24.00 USD
Great image of Hedwig Reicher portraying Salome. Such superb resolution and contrast in this radium card. In a previous listing of another of her images, we described Fraulein Reicher as an opera singer. Our mistake. There was a famous German opera diva by that same name, but from a previous generation of performers.
This Hedwig, born in 1884, was an actress on the stage, and later in film as well. She was the daughter of Emanuel Reicher, a famous German character actor.
At the Stadt Theater in Berlin, at the age of fifteen, she played the role of Nora, in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House," and was still in her teens when, as pictured here, she played Salome, again in Berlin, to her father's King Herod.
That would put the production in 1903 at the latest, but because we can't know for certain, we'll date this image circa 1905.
Salome was one of her favorite characters. "I see Salome as a pure flame," was the way she put it in one interview.
She was also very much involved in the suffragette movement, and is shown in a photograph of suffrage activists in Washington a few years later, in a ***not for sale*** image at the end of our listing images. The following quote describes the image:
"German actress Hedwig Reicher wearing costume of "Columbia" with other suffrage pageant participants standing in background in front of the Treasury Building, March 3, 1913, Washington, D.C. The pageant featured an allegory in which Columbia summoned Justice, Charity, Liberty, Peace, and Hope to review the new crusade of women."
Thanks for that, Wikipedia!.
In the 1920s Fraulein Reicher embarked on a career as a film actress here in the USA, and appeared in a number of movies, making the transition to the talkies easily, but without ever achieving the level of fame she had decades earlier on the stage.. Fraulein Reicher passed away in Los Angeles in 1971.
This card was printed on radium bromide treated paper. Radium bromide is the salt of radium produced when separating radium from uranium ore. It is radioactive, but this card does not glow under an ultraviolet bulb any more than an ordinary postcard, so no worries:) In fact when we first ran across radium bromide paper, we borrowed a friend's geiger counter, just for fun, and it registered no cool clicky noises like in "The Satan Bug," or "Them," sigh. The radium really does seem to lend a certain vibrancy though, particularly to hand-colored images, and a richness to untinted ones.
Really a lovely card! Please examine our high res scans for detail.
Postage is for first class shipping in a secure photo mailer, and we happily combine shipping on all paper goods. If you purchase two cards, we will refund the postage on the second card, and when you purchase three or more cards from us at the same time, your shipping will be entirely free, except for international orders which, because of sudden increases in international shipping rates will still be charged one card's shipping fees on orders of three or more.
And please come visit our blog at:
redpoulaine.blogspot.com
where we post biographical and historical tidbits, images of cards and photographs for sale, some already sold but remembered fondly, related images of historical interest and sometimes even images of items that have not yet arrived in the shop, but that are expected to arrive soon, as well as coupon codes, links to other related sites, and more!