Letter Museum

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Letters Museum is the name of a museum project in Berlin that aims to collect and preserve, document and permanently display interesting typographic objects from public space - mostly three-dimensional lettering on buildings. The museum has been located in the Stadtbahn arch at Bellevue station since 2016 , directly in the Hansaviertel district .

The association and its goals

Letters in the open depot
A letter with informational text

Support of the project is in association register of the local court of Berlin-Charlottenburg registered and as a non-profit recognized association Buchstabenmuseum e. V. It was founded on May 20, 2005 and had around 50 members in mid-2009. The chairpersons of the board are Barbara Dechant ( communication designer) and Anja Schulze (active in public relations at the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation ).

Permanent and special exhibitions and guided tours are planned for the museum. In children's programs, the little visitors can literally “grasp” letters. The operators see their project as a cultural, including conservation, task in a situation in which visual design elements that were typical of the cityscape of the 20th century are increasingly disappearing. Traditional, relatively complex manufacturing processes, such as individually crafted three-dimensional fonts with fluorescent tubes , are increasingly being replaced by new technologies such as LEDs , large screens, etc.

In December 2008, over three years collected could fund the public system will be presented. Since then, the exhibits can be viewed regularly. The voluntary operators meanwhile also welcome interested parties from abroad. From 2013 to 2015 the museum was housed in a former HO shop at Jannowitzbrücke station in the Mitte district.

Letters and their stories

The collection comprises around 350 letters or entire logos (as of August 2009). They are up to 2.5 meters high, some of them weigh 100 kg. The exhibits are provided with basic information such as font , date, location, material, etc. In addition, the historical background and special stories associated with individual exhibits are of interest. The following examples can be used for this:

  • The logo of the Hertie department store - cursive, bright red, about two meters long - was symbolically sunk in the water of the Spree by dismissed employees of the insolvent group in front of around 200 guests and representatives of the press . After the lettering was recovered due to the requirement of the Berlin Waterways and Shipping Office , the Letter Museum received it.
  • H, A, U and P - the four large-format letters were used to identify today's Berlin Ostbahnhof when it was still called the Hauptbahnhof. No other Berlin train station has been renamed so often: 1842–1881 Frankfurter Bahnhof , 1881–1950 Schlesischer Bahnhof , 1950–1987 Ostbahnhof , 1987–1998 Hauptbahnhof , since 1998 Ostbahnhof again . The old letters were stored on the site of the historic Wriezen train station nearby and could be taken over from there.
  • An inconspicuous E , made provisionally from cardboard, slightly damaged and sooty, was part of a film decoration. It was part of the labeling of a Parisian cinema (Le Gammar) , an important location in the war drama Inglourious Basterds , which the director Quentin Tarantino shot in 2008 in the Babelsberg film studio near Berlin. After an explosion at the end of the storyline, the damaged letter was left over.
  • The turquoise-blue lettering Zierfische has been part of the street scene at Frankfurter Tor in the East Berlin district of Friedrichshain since 1957 . At the beginning of 2009, the associated zoo and aquarium store had to close. The letter museum endeavored to have the advertising font in the typical design of the 1950s. In contrast to all previous cases, the acquisition was not free of charge here. But with the help of the Rettet die Zierfische donation campaign , the rare piece could be acquired. In general, the previous owners are satisfied when they can get rid of the objects that have become useless at no cost.

Web links

Commons :  Museum of letters - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Further links lead from the website to more than 60 publications about the letter museum, including by: Berliner Rundfunk , Der Tagesspiegel , Berliner Zeitung , Berliner Morgenpost , Zeit online , Goethe-Institut , das tageszeitung , Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg , Kulturradio , Deutschlandfunk and New Germany .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Conrads: Neon past - the letter museum in Berlin . Goethe Institute; Retrieved September 23, 2009
  2. ↑ Blog with information about the opening of the letter museum depot ( Memento of December 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on September 23, 2009
  3. ↑ Sea funeral for Hertie . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 28, 2009.
  4. ↑ Information about the fundraising campaign Save the ornamental fish . Retrieved September 23, 2009

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 12.5 ″  N , 13 ° 20 ′ 42 ″  E