Postcard Hessian Schwalm traditional costume, sent from Bad Nauheim 1921

German postcard from 1921 showing a hand-coloured photolithograph of Hessian girls in traditional costume, in a group view before a traditional half-timbered house. The image shows six girls in the characteristic Schwalmer Tracht from the Schwalm region of Hesse, recognisable by the red Stülpchen caps placed on the crown of the head and the black dresses with red embroidered hems and white aprons. One of the girls holds a doll in the same costume. In the background the typical Hessian half-timbered architecture with red-tiled roofs. On the verso the caption "Hessische Trachten Nr. 250 - Spielende Kinder" and the publisher's mark "Kunstverlag: Gustav Mandt, Lauterbach, Hessen", catalogue number 31895. The card shows folds and tears in the lower left corner.

The Schwalmer Tracht, worn in the region around Ziegenhain and Schwalmstadt in North Hesse, is one of the most recognisable German regional costumes and was brought to international fame in the nineteenth century by the tales of the Brothers Grimm: the round red cap is said to have inspired the little red hood of Little Red Riding Hood, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm having known this costume closely during their residence in Kassel and their Hessian collecting journeys. The verso bears a bilingual Dutch-German address: Fräulein Johanna Hennen, Villa Via Nova, Valkenburg, Holland, with postmark of 29 July 1921 from a Hessian town. The sender stayed according to the handwritten message in a hotel in Bad Nauheim, the famous Hessian spa town renowned for its saline springs and cardiac cures. This card is the third documented in the archive addressed to the Hennen family at the Villa Via Nova in Valkenburg, following an earlier issue from Boppard on the Rhine from before the First World War and a Bad Nauheim sending from the interwar years, and preceding a birthday card from Heerlen after the liberation of 1944. Together these cards document a correspondence history spanning four decades.