Museum for Communication Berlin
 Museum of Communication |
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| Data | |
|---|---|
| place | 10117 Berlin , Leipziger Strasse 16 |
| Art |
Post and Communication Museum
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| architect | Ernst Hake , Otto Techow and Franz Ahrens |
| opening | 1872 |
| Website | |
| ISIL | DE-MUS-813910 |
The Museum for Communication Berlin is one of several locations of the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunications , a federal foundation under public law . It is located in the Mitte district of Berlin in the building of the former Reichspostmuseum on Leipziger Strasse and the corner of Mauerstrasse . The building has been a listed building since 1977 .
The building
Reichspostmuseum
The Reichspostmuseum, the predecessor of today's museum, was founded in 1872 by Heinrich von Stephan , the postmaster general of the German Empire . It was one of the first museums for the history of technology in the world and was given the comprehensively defined mandate to " illustrate in terms of cultural history the development of transport from ancient times to the very latest ".
The building on Leipziger Strasse was built between 1871 and 1874, initially as an imperial post office , which also housed the new collection. The architect was Carl Schwatlo , who was responsible for numerous buildings for the imperial post office . At the opening, Kaiser Wilhelm I gave an appreciative judgment: “Good! Pure and simply worthy style! "
Between 1893 and 1897 the house was expanded according to plans by architects Ernst Hake , Otto Techow and Franz Ahrens and turned into the Reichspostmuseum.
Since 1895 there has been an almost six-meter-high sculpture by Ernst Wenck on the roof above the main entrance - giants encompass the globe, an allegory of the global importance of post and telecommunications. In the Berlin vernacular , the massive building was also jokingly known as the Post Coliseum or the Stephan Circus (after the postmaster general).
The museum was closed during the two world wars. Due to the Allied air raids from 1943 and intensive house-to-house fighting during the Battle of Berlin in April 1945, the building suffered severe damage during World War II . After the end of the war , only the surrounding walls were left.
Postal Museum of the GDR
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After the end of the war, the ruins were in the Soviet sector of Berlin, on the territory of East Berlin . When a small postal museum was to be opened in the Urania building in West Berlin in 1966 - a new Bundespostmuseum came to Frankfurt am Main in 1958 - work began on the old location on Leipziger Strasse. The result was initially a stamp exhibition in a very limited space in the same year. In April 1960, the Postal Museum was reopened with a permanent exhibition on the development of postal and telecommunications in departments on the history of the postal system, telegraphy and telephony, and radio and television with devices, models and equipment. The exhibition area was expanded in the following years. In 1964, a permanent stamp exhibition opened on the first floor of the building. With a view to the 750th anniversary of Berlin in 1987, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED decided in 1981 to completely rebuild the building of the old Reichspostmuseum and to reopen it as the GDR Postal Museum . However, work according to plans by the architect Klaus Niebergall was delayed and in 1987 only part of the planned exhibition space was available. The remaining construction work was not completed until 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall , with the reconstruction of the atrium .
Museum of Communication
In 1992, the architectural office Henze & Vahjen was commissioned to restore the building according to historical preservation criteria and to develop a new usage concept. The preservation of the original building fabric had priority. The initially planned restoration of components that no longer exist - such as the two decorative towers on the side of the roof of the entrance facade - was not done. An extension on Leipziger Strasse, built in the 1980s, has been adapted in terms of storey heights to the main building. A new basement was built under the atrium for the greatest treasures of the house, including the world's most famous postage stamp, the Blue Mauritius . The topping-out ceremony took place in September 1997 ; the group of giants, recreated according to a small original model in the old size, was installed again above the main entrance. The construction work was completed in August 1999 and the building, which was completed for 60 million marks , was handed over to the users. On March 17, 2000, the then Federal President Johannes Rau opened the Museum for Communication.
Detail of the facade
View into the atrium
Details in the atrium
Details of the dome and the architecture in the atrium
The collection
history
The extensive collection claim of the Reichspostmuseum required “first of all the objects, devices and models used in post and telegraphy [to collect], but then also pictorial representations [...] and other products that relate to literature, communications and the transport facilities of everyone Relate times and peoples. ”From this task, an extremely extensive and valuable collection developed in the following decades. The museum not only presented historical objects, but also presented the newly developed technologies such as airmail , radio, video telegraphy and television.
