When UNamur told its story in postcards

This article is taken from the March 2025 "The Day When" section of Omalius magazine.

Who hasn't been delighted to discover a postcard in their letterbox? Today, as in the past, this little piece of cardboard circulates over distances of varying length, letting people know, in pictures and a few words, that we're being thought of. Although the use of postcards is declining these days due to competition from digital communications, they have long played a fundamental communicative role in our society. As soon as they were launched in Austria in 1869 (they arrived in Belgium two years later), they met with great success, which lasted at least until the Second World War. They were often used to make appointments, to acknowledge receipt of a parcel, or simply to check on a loved one. Very quickly, amateurs became passionate about these documents, which were accessible to all due to their modest price, and built up veritable collections of them.

From the 1890s onwards, chromolithographic or photographic views replaced the advertising content that had prevailed until then. These images were invaluable testimonials: illustrated newspapers were expensive (and therefore inaccessible to the majority), and cinema was still in its infancy at the beginning of the 20th century. The postcard thus became an eminently popular medium. It was not uncommon to have individual or family portraits printed in postcard format and sent to friends and family, at a time when the camera was not the everyday object it is today. In most cases, the image chosen by the sender indicated to the recipient the place from which the card had been sent: those featuring remarkable landscapes or monuments were therefore particularly sought-after.

The thousands of postcards preserved at the BUMP, more than 3,000 of which are already digitized on the library's digitization portal (https://neptun.unamur.be/), thus enable us to discover the face of various Belgian cities at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The BUMP collection includes, among others, over 400 digitized maps depicting Namur at that time: the city is revealed through panoramas taken from the citadel, photographs of its most famous buildings (the cathedral, the citadel, the theater, the train station...) or views of the Sambre, the Meuse or the Rochers des Grands-Malades (between Namur and Beez).

Among this set of views of Namur are twenty-three postcards that reveal the university campus as it was in 1937. The series was produced, probably at the request of the institution, by Namur photographer Jean Lemaire (1891-1967), who was renowned for his portraits and for his work on heritage. The series was so successful that it was republished several times, with the addition of a few new images. The postcards show the infrastructures that once housed the Faculties' research and teaching activities. These include the dome of the historic astronomical observatory, which stood on the site of today's Observatoire Antoine Thomas sj at UNamur, and the facade of the library, then located on rue Grafé. While the appearance of some buildings has changed relatively little, this is not the case, for example, with the former Faculty of Science, also immortalized in the series, which has since been demolished and replaced by a more modern construction.

Jean Lemaire's photographs also highlight the spaces that were made available to students and staff. Several shots show the appearance of the auditoriums of the time, already equipped with folding seats, and the practical rooms, such as the microscopy room (image 1) or the physics and chemistry laboratories. The stacks and consultation room of the Belles Lettres library, from which several readers can be seen (image 2), also come into view. Places devoted to moments of relaxation are not forgotten: several views thus immortalize the bar (image 3), the refectory, the billiard room or even the circle room.

The series of postcards allows us to identify and date the scientific and educational equipment used at the time. Alongside Mendeleïev's tables and other didactic panels, the shots show several instruments used by chemists or physicists, including an Atwood machine, which made it possible to reduce the acceleration of motion and verify the laws of falling bodies. We also discover the use of "Brendel" models, splendid papier-mâché teaching aids used in the botany study room (image 4), or that of a "repro camera", which was used to obtain extremely precise photographic reproductions, for example, of scientific and technical drawings. While many of these pieces are now preserved at the BUMP (such as the botanical models) or within the departments concerned, others have disappeared over time and are known only through this series of photographs.

The collection of postcards preserved at the BUMP thus constitutes a precious testimony to the society that saw their birth. Vectors of a major social and emotional bond in the 19th and 20th centuries, these little pieces of cardboard provide irreplaceable documentation on the history of the city and the University of Namur, and document a societal practice that is almost obsolete today, in the age of the instantaneous and digital. This collection is now freely accessible, via the BUMP digitization portal, to anyone curious about our heritage.

Olivier Latteur