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488 Lilia Uzlowa These aspects are complemented with the context of the message, which often answers one or more of these questions. The birth of mass tourism at the end of the 1960s to the 1980s means a peak in the spreading of landscape-postcards. This dependence, mass-tourism und spreading of landscape-postcards, which has gone through some metamorphoses, is still alive today.'* The tradition of sending postcards with greetings and impressions from the visited places, holidays, or travel, has been preserved as a fashion, an expression of good taste and behaviour. “The distant and the other”, positively or negatively filtrated through the personal experience, are related through the messages with the familiar and the experience of everyday life. In this case, it is not only a gesture of attention to relatives and friends, but a spontaneous documentation of different expressions, identities, and cultural models. The functions of the postcard change and become “individualized”. The postcard’s “privatization” becomes stronger and gradually leads to a differentiation of its functions, tending to messages of a more intimate, that is familiar nature (Lecerc 1986: 5). It is logical that the type and genre variety of the motifs is consistent with the needs of the market. The product should respond to the demand. In addition to the mentioned postcards with images of famous and exotic places there are those sent on holidays and special private and public life events"? (Till 1983: 32, 46). Such are greeting cards for Christmas, Easter, birthdays, anniversaries, engagements or weddings, childbirth, or condolences in the event of death of a relative and so forth. The lifestyle—the holidays and the everyday life—determines the genre variety of the motifs in that group (Holzheid 2011: 15).'4 Sending of messages written on open postcards in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is not particularly popular due to the intimacy of the messages, the individual character of the correspondence and the nature of the epistolary culture (Till 1983: 32, 46). Letter writing became an art, a sophisticated pastime that can be compared with diary keeping. A culture of secularism gradually embraced the postcard: “As a favourite epistolary tool, not only as a document, the postcard becomes a literary fact. It is obvious that the 2 Tt should be noted that sending electronic cards and messages via the Internet is increasing, which restricts to some extent the classic function of the postcard. '5 As far as is known, greeting cards have existed ever since the beginning of the 17" century, when they were sent in bulk quantities in sealed envelopes. Their manufacture then was manual, more difficult and labour intensive, which makes them small pieces of art. Many of these old techniques like collages, applications, pull-out mechanisms, and bending are still used today in the manufacture of unique postcards or postcards produced in small numbers (Till 1983: 32, 46). 4 Original text: “Im Alltag versiert zu kommunizieren, bedeutete im ausgehenden 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert vor allem auch, die bürgerliche Maxime gepflegter Unterhaltung mit ihren inhaltlichen und formalen Vorgaben für mündliche und schriftliche Formen zu befolgen und diese zur eigenen Persönlichkeitsdarstellung in eloquenter Rede oder Briefform geschickt zu inszenieren.” See also Ettl 1984: 55.
