This just gets better all the time ... let me see if I can add a few tidbits of info ...
"Probably he who has the last hour of life in front of his eyes." In this case most likely the good looking young maiden having her "last dance with death." Beautiful, obscenely ugly, young, old and in-between, I guess sooner or later we all take our turn to have that final dance ..?
A very Nouveau flavor to your next card, though, I don't think too awfully strange for that date. I've seen lots of Jugendstil illustrations that combine natural overtones with the fantastic, like this oddfellow. Perhaps an elf, woodnymph or satyr-like being? If that was my daughter I wouldn't want her anywhere near this old boy, possibly a take on Beauty and the Beast? Quite unique.
The last one is my personal favorite of this group - definitely German. "Deutschland über Alles," underneath the sword pommel pretty much clinches that. As to the warrior or maybe even king, my first instinct says Charlemagne, or possibly even Wotan in disguise as he often did? The two crows could lend a bit of credence to that, Wotan's spies were a pair of crows, Hugin and Munin. Great image and a nice painting!
Do you guys know the work of John Heartfield? I really like his photomontage compositions and I'll see if I can find a couple of his relevant works.
In the meantime I wanted to ask, how did you come to choose these particular cards and bookplates to purchase for your collection? Was there a particular theme in mind? These are all a bit out of the ordinary from average imperial postcard collections. Well done and thanks for sharing them.
