Neue Photographische Gesellschaft and the Industrial Real Photo Postcard

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The Neue Photographische Gesellschaft, usually abbreviated NPG, was one of the largest and most technologically advanced producers of photographic postcards during the great postcard boom of the early 20th century.

Based in Berlin, Germany, NPG produced an enormous variety of cards depicting actresses, musicians, royalty, children, romantic scenes, military figures, warships, city views, works of art, and countless other subjects. Its photographs circulated internationally, and cards bearing the small NPG logo can still be found with postmarks from Europe, North America, South America, and beyond.

For collectors, NPG is particularly interesting because the company complicates one of the basic assumptions we make about real photo postcards.

Many NPG cards are genuine photographic prints. They were exposed and chemically developed on silver-based photographic paper rather than reproduced with halftone printing ink.

But they were also mass-produced in factories, sometimes by the tens of thousands.

NPG had essentially industrialized the real photo postcard.

Arthur Schwarz and the birth of NPG

The Neue Photographische Gesellschaft was founded by Arthur Schwarz in Berlin-Schöneberg in July 1894.

Schwarz had already been involved in experiments with automated photographic production. A surviving company document traces NPG's technological origins to the Falk Automatic Photograph Company, established in New York in 1893 by photographer Benjamin J. Falk along with Hector Rosenfeld and Schwarz. The American operation was created to commercialize a photographic rotary-printing process.

Schwarz brought the technology to Germany and established the Neue Photographische Gesellschaft with only about ten employees.

Growth came quickly.

The company purchased property in Steglitz in 1896 and moved into a large new factory the following year. By its tenth anniversary in 1904, NPG employed about 650 people. Within several more years the workforce had grown to roughly 1,200.

What had begun as a small photographic operation had become an industrial manufacturer of photographic paper, postcards, portraits, stereoscopic views, and other photographic products.

Kilometer photography

The technology behind NPG's success became known as Kilometerphotographie, or kilometer photography.

Traditional photographic printing usually involved exposing individual sheets of photographic paper beneath a negative and then developing those sheets in batches. This worked well for portraits and small commercial orders but was inefficient if a publisher wanted thousands of identical photographic prints.

NPG approached the problem more like a printing company.

Instead of individual sheets, long rolls of silver-bromide photographic paper were fed through specialized machinery. The paper was automatically exposed beneath negatives and then carried through developing, fixing, washing, and drying processes.

The resulting images were still photographs. Light had formed the image on photosensitive material, and the tonal range came from the photographic emulsion rather than a halftone screen.

But the process could produce them continuously.

NPG promoted the idea of photographic paper running through its equipment in extraordinarily long rolls, giving rise to the term kilometer photography. Contemporary and later accounts credit its machinery with producing tens of thousands of photographic images in a working day.

This was a major step toward turning photography into a mass-market product.

Are NPG postcards real photo postcards?

Many of them are.

This is where NPG becomes especially useful for understanding what the term real photo postcard actually means.

An RPPC does not have to be a one-of-a-kind photograph or a small batch produced in a local photographer's darkroom. The term describes the physical process used to create the image.

A mass-produced NPG bromide card can therefore be a genuine real photo postcard.

Under magnification, an original silver-bromide NPG card should generally show continuous photographic tones rather than the regular pattern of dots associated with halftone printing. Fine detail in hair, fabric, faces, backgrounds, and shadows remains photographic rather than breaking apart into a mechanical screen.

This is an important distinction because an NPG card may look and feel like a commercially printed postcard while technically being a photographic print.

Not every card distributed under the NPG name should automatically be classified as an RPPC, however. The company operated for decades, used several processes, and produced or distributed material in different forms. Individual cards should still be examined under magnification.

Oranotypie postcards

Collectors frequently encounter the word Oranotypie on early NPG cards.

Oranotypie was one of NPG's branded photographic products and is particularly associated with its glossy photographic postcards from the first years of the 20th century.

Many Oranotypie cards feature women, actresses, theatrical performers, romantic scenes, children, and carefully staged studio compositions. Hand coloring was frequently added to the photographic image, giving some examples delicate pink skin tones, brightly colored dresses, flowers, or decorative backgrounds.

These are often mistaken for printed cards because they were manufactured commercially and may have applied color. Underneath that color, however, many are genuine photographic prints.

Early examples may have Oranotypie prominently printed on the reverse along with the full company name:

Neue Photographische Gesellschaft A.G., Steglitz

For collectors of early photographic postcards, these cards represent one of the more recognizable products of NPG's peak period.

NPG did not necessarily take the photograph

One of the most important things to understand about NPG is that it was primarily a photographic manufacturer and publisher, not a single photographic studio producing all of its own negatives.

The company obtained images from photographers throughout Europe and the United States.

Many early celebrity cards reproduce photographs by important portrait photographers such as Léopold Reutlinger in Paris and Benjamin J. Falk in New York. NPG then manufactured and distributed photographic postcards from those images.

