Berliner Packetfahrt Gesellschaft
The Berliner Packetfahrt-Gesellschaft (temporarily Neue Berliner Omnibus- und Packetfahrt-Actiengesellschaft or Berliner Packetfahrt Aktien-Gesellschaft ) was a Berlin- based transport company that developed into one of the largest private postal services in the German Empire at the end of the 19th century . Over 120 postage stamps and numerous postal stationery envelopes and cards that were issued by the company for local mail are now sought-after collectibles among philatelists and those interested in local history.
Historical background
According to the law on the postal system of the North German Confederation of November 2, 1867, ordering city letters did not come under the obligation to post. Only when transporting "all sealed, sewn up or otherwise closed letters" and "all newspapers with political content that appear more than once a week" was there, provided that this transport "against payment from places with a post office to other places with a post office of the In - or abroad ”, a monopoly of the state postal service .
This regulation, which was reflected in the Reichspost Law of October 28, 1871, was used by enterprising business people and set up private postal services in various German cities, some of which developed into serious competitors of the state post offices. In the period from 1886 to 1900 there were more than 250 private post offices in 170 German cities. The economic pressure that some of these companies exerted on the state post became so great over the years that the German Reichstag, on December 20, 1899, at the urging of the State Secretary in the Reich Post Office, Count von Podbielski with an amendment to the Reich Post Law, stopped the operation of the banned private postal services throughout the German Reich on April 1, 1900.
The compensation to be paid was also regulated by law. Compensation of around six million marks was paid to the owners of the 84 private postal companies that existed at the time , “for actual loss and lost profit”. In addition, there were severance payments for employees and postmen, based on the level of their respective income and length of employment, which the state postal administration could not cover. Ultimately, the total of the payments to be made amounted to 8.2 million marks. Of this, the Deutsche Reichspost accounted for 7,450,000 marks, the Royal Bavarian Post 440,000 marks and the Royal Württembergische Post 320,000 marks.
With the amendment of the Postal Act around 1900, the view that the postal system was an intrinsic task of the state, which could not serve to generate profit and therefore should not be exposed to free competition , prevailed for many years. In Germany they remained connected to her until the beginning of the 21st century. The state postal monopoly in Germany only came to an end with the lifting of the exclusive licenses for Deutsche Post AG on December 31, 2007. Since then, numerous other postal service providers have established themselves on the German market in addition to Deutsche Post AG . The complete liberalization of the European postal market should take place by January 1, 2013.
founding of the company
In August 1883, the Berlin entrepreneurs Kappel and von Lindheim founded a "haulage company for the transport of goods with and without value insurance including the associated Incasso". Success did not materialize and the company was discontinued a year later.
The Berliner Packetfahr-Gesellschaft Berlin S, Alexandrinenstrasse 93 , started with the same business idea, but much more successfully, and was entered in the Berlin commercial register on February 13, 1884. After just one year, around 11,000 shipments were being transported every day. Above all, it was the low tariffs and the fast delivery that made this parcel expedition interesting for customers throughout Berlin. Operating under the name Neue Berliner Omnibus- und Packetfahrt-Actiengesellschaft since January 12, 1886 , the company has continuously expanded its business areas. In addition to the parcel service, the company was now also involved in the field of passenger transport. From 1887 to 1894, Berliner Packetfahrt operated five bus routes in Berlin. The expansion into a large private post office was increasingly pursued. For this purpose, a comprehensive offer was developed that was geared to the interests of customers and was superior to that of the Deutsche Reichspost in many respects. From 1894 - after the cessation of passenger transport - the company then concentrated primarily on the inner-city postal service under the name Berliner Packetfahrt Aktien-Gesellschaft .
Post delivery offers
Within the Berlin urban area, the Berliner Packetfahrt-Gesellschaft carried postcards for 2 pfennigs (Reichspost: 5 pfennigs) and letters for 3 pfennigs (Reichspost: 10 pfennigs). Customers with a larger volume of mail also received a discount . In addition, previously unknown services such as direct mail were introduced . Card letters with stamp imprints - which the Reichspost did not offer until November 1, 1897 - were extremely popular with customers. Also new is the postal catchment of invoices (were debt collection ) and delivery of printed matter and newspapers on the basis of address lists. The specially marked mailboxes set up throughout the city were regularly emptied; on weekdays the post four times, on Sunday held twice. There was also a courier service.
Around 10,000 customers took advantage of the offer to have the envelopes, cards and wrappers printed with their own text or images printed free of charge.
