What was a new year only yesterday has already gone old. And here we are, well into the next one. Indeed, it was only last year at this time—or was it the year before?—that I was writing a few comments about another set of these old German postcards, cards which were sent as New Year’s greetings to friends and family a century ago.

But asking where the time has gone, whether from last year to this one, or from the past century to the present, is a waste of time for two reasons.

First, if what our high school physics teacher told us is true (God rest his harried soul) then no matter however transmuted is ever lost. It is conserved in one realization or another. In other words, time must be going somewhere in some form. Who knows, maybe it’s being collected in some great Mason jar in the sky. Or it’s being recycled as traffic jams. Or my daughter’s transatlantic phone calls. The point is nobody knows.

The second reason is that where the time goes isn’t the problem. It’s how fast it goes. Furthermore, it’s not just how fast it goes. It’s that it’s going faster than it did just a few of our years ago. The fact is that when we were younger time actually did go slower. To claim it just seems that way is condescending.

The replication of research results by independent observers in consideration of a stated hypothesis is the fundament of the scientific method. And one thing that has been observed over and over again, by all peoples in this world, over all time, is that time does go by faster when middle-age bellies up.

The concept that the days of our lives are of equal length is, as a result, a primitive and mechanistic conceit. It confuses a convenient standardization concept with what for mankind is reality. It makes believe that we tick out our lives in equal portions of regulated time —as if we were Velveeta in a slicing machine.

Why not just concede that of the different types of time this is but another? We accept Standard Time, for example, in which the days and hours of the day are construed to be of equal length although they really aren’t. We’ve agreed to make believe that within broad arbitrary swaths of the map the sun also rises at the same time.

Which can be compared with Local Apparent Time in which, for instance, it’s noon when the sun is due south from wherever it is we are standing. So on January 1, 2005, when the sun beaming through my noon-mark disk was centered exactly on my noon-mark line—when it was exactly twelve o’sun—the Naval Observatory through my computer was saying it was 12:33 Mountain Standard Time. “You just think it’s High Noon!” I told the sun.

The time we’re talking about, the one that speeds up when you’re older, is not only the-way-it-is time. It’s also, over time, the more important one. Not for getting up early enough to punch in at work. Or for catching a flight at LAX. Or for any such utilitarian chores. But when wishing, say, that we’d stroked more of those long golden strands of time back then when the summers were never ending. Or that we’d spent more time with them when the kids were still at home. Or when we finally understand that Schiller’s “Pfeilschnell ist das Jetzt enflogen” isn’t just poetical, it’s a present perfected truth. The “now” has flown off arrow-swift. Or just when we think about where we’ve been and where we’re hurrying to, as we all tend to do at the end of each new year.

Which reminds me. It was only yesterday that I was writing something about these German postcards that used to be sent out as New Year greetings to friends and family. And we were wishing you all die besten Glückwünsche zum Neuen Jahre.

Figure 1—The little girl with the bottle of bubbly.

This card was posted in Leipzig on 31.12.12—December 31, 1912—to the family Grafe in Dresden. The inscription on the back picks up the message by penning “...we wish to everyone [signed] Mother and Kurt.” A little girl serving up a bottle of no-doubt alcoholic champagne doesn’t fit contemporary mores, needless to say. Nor does hanging a pocket watch from a bough. For when the bough _____, the watch will _____, and it’ll pop that _____, and spew foam over _____!

Figure 2, The night watchman.

This toast to the New Year (with “wishes your friend W. Heilmann” inked in on the front) was mailed in Berlin to Tertianer W. Sawatsky, also in Berlin, on “31.12.06 4-5 N.” It’s a favorite because there’s so much to it and on it. That “4-5 N” on the postmark, for example, indicates that the card was posted between 4 and 5 p.m. It reflects the earlier German convention of using a V (for Vormittag ) and an N (for Nachmittag) which were comparable to our present a.m. and p.m.

Below a grinning full moon, there’s also the tower clock dial with its Arabic numerals written backwards, that is, with an 11 where the 1 normally is, the 10 where the 2 should be, and so on. Even that old address form “Tertianer” speaks of a different time and a different way of life. It indicates that W. Sawatsky was a student in the fourth or fifth class at a Gymnasium—a type of secondary school that restricted admissions to a tiny elite.

Figure 3—The two children with lanterns.

This colorful card with the two small children, their celebratory lanterns and a rocks-round-the-clock clock, is somewhat out of sync with the others. It was posted from Stolberg in the Rhineland on December 31, 1932, between “12-13” to the Heinrich Kind family in Aachen. Signed by Johann, Anny, and the children, it wished them, and Mother as well, a happy new year from their “entire hearts.”

The card is later (and slicker) than the others. But it’s also hard to read today without our thinking about what that old new year of 1933 would bring. Hitler came into power as Chancellor, and three years later that same Rhineland was remilitarized. Yet that’s what we know now, looking back. Anny had just added “I’ll be by on Tuesday.”

Figure 4—Red-winged angel.

This card, with the buxom, red-winged, jolly-green goddess coming out of the clouds to point at the church-tower clock striking twelve as folk young and old enter below, used to be my one of my favorites. First of all, the artwork just glows.

Secondly, it was sent by someone named Paul in Marsbach to a Fräulein named Martha in Obercarsdorf near Dippoldsinswalde, which, incidentally, is only about 10km from Glashütte!

So there’s a secondary horological association however slender. And thirdly, Paul posted the card on 1.1.1915 at 11-12 V. Not the day before as was traditional, but the morning after the night before as was hangoverly. There was a Liebe in his scrawl, but I couldn’t make out his thought. Martha no doubt knew.

So it was a favorite. Until a friend who saw the card said that it looked like the upthrusting Lady in Green had just won the Weight Watchers’ Award, and was pointing at the Scales that showed she’d lost an Amazing 120 kilos as other Contestants entered the TV studios. It made me make a New Year’s resolution to ignore such frippery from friends in the future. And to eat less and walk more.

About the Author

Douglas K. Stevenson is a member of the Antiquarian Horological Society, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chronometrie, and the NAWCC. His e-mail address is duck@catzen.in-berlin.de.