Soldiers’ Life in Picture Postcards

For half a century now, Sebestyén Imre has been searching and purchasing picture postcards. With his collection of a quarter of a million, arranged into 37 topics, the former youth protection investigator is the greatest private collector in the country. He is a member of the National Postcard Collectors Club; he has exhibited some tiny parts of his valuable collection more than 200 times.

On the HUNFILA International Picture Postal Card Exhibition he wins the first prize every year straight from 2004, and often he also brings home the special prize of the jury and of the audience.

His picture postcards showing the happy and less happy moments of the soldier’s life were on display in July in Szabadszállás, at the exhibition organised by the local club of pensioners. The memories of an era that almost vanished into the mist of the past come to life when reading the lines put on the war cards, on the reverse side of the photos taken at the front, on the censured army postcards, and on the humorous cards sent just a few decades ago.

Sebestyén Imre told us: though he did have earlier military picture postcards, he only embarked upon the thematic collection of these after the official termination of the conscription. At that time he thought that perhaps by means of his initiative also those young people can familiarise themselves with the life and heroism of the soldier’s life, the horrors of war and the sunny side of the army life, who have never put on the uniform yet.

On the occasion of the exhibition it soon turned out that even the elderly generation gladly lingers on the pictures, as the picture postal cards with military topics have almost entirely disappeared: they are hardly available in second-hand bookshops, mostly some pieces come to the Ecseri Market from the inheritance of some elderly collectors.

Photos by the author

(Click on our gallery to see the most beautiful pieces of the picture card collection.)