English: Clifton & Co.

Mumbai Bombay c. 1903 Collotype Divided back 13.80x8.90cm

Who knows what motivated the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig to send this postcard to Miss Hirschfeld in Vienna from Bombay on December 30, 1908? The 27-year old Zweig, a budding novelist whose popularity after World War I was unparalleled among German writers, mailed it to Miss Hirschfeld just after having heard that she was to be engaged: [Recto] “Most honored Miss. I greet you many times still as a Miss – with your understanding I hope.” [Verso] “I wish you luck for Hannover over everything else. For myself, I can wish for nothing more than India – it is incredibly wonderful and terrific.” Handwritten on the front of another card, unsent: “This is the celebrated Tower of Silence where the Parsees put their dead + the vultures eat all the flesh off them You can see them waiting around the walls for their dinner I saw about 200 of these birds feeding on a dead body in the Hooghley just recently.” Many versions of this postcard were published by different publishers and mailed as late as 1952 from Mumbai.

Source: Stefan Zweig, Ansichtskarten Aus Indien [Postcards from India], Herausgegeben von Erich Fitzbauer, p. 4-5, at the New York Public Library, New York. Translated from German.