A postcard can therefore carry both an NPG mark and another photographer's credit.

For cataloging purposes, it is useful to separate those roles. NPG may be the publisher or manufacturer, while Reutlinger, Falk, or another studio was the photographer.

That distinction can have a significant effect on collector interest.

A generic NPG portrait may be inexpensive. The same card identified as a Reutlinger portrait of a famous actress can appeal simultaneously to collectors of photography, theater, celebrity, fashion, and postcards.

Actresses and celebrity culture

Some of NPG's most recognizable postcards depict the international celebrities of the Belle Époque.

The company's early series include portraits of performers such as Cléo de Mérode, Lina Cavalieri, Anna Held, Caroline Otero, Emma Calvé, and other actresses, dancers, opera singers, and theatrical personalities who became internationally famous around the turn of the century.

The postcard boom coincided with the emergence of modern celebrity culture. Stage performers who might previously have been known primarily to theatergoers in Paris, London, Berlin, or New York could suddenly have their portraits circulated by the thousands across Europe and overseas.

NPG was exceptionally well positioned to serve that market. It could acquire a fashionable portrait from a leading photographer, reproduce it photographically in enormous quantities, and distribute the finished cards through an international network.

The result was something surprisingly close to the modern celebrity photograph.

Collectors should pay particular attention to cards where the sitter can be identified. A portrait labeled simply “lady” or “actress” in an online listing may actually depict a major performer whose name substantially improves both the historical interest and marketability of the card.

Kaiser Wilhelm, the German military, and the Imperial Navy

Another major portion of the NPG catalog reflected Imperial Germany.

The company issued large numbers of photographic portraits of Kaiser Wilhelm II, members of the Hohenzollern family, military officers, and prominent political figures. German naval ships and military subjects were also extensively represented.

NPG's production of imperial portraits was substantial enough that Wilhelm II formally thanked the company for the photographs of the imperial family displayed in schools, military barracks, and other public institutions.

These cards became particularly numerous around the First World War.

Today they form a large and complicated collecting category. Common portraits of Wilhelm II survive in significant quantities and are usually inexpensive. Cards become substantially more interesting when they identify a particular military figure, naval vessel, aviation personality, regiment, event, or wartime casualty.

As with most postcards, specificity matters more than age alone.

An international company

NPG was not simply a German postcard manufacturer selling German views.

Arthur Schwarz aggressively pursued international markets, and the company developed business relationships and subsidiaries outside Germany. Its commercial reach included London, Paris, Rome, New York, and other major markets.

That international network is visible in the surviving postcards.

NPG cards can carry French, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and other captions. The same basic photographic series might circulate in several countries, while locally appropriate subjects were produced for individual markets.

The international nature of the operation also explains why NPG cards turn up so frequently in American postcard collections despite having been manufactured in Germany.

A card mailed in Ohio, Buenos Aires, Paris, or London may still carry the tiny Steglitz NPG logo.

Identifying the NPG mark

The easiest way to identify many cards is the distinctive NPG logo.

The letters are usually intertwined, with a large stylized P dominating the mark. The logo frequently appears inside a small circle or oval near one lower corner of the image.

Earlier cards may instead spell out Neue Photographische Gesellschaft. The company registered N.P.G. as a word trademark in 1897, while the familiar stylized logo was registered in 1905.

The design of the logo changed somewhat over time, which can help distinguish earlier and later issues.

Catalog or series numbers frequently appear near the opposite corner. A number might look something like:

464/20

or

551/2

The first portion generally identifies a series or design group, while the number after the slash can identify a particular card within that group.

Unfortunately, NPG reused numbers and issued several overlapping numbering systems. A low number does not automatically indicate an early card, and the catalog number alone should not be used to date an example.

Logo style, postcard back, postmark, subject, series, and printing process should be considered together.

Undivided backs and early NPG cards

Some of the earliest NPG postcards date from the period before divided backs became standard.

These cards may reserve the entire reverse for the address, leaving the sender to write a short message on the image side. Other early cards use the Oranotypie back or multilingual postal layouts intended for international distribution.

Surviving postmarks indicate that some of NPG's earliest numbered postcard series were already circulating around 1900.

That places the company near the beginning of the photographic postcard boom rather than merely participating in it after the format became popular.

Early undivided-back NPG cards, especially those with unusual subjects or identifiable performers, deserve closer attention than common later issues.

Color and hand finishing

NPG produced both monochrome and colored photographic products.

Some cards were individually or mechanically tinted after the photographic image had been made. Color might be applied to clothing, flowers, skin, backgrounds, or decorative details while the underlying photographic image remained visible.

The company also invested heavily in research into photographic color processes. Chemist Rudolf Fischer and Hans Sigrist conducted important experiments in NPG's laboratories between 1910 and 1912 that contributed to the technical development of modern chromogenic color photography.

For postcard collectors, the more immediate distinction is between a colorized photographic card and a mechanically printed color postcard.

