Augustin Playing Cards

Augustin is a Viennese street newspaper sold by people excluded from the formal labour market, providing its vendors with a fair and direct source of income. Around half of the newspaper’s cover price goes directly to the sellers, and the same model was applied to the Augustin Playing Cards, developed in 2021 as an additional support initiative.

The result is a 20-card Schnapsen deck illustrated by Thomas Kriebaum, who has drawn the newspaper’s long-running comic strip Gusterl for over twenty years. The face cards follow the German-suited ranks (B, D, K) and depict Augustin sellers. In a deliberate feminist decision described by editor Claudia Poppe, the gender roles are inverted: Kings portray female vendors, while Dames depict male vendors. The Bube and Ace cards show the animals that often accompany vendors, dogs and cats.

Kriebaum also introduced new suit symbols alongside the traditional Heart: Tschick (Viennese slang for cigarette), Kriagl (beer jug), and a fictional €2.50 coin (Knedl), representing both the price of an Augustin issue and a dialect expression for small change. The illustrations were conceived to reflect the diversity of the vendors and to address the theme of poverty with humour and a degree of self-irony. The deck and folding box were printed by the Viennese playing-card manufacturer Ferd. Piatnik & Söhne. Four supplementary cards accompany the pack: a title card, an introduction to the Augustin newspaper, an explanation of the new suits, and a signature artist’s card with a self-portrait.