'When the Hotel Bar was All the Rage'

A nice piece by Der Bund--replete with many vintage postcards--shows, I'd argue, that postcard armchair travels are quite, well, awesome

In this Sunday Special, I’m providing you with a translation of a piece that appeared in the newspaper Der Bund of Bern, Switzerland, on 1 June 2024.

I was made aware of this awesome article by a long-time friend and reader of this little weblog (hi, S.A.!), prompted mainly by his question, “how do you the time to do all the blogging?”—My reply: I typically prepare (and sometimes schedule) these postings while my daughters are occupying the bathroom. So, now you know, too.

Without much further ado, here cometh a piece about vintage postcards.

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When the Hotel Bar was all the Rage

Check-in Check-out revives the glamorous world of Swiss hotels in the 60s and 70s and shows tourist dream worlds in postcard format.

By Xymna Engel, Der Bund, 1 June 2024 [source]

A lady in a leopard coat gets out of the carriage, the porter is already on hand. Another hotel employee helps with the skis, while a woman with a blow-dried hairstyle climbs the stairs to the Zermatterhof as if her lover were waiting at the top.

The scene looks as unreal as the pearly white snow in front of the hotel. It was created around 1960 by the Kunstanstalt [art studio] Brügger an advertising agency based in Meiringen (1878-1994), which for decades characterised the imagery of Swiss hotels—and thus created tourist dream worlds in postcard format.

The Alpine Museum of Switzerland has rummaged through its archives and, with the postcard book Check-in Check-out, is reviving the time when the paper holiday souvenir became the perfect advertising medium. The view from a hotel window onto the imposing mountain backdrop, a stately dining room with heavy curtains and flowered armchairs, a buffet with a buurehamme [traditional pork shanks] and Russian salad: all the images carry the promise of cosy bliss.

But what is a picture of a safe or an underground car park doing here? This question is answered in the accompanying booklet, in which you can also learn a lot about the Swiss hotel tradition, the development of tourism, and the history of advertising photography.

At the time, a safe was a big novelty, and a multi-storey car park was also an advantage for a hotel in times of increasing private motorisation, which people wanted to show off. The boom in grand hotels was over; in the 1970s, hotels with modern infrastructure, such as lifts and minibars were in demand.

The photographs therefore also tell us a lot about the changing times. Just like the windowless room with the wood panelling and the dizzying checked carpet, in which a group of strangely smiling people are working out on sports equipment.

In the age of Instagram, you might be surprised by such pictures. Or declare them a cult. But the advertising images from then and now have one thing in common: the view of the deserted, magnificent mountains, and the longing they evoke.

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Alpines Museum der Schweiz (ed.), “Check-in Check-out.” Hotelfotografie der Kunstanstalt Brügger, Meiringen: Ein Postkartenbuch (Scheidegger & Spiess, 2024), 29 Swiss Francs.

About the journalist: Xymna Engel is a cultural editor and likes art in unusual places. She studied Media Studies, Art History, and German Studies.

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Afterthoughts

While not 112% about vintage postcards, it is a nice essay, and, personally, after having lived in Switzerland for a decade, these scenic images are very nice.

As it happens, I also have a sizeable amount of picture postcards from Switzerland, and tomorrow, we’ll venture to…Geneva