Why mess up a good thing? At the turn of the century, it was highly unlikely that someone buying chocolates in some remote city in the US or UK would have previously seen the same set in chocolates from Germany, and even less of a chance that they would really care all that much.

 

Moscow in the XXIII Century

William Gibson once described Science Fiction not as true speculation about the future, but rather, the colonization of the future with the present. A dramatic example of this truism can be found in the postcard series Moscow in the XXIII Century, produced in 1914.  

Published by Einem, one of the biggest and most popular confectionary brands in Russia, these cards purported to show the grand Russian capital as it would become between 2114 and 2259... The same mixed image of metropolitan futurism with the social and aesthetic conventions of the day seen in the French En L'An 2000 card series. Unfortunately, Einem could not predict that a scant three years after production of these cards, the blight of Communism would seize Russia, murdering tens of millions and dashing any such hopes as these. Whereas En L'An 2000 has a wistful air, Moscow in the XXIII Century has a tragic one. 

Eight cards were produced in the series, collected here...

Lubianka.

Arthur Thiele's Flugmaschinen

Carl Robert Arthur Thiele was a well-known illustrator of postcards within Germany, though his output outside the country is not as well known. Beyond Deutschland he was mostly known as a painter of anthropomorphic animals, and they were his most profitable subject. Nevertheless he produced many, many images of many different kinds. Born in Leipzig in 1860 and dying in the same city in 1936, he lived through both the fantasies of air travel and its realization. Among his prodigious postcard paintings are a few series of the life aeronautic. Even these are but a small sample of his postcards on this one subject.  

Receiving drinks and hors d'oeuvres aboard the party barge.

The caption speaks to the pleasure and strengthening of the heart

that comes from a flight through the Italian sunshine. 

Collision with a messenger boy.

Aerial rabbit hunting.

En L'An 2000 - Daily Life Made Better

En L'An 2000 (English: In the Year 2000) were a series of cigarette cards produced in France at the turn of 1900. The initial series was released between 1899 and 1901, in conjunction with the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, when excitement about the advancements of the coming century were accelerating. A second series was produced in 1910.

In this third collection, we look at how daily life was predicted to improve in the year 2000... Hearths heated by radium, education by osmosis, new methods of agriculture, advances in science, chemical dinners, and correspondence via cinema-phono-telegraphique... Or what we, in more banal times, call "the Internet."

En L'An 2000 - The Life Aquatic

En L'An 2000 (English: In the Year 2000) were a series of cigarette cards produced in France at the turn of 1900. The initial series was released between 1899 and 1901, in conjunction with the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, when excitement about the advancements of the coming century were accelerating. A second series was produced in 1910.

This second set of cards from the series goes on and beneath the waves. This vision of the year 2000 not only has humankind taking to the air, but also taming the wild depths of the sea.