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"In the Year 2000…"

My friend Fipi Lele has provided me with a scan of old German postcards with illustrations depicting what life would be like in the year 2000. I posted one of them below — “Theatre in the Year 2000”:


Click the photo to see all the postcards.

Note how practically everyone in the audience is on the phone, which is pretty much what the movie-watching experience in 2000 was like. It’s eerily prescient.

Joey deVilla

View Comments

  • Even back then, they assumed that we would have flying cars in the year 2000 (see the seventh postcard). What gives?

  • Any idea how old these postcards are, Joey?

    (My fav is the last one, in which the city has a roof over it to keep out the rain and snow.)

  • Note also how all the women have unfeasibly small waists. How could they have known that corsets would still be in fashion in certain circles. ;)

  • I love that everyone is wearing the same fashions 100 years later. I guess they figured they'd never go out of style.

  • Well according to this site, they're from the year 1895-99. Unfortunately the exhibition where these pictures were found doesn't seem to have its website anymore, at least I can't get there. It was called "Turns of the Century" and ran at the "Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe".

    Thanks for these scans. I hope it's okay to use them in school? I'd like to use them for history lessons.

  • It should be okay to use these scans for just about any purpose, as they predate copyright laws. Enjoy!

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