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Clark University
CENTERS AND INSTITUTES
Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Barry Hoffman Nazi Postcard Collection

How Great is the Prospect of Growing Old Postcard

April 19, 2024

Accession Number: 2022.02.14.36

Stamp: Paul von Hindenburg, the second German President. Medallion set dates December 1933 and February 1936.

Postmark: From the post office of Upper Thomasdorf, Sudetenland

Historical background: The social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany were composed of various ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of “Nordic” or “Aryan” traits at its center. These policies were used to justify the involuntary sterilization and mass-murder of those deemed “undesirable”. Eugenicists had three primary objectives. First, they sought to discover “hereditary” traits that contributed to societal ills. Second, they aimed to develop biological solutions to these problems. Finally, eugenicists sought to campaign for public health measures to combat them. This postcard come from the community to cultivate the life insurance idea to encourage Germans to take care of their health in order to live to 100 because “How great is the prospect of growing old?”

[Front]Staircase representing how people age from 20 to 100.

[Back]Unused back of a postcard with a stamp and postmark

Front

The text at the top of the postcards reads, “How great is the prospect of growing old?” Under the text is an illustration of a staircase with age levels from 20 to 80 years old. Ten 20 year olds starting at the bottom to represent “100 twenty-year-olds start their life together.” The amount of people decrease as they move further up the stair case. To the right of the stair case there are statistics at each decade.
At 30 it reads, “94 reach the age of 30 out of 100.”
At 40 it reads, “86 reach the age of 40 out of 100.”
At 50 it reads, “75 reach the age of 50 out of 100.”
At 60 it reads, “58 reach the age of 60 out of 100.”
At 70 it reads, “35 reach the age of 70 out of 100.”
At 80 it reads. “11 reach the age of 80 out of 100.”

Back

The back of the postcard is unused with a stamp and a postmark.

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