“The Car’s Line Is a Reflection of Its Time”

“The car’s line is a reflection of its time,” Batty Weber (1860–1940) observes in an article in his Abreißkalender dated 10 January 1925. The renowned journalist and writer describes a postcard by photographer and chronicler of the Belle Époque Charles Bernhoeft (1859–1933), which had been rediscovered by chance. Dating from 1903, it shows the first motor car to cross the newly completed Adolphe Bridge.

An English-language caption (“The oldest Auto passing first the New Bridge of Luxembourg”) informs the viewer of the historical significance of the snapshot. The vehicle depicted is a variant of the Benz “Victoria” model (1893–1900), an evolution of the three-wheeled motor car patented by Carl Benz (1885–1886). (See also J. P. Hoffmann’s article “Die Stad Luxemburg und das Automobil” in Ons Stad (70/2002).) The owner of the vehicle was the then well-known owner of Villa Louvigny, “Kleens Jampier” (Jean-Pierre Klein), as Weber calls him.

In his discussion, however, Weber is less interested in such details than in the sociopolitical context that can be read into the image. By the 1920s, the motor car had become a powerful cultural object, reflecting social and technological processes of modernisation while also actively driving them forward. This is particularly evident in the design of the vehicles. “There is nothing about it that betrays the practicality of a tool designed for the greatest possible speed,” Weber observes of the carriage-like vehicle of the turn of the century. Compared with the soft, sweeping lines of interwar automobiles, this “horseless carriage” appears like a “foetus beside an Apollo”.

The title quote above, however, refers not only to vehicle design shaped by the spirit of the age, but also to another sociohistorical development of modernity that helped shape the automobile: the compression of time and space brought about by technological innovation, in other words, the acceleration of everyday life through new means of communication and transport. In another article in his Abreißkalender, for instance, Weber criticises the automotive “frenzy of movement” that has taken hold of “humanity as a transport system” and argues for slower, more conscious movement: “Today we race through the countryside at 50 kilometres an hour and see things and people only in passing. What if, for once, you spent a day travelling through the countryside in one of those Rollefax [beer carts] and once again became slowly and thoroughly aware of what kind of life the people out there are actually leading.”

The greeting written on the BnL copy of the postcard points to another characteristic of the new age of motoring: “Wâr dat do meng. Wat gef dat fred”, the sender writes, clearly admiring the modern vehicle. The longing looks of the passers-by at the roadside also speak volumes. Even in Luxembourg in the later 1920s, the motor car remained a luxury object admired by many but driven by very few. Weber calculates that in 1925 there was one car for every 60 inhabitants. Motoring was still a privilege of the social elites. This was also reflected in the streets, where new power relations emerged between wealthy motorists and (underprivileged) pedestrians. “We must get used to the idea that cars today have at least the same rights as pedestrians. In the city streets, that is; outside them, the car has long since asserted its dominance over the pedestrian,” Weber observes. Elsewhere, he concludes: “Anyone who has forgotten how to keep alert has no right to exist today. […] The street is now a place where killing is no longer murder, and where, under the inexorable law of a new struggle for existence, you must earn the right to live by remaining constantly vigilant.”

This article was originally published in German. The English version was translated using AI and reviewed by the author.