Eisbergfreistadt Panoramische Spielkarte 1923

In 1923, an iceberg drifted into the Baltic Sea and collided with the German port town of Lübeck. From this historical incident emerged the Eisbergfreistadt or Iceberg Free State in which the town’s residents "colonized" the glacier, established new laws, citizenship requirements, and an inflated currency. The short-lived utopian state came to an end when a large masked ball was held to celebrate the creation of the Eisbergfreistadt bank. During the celebration, the iceberg split under the weight with one of the parts drifting towards the arctic and the other melting. Although the creation of the Eisbergfreistadt is an actual historical incident, it is not clear to what extent it actually existed. See the box►

In 2006-2007 two artists - Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, who specialize in fictitious histories set in both the past and future, blurred fact and fiction in a series of exhibitions in the USA and Germany, which told the story of the iceberg using a variety of invented media including newspaper clippings, photographs, postcards, cultural relics, banknotes, and period clothing.

This pack is described as a 2006 facsimile of an original hand-coloured pack printed in Lübeck in 1923 by the Royal Excavation Corps and published as a souvenir for the Iceberg Ball of October 13th 1923 in both German and English editions. However, it is unlikely that such a pack ever existed but is rather the creation of the artists themselves. There are four suits, birds, chimneys, icebergs, and thorns. Together they form a continuous panorama. A printed catalogue illustrating each card accompanies.

Above: “Eisbergfreistadt: panoramische Spielkarte 1923” created by Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick, produced in Germany, 2006. 52 cards + 2 extra cards. The pack was designed as an imaginary souvenir of a fictitious historic event of 1923.

A cautionary tale of environmental disaster is told on the two extra cards (Click to zoom) →