Letter delivery
The mail delivery is the delivery of a letter by the respective authorized carriers to the mail recipient .
Delivery from the Prussian postal administration to the German Reichspost
In the Prussian postal administration, it was initially left to the recipient to regularly inspect the post office cards that had been posted in the post offices since 1680 and to collect the items. At the request of the customers, the postmasters had the shipments delivered by private servants , against payment of the order three (3 pfennigs) or order cruisers, which the messenger kept for his services. The delivery of so-called "local mailings" in the place of posting, in the local or rural delivery district, as well as in neighboring local traffic against the delivery fee was permitted if the capacity of the messenger's bag allowed it.
From this the postman business developed . The postman is named in a postal order from 1710. Since 1712, letters were ordered to the recipients in Berlin. The letters had to be kept ready for collection at the post office for a while and were only removed after a certain period of time. The postmaster paid his postman from the delivery fee. A note (which was used to report the arrival of valuables and parcels) usually had to pay 6 pfennigs, for a letter in town 3 pfennig and to the suburbs 6 pfennigs.
The postage tax regulation of 1824 put the delivery fee for letters up to 16 lots (≈250 g) on ½ silver groschen (Sgr.), For heavier letters, notes (for items of value) and addresses (for parcels) with 1 Sgr. fixed and charged them to the post office. There was a city postal service from 1810 in Bavaria, 1827 in Prussia and in Württemberg in 1844 (under Thurn und Taxis). In 1856, Saxony banned a local service wherever the post office maintained one, while Württemberg, Bavaria and Prussia gave private companies a free hand.
According to the regulations of 1852, the post office was obliged to deliver normal and registered letters, parcel addresses (letters accompanying normal parcels) as well as receipts for valuables and delivery receipts for letters with cash payment. The postal law of 1862 abolished the local letter delivery fee for printed matter, postage-free letters and other postage-paid letters, and in 1864 also for postage-paid letters that were not postage paid. In Bavaria the conditions were similar, here too the courier was paid for with the order money. The local broadcasts are taxed like normal long-distance letters.
A delivery fee of 1 Kreuzer was levied in Württemberg, which was also payable when the letter was picked up. This delivery fee was lifted in 1851 when it was taken over into the state enterprise for the second time. Local letters were taxed like long-distance letters. In contrast to other administrations, Prussia (since 1852), Braunschweig (since 1863) and Hamburg also had a discount system for larger quantities of location letters that were posted at the counter at the same time, franked. In Berlin this regulation lasted until 1875.
Private local transport was banned in the Reich territory on April 1, 1900.
Monopoly of mail delivery
In the German Reich, from April 1, 1900, mail delivery was declared a monopoly of the Reichspost . This monopoly position lasted over a hundred years and was exercised by the Deutsche Bundespost and the Deutsche Post of the GDR , and after privatization by Deutsche Post AG until the postal monopoly was liberalized .
There was a special fee for location letters in the GDR and West Berlin until July 1, 1990.
Todays situation
Posting of letters and types of delivery
In the German-speaking countries and many EU countries, letters are posted either by collection from the sender, by dropping them off at a post office (post office, post office) or by dropping them in a mailbox . This is followed by collection and transfer to a delivery base or letter center, where the mail is sorted according to routing regions and sent to the relevant delivery point or letter center. This is where the distribution to the individual deliverers takes place, who distribute the items in their catchment area. If this is not possible, Deutsche Post AG has a mail dispatch center in Marburg .
Development of state monopolies
Since the liberalization of the market in Germany (the gradual abolition of the postal monopoly since 1991, the abolition of the letter delivery monopoly on December 31, 2007), private postal companies in Germany can also deliver letters and parcels.
Other EU countries with the postal market liberalized in 2008 are Finland, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden.
In Austria, the opening should take place by January 1, 2011. The same date applies to the EU countries Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.
The EU states Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Cyprus have until January 1, 2013 to completely abolish their postal monopolies and to create the conditions for private delivery services.
In Switzerland, the postal monopoly was further weakened on October 22, 2008 by allowing private mail carriers to send letters weighing 50 grams or more. Before that, the limit was 100 grams.
In the USA there is still a complete monopoly on mail delivery for US mail . United States Postal Service has been profitable for many years and has lower fees than the privatized German Post. Parcel delivery, on the other hand, is completely privatized. House mailboxes in the USA are often only accessible to the USPS postman .
Russia's postal company, which is also state-owned, has been operating at a deficit for years. In 2006 the losses were 2.5 billion rubles (then about 68 million euros), in 2007 they were 3.9 billion rubles (about 105 million euros). The main reason for the losses is the fact that the state has kept tariffs artificially low for postal services, so that only half of the costs can be covered by income. From the top of the post office there are plans for a conversion of the state enterprise into a state stock corporation and the desire for freedom of collective bargaining. The long delivery times of the Potschta Rossii of ten days and longer are now considered a serious economic obstacle, as it severely hampers mail order.
literature
- Manual dictionary of the postal system , 2nd edition, 1953, pp. 821–826
- German traffic newspaper ; 1926, p. 327 ff.
- WH Matthias, presentation of the postal system in the Kgl. Prussian States, Wilh. Diederici, Berlin 1816
- Brunner: The postal system in Bavaria in its historical development from its beginnings to the present, self-published, Munich 1900
- Statistics of the RPV 1881, p. 55 ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Felicitas Wilke: Letters delivery: wrong address, sender unknown. In: Zeit Online. February 14, 2018, accessed February 22, 2018 .