Eigenhändige Visitenkarte an Ignaz Grünberg, wohl Wien, 23. Januar 1927

This file is a brief antiquarian/autograph-catalogue entry, not a sustained essay: its scope is a single autograph visiting card by Viktor Mataja to Ignaz Grünberg, probably written in Vienna on 23 January 1927, followed by duplicated catalogue prose and a rough OCR-like rendering of the card. Its implicit thesis is archival rather than argumentative: the small courtesy note matters because it joins Mataja’s late public persona—economist, statistician, minister, and theorist of advertising—to the contemporary reception of his book on advertising.

Viktor Mataja (1857–1934), Nationalökonom und Politiker.

English translation: Viktor Mataja (1857–1934), economist and politician.

The entry first identifies the object materially and socially: an unsigned visiting card addressed to Grünberg, named as administrative head of the Österreichische Volkszeitung. The quoted message presents Mataja as absent from Vienna and belatedly encountering Grünberg’s article “Die Reklame als Wissenschaft.” Its core gesture is one of acknowledgement: Mataja thanks Grünberg not merely for praise, but for treating advertising as a serious intellectual subject.

Seit geraumer Zeit von Wien abwesend u. auf italienischem Boden habe ich Ihren Aufsatz ‚Die Reklame als Wissenschaft‘ erst verspätet zu Gesicht bekommen.

English translation: Having been away from Vienna for some time and on Italian soil, I only belatedly caught sight of your essay 'Advertising as a Science.'

That sentence is the document’s most revealing passage. It locates the card in a network of press, scholarship, and public life: advertising is not a commercial triviality but a field capable of being discussed “als Wissenschaft.” Mataja’s delayed response also gives the item its epistolary texture—brief, courteous, occasioned by a newspaper essay, and tied to travel or residence abroad.

The catalogue then expands from the note to Mataja’s biography, explaining why his approval of such an article is significant. He is placed first in the academic field, as a political economist associated with Vienna and Innsbruck.

Der Bruder von Emil und Halbbruder von Heinrich Marriot habilitierte sich 1884 für politische Ökonomie und war anschließend Universitätsprofessor in Wien und Innsbruck.

English translation: The brother of Emil and half-brother of Heinrich Marriot habilitated in 1884 in political economy and was subsequently a university professor in Vienna and Innsbruck.

From there, the entry moves through administrative and ministerial offices: the commercial statistical service, the labor statistical office, the Statistical Central Commission, the Ministry of Trade, and the Ministry of Social Welfare. This biographical sequence frames Mataja’s interest in advertising as continuous with statistical, economic, and governmental expertise. The conceptual move is clear: the card is valuable not simply as a signature or social relic, but as evidence of a figure who made markets, public communication, and social administration part of the same intellectual world.

The final biographical sentence makes that point explicit by naming Mataja’s special relevance to the history of advertising:

Daneben machte er sich als Pionier des Werbewesens einen Namen („Die Reklame“, 1910).

English translation: In addition, he made a name for himself as a pioneer of the advertising trade ("Die Reklame," 1910).

The file’s structure reinforces its documentary character. It begins with catalogue data and price, gives the item description and quoted content, repeats the same catalogue entry, then appends a faulty transcription and the printed card text identifying Mataja as former minister, professor, and retired president of the Federal Statistical Office. Read as a whole, the document is a compact witness to the reception of Die Reklame and to the emergence of advertising as a field claiming scientific legitimacy in interwar Austrian public culture.