Applied color does not automatically mean a card is lithographic. A hand-colored NPG card may still be an RPPC.

Magnification remains the best first test.

A catalog that seems almost endless

Trying to build a complete catalog of NPG postcards is a daunting project.

The company issued thousands of subjects across numerous overlapping series. Portraits and theatrical performers were joined by children, romantic couples, fantasy scenes, holiday greetings, animals, sculptures, paintings, city views, landscapes, military subjects, ships, comic cards, and stereoscopic images.

Some series contained only a handful of cards. Others contained many more. Numbers were eventually reused, and the same number can appear on cards produced many years apart.

That scale is itself part of the company's importance.

NPG demonstrated that photographs no longer needed to be individually commissioned objects. Photography could be manufactured, cataloged, packaged, distributed internationally, and consumed in much the same way as printed illustrations.

The postcard was one of the first products to make that transition visible to ordinary consumers.

The decline of NPG

By the 1910s, the conditions that had fueled NPG's rapid growth were beginning to change.

Competition in the photographic postcard business increased, while cheaper mechanical printing processes improved. The First World War severely disrupted the international relationships upon which NPG had built much of its business.

Arthur Schwarz withdrew from the company's leadership in 1912.

Production at the large Steglitz operation ultimately ceased around 1921. The subsequent history becomes somewhat complicated because the NPG name, trademarks, equipment, and portions of its business passed into other photographic companies.

Sources connect the later NPG operation with the Dresden photographic company Mimosa, while the NPG postcard trademark also continued in association with E.A. Schwerdtfeger. Cards carrying NPG-related marks can therefore postdate the original Steglitz company's main period of operation.

For collectors, 1894 to 1921 is the most useful period for understanding the original Neue Photographische Gesellschaft as the major Steglitz photographic manufacturer.

Notes and market conditions from North West Postcards

NPG postcards are extremely common as a broad category.

The company produced photographic cards on an industrial scale, and huge numbers survived. A small NPG logo by itself adds very little monetary value.

Common portraits, romantic cards, children, generic glamour images, and imperial subjects can often be found in the $5 to $15 range. Groups of common cards may sell for only a few dollars per card.

The stronger opportunities are found by identifying the subject rather than simply identifying NPG.

An apparently anonymous portrait may depict Lina Cavalieri, Cléo de Mérode, Anna Held, or another major performer. A generic military portrait may show an important officer or early aviator. A naval card may depict an identifiable warship. A seemingly decorative costume card may have been photographed by Reutlinger or another significant studio.

Those additional layers can move a card into an entirely different collecting market.

Early Oranotypie cards, unusual fantasy images, scarce performers, risqué subjects, aviation, named military personalities, unusual ships, and complete series can command substantially more than common NPG material. Exceptional First World War aviation and military cards can move well beyond ordinary postcard prices when the individual or event is significant.

Condition matters, but NPG cards were commercial products intended to be handled and mailed. Postal use, writing on the reverse, and modest corner wear are normal. Heavy silvering, creases through a face, severe fading, surface loss, or trimming are more significant problems.

For dealers, the greatest mistake with NPG is probably treating the publisher as the entire identification.

NPG is the beginning of the research, not the end.

Collector's perspective

At first glance, NPG postcards can feel almost too common to be interesting.

Then you look more closely.

The small logo in the corner might lead to a famous Parisian photographer. The anonymous woman may turn out to be one of the most celebrated performers of 1903. The military officer may be an early aviator. The ship may have participated in a major naval event.

The physical card itself can also challenge the assumptions we make about photographic postcards.

An NPG card might have been made by exposing real photographic paper beneath a negative, yet thousands of identical copies could roll through an automated factory.

It is simultaneously a real photograph and a mass-produced consumer product.

That is what makes the Neue Photographische Gesellschaft important. NPG helped move photography from the photographer's darkroom into industrial manufacturing, and during the process it put millions of photographic images into the hands of ordinary people around the world.

For postcard collectors, those little intertwined letters NPG mark one of the companies that helped create the modern image economy.

Additional reading

• "Neue Photographische Gesellschaft", Verein für die Geschichte Berlins.
• "Neue Photographische Gesellschaft (Steglitz)", Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.
• "Gründungsurkunde der Neuen Photographischen Gesellschaft (NPG) zu Berlin", Deutsches Historisches Museum / Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek.
• "NPG Early Issue Series", Ross Verlag Movie Star Postcards and Other Vintage European Postcard Publishers.
• "Neue Photographische Gesellschaft", RTH Postcard Publisher Logos.
• Neue Photographische Gesellschaft Steglitz: Die Geschichte eines Weltunternehmens, Wilma Gütgemann-Holtz and Wolfgang Holtz, 2009.
• Ludwig Hoerner, "Postkartenboom und Kilometerphotographie," in Das photographische Gewerbe in Deutschland 1839–1914, 1989.

Example postcards