The orientation towards the needs of the customer was also evident in the varied design of the postage stamps and postal stationery . A total of 124 different postage stamps were issued by the company, the majority of which were produced in the Giesecke and Devrient printing plant in Leipzig . When issuing the postage stamps and postal stationery, the interests of a steadily growing group of stamp collectors were orientated towards them.
Economic success
The favorable conditions, the diverse offers and a convincing service were increasingly recognized by the Berlin population. By the year 1889, the number of inner-city items carried by private mail rose to 89 million. In comparison, the Reichspost only brought it to 77 million.
In 1899, the company owned over 500 acceptance points and around 2500 mailboxes in all parts of Berlin. 18 distribution and ordering offices, in which around 3,100 employees, 1,700 of them as sorters and 986 as postmen, ensured that the mail was transported quickly and reliably.
The economic success of the Berliner Packetfahrt was also evident in the company's superiority over other private postal companies. In the years 1886 and 1897, the Berlin transport authority Hansa I , the Berlin transport authority Hansa II , the Deutsche Privat-Post Lloyd , the Berliner Privatpost und Speditions-AG and a number of smaller companies were founded in the capital of Berlin . Many of them had to close again after a short time, sometimes after a few weeks, or were taken over by Berliner Packetfahrt - like the Berliner Verkehrsanstalt Hansa I and Berliner Privatpost und Spedition AG .
Even a Berlin street post introduced by the Berlin Post Office in 1889 did not prove to be a serious competitor to the Berlin parcel service. The horse-drawn mail wagons of the street post, which were in use from November 1st, ran on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. on 11 a.m. from the Berlin C.2 city post office. outgoing mail lines and carried letters and postcards. Mailboxes on the mail car were supposed to enable the customer to drop mail on the move, but the whole thing turned out to be far too inconvenient and dangerous. The officers working in the swaying mail cars were also barely able to process the mail properly. In order to have their hands free to work, they had to buckle up firmly while driving over the sometimes miserable Berlin pavement. The Berlin street post remained an episode in the city's postal history. With the dissolution of the private postal services in 1900, the service was stopped immediately. The goal of building state competition with the private postal service with the help of road mail was never achieved. This plan failed because of the higher postal rates of the Reichspost, which were not compromised.
In the last few years of its existence, the Berliner Packetfahrt Gesellschaft realized around 60 percent of Berlin's local letter traffic. The economic strength was also shown by the legally enforced closure of the company on March 31, 1900. The shareholders of the Berliner Packetfahrt Gesellschaft were compensated with 2.7 million marks.
After the ban on private mail delivery, the company concentrated again on parcel services. At the same time, the freight forwarding area was expanded significantly. Even before the First World War , the Schenker company took over shares in the Berliner Packetfahrt Gesellschaft, and this stake was expanded considerably in the 1920s. In the 1930s, Berliner Packetfahrt was one of the largest freight forwarding companies in Berlin.
literature
- Fritz Steinwasser: Berliner Post. Events and memorabilia since 1237. transpress VEB publishing house for traffic, Berlin 1988.
- Horst Müller: Foreword. In: Michel-Privatpostmarken-Spezial-Katalog 2005/2006. Schwaneberger Verlag GmbH, Unterschleißheim 2005.
- Horst Müller: Postal stationery catalog of the German private post 1873-1914, part Aachen-Dresden. Witten 2009.
- Hans Meier zu Eissen: The German private post offices. Volume I, Aachen to Berlin, Verlag Richard Boreck, Braunschweig 1979 (extended new edition 2000).
- Carl Schmidt: Handbook of the German private postage stamps. 2 volumes, Noske Verlag, Borna 1939.
- Vol. 1. Brands u. their cancellations, test prints, reprints, reprints, forgeries, as well as the corresponding tariffs and the like. a.
- Vol. 2. Cards, card letters, envelopes, wrappers, golden instructions, collection cards, parcel addresses, etc. a.
- Heinz Frost, Horst Liskien, Horst Müller: The stamps of the German private post offices 1873-1945. , Witten 2010.
Web links
- ARGE Privatpost Merkur im BDPh e. V.
- Private mail at the end of the 19th century as a classic collecting area
- For private mail in general and specifically in Mannheim, homepage of the postage stamp collectors association Mannheim e. V.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Brief outline by Horst Müller on the private post offices ( memento of the original from December 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.3 MB)
- ↑ Cancellation of licensing ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ A b c Fritz Steinwasser: Berliner Post. Events and memorabilia since 1237. transpress VEB Verlag für Verkehrwesen, Berlin 1988, p. 301 ff.
- ^ ARGE Privatpost-Merkur