During the Second World War, the collection was decimated and torn apart. Many of the exhibits that remained in the house did not survive the war. Most of the most important parts of the collection had been relocated to Waltershausen Castle in Bavaria . After the end of the war, the responsible American military administration refused to hand them over to the postal authorities of the Soviet occupation zone , on whose territory the Berlin Museum was located, and in 1947 handed the holdings over to the Deutsche Post (West). The Bundespostmuseum , which opened in Frankfurt am Main in 1958, developed from this . As a precautionary measure, the most valuable copies of the stamp collection were brought to Eisleben , now Saxony-Anhalt , before the end of the war . In the post-war turmoil , the holdings were plundered and the most valuable pieces disappeared. When they reappeared in 1976, the GDR made a claim. It was only after German reunification in 1990 that the stamps were returned to the Philately Archives .
In addition to the Federal Postal Museum, there were a number of regional postal museums and smaller collections in the Federal Republic. In 1995, as part of the comprehensive postal reform, they were separated from the newly created companies Deutsche Post AG and Deutsche Telekom AG and combined as the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunications in a foundation under public law.
Current situation
The museum in Berlin is also run by this foundation. It is primarily focused on the history of the postal service. At other locations, other thematic focuses are looked after, for example the history of telecommunications in Frankfurt . The Berlin collection consists of three departments:
- Transportation history and traffic. Here you will find, for example, vehicles such as carriages , rail mail cars and motor vehicles, as well as cartographic objects and items from payment transactions .
- History of the Post and its successor companies, archive and photo collection. These include post office signs, uniforms, letter boxes , postage stamp machines and sorting facilities, materials on architecture and furnishings, advertising measures and social facilities.
- History of correspondence, with letters and postcards, writing culture devices (writing tools and furniture, seals , etc.), printing blocks , stamps and postage stamp designs .
For reasons of space, the collection departments are not completely housed in the actual museum buildings. Addresses and further information can be found on the museum's website.
The tradition of the museum library goes back to the time of the Reichspostmuseum. An extensive collection of postal history and philatelic works already existed there. After several closings, relocations and relocations due to renovations, both the library and the library's archive with a holdings of approx. 95,000 volumes found their final place in the museum building in March 2000. The library is open to the public Tuesday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Exploded view of a stagecoach by the artist Stefan Sous
Showcase
Exhibition wall with mailboxes
Showcase with tubes
Berlin Phone Booth Memorial Park
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See also
literature
- Sigrid Randa-Campani (Ed.): … Simply worthy style! From the Reichspostmuseum to the Museum for Communication (= catalogs of the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunication . Volume 6 ). Umschau, Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-8295-7026-0 .
- Joachim Kallinich (Ed.): Message of Things (= catalogs of the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunications . Volume 18 ). Edition Braus, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-89904-056-2 .
Web links
- Museum for Communication Berlin
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List: Reichspostamt, Reichspostmuseum
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Website of the Museum Foundation Post and Telecommunications. In: museumsstiftung.de , accessed on May 14, 2018.
- ↑ Museum tour. Museum of Communication. In: stadtentwicklung.berlin.de. Berlin State Monument Authority, archived from the original ; accessed on May 14, 2018 .
- ↑ Ernst Hake. In: Structurae , accessed May 14, 2018.
- ^ Helmut Schönfeld: The Berlin colloquial language in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Joachim Schildt, Hartmut Schmidt (Ed.): Berlinisch. Historical introduction to the language of a city. Akademie-Verlag, East Berlin 1986, pp. 214–298, here: p. 254.
- ↑ Negro drum and telegraph . In: Berliner Zeitung , April 7, 1960, p. 8
- ^ Auctioned on November 5, 2002 in favor of UNICEF in the "Museum for Communication" in Berlin. In: buddy-baer.com, accessed on May 14, 2018.
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 35 ″ N , 13 ° 23 ′ 13 ″ E