Pneumatic post in Berlin
The pneumatic tube system in Berlin existed from November 18, 1865 to 1963 in West Berlin and in East Berlin until 1976.
history
Beginnings
In 1861 a pneumatic pneumatic tube system was installed in the Central Telegraph Office of London to carry telegrams. The Royal Prussian Telegraph Directorate awarded Siemens & Halske the contract to build a pneumatic tube system for Berlin. The first line of pneumatic dispatching of dispatches began on November 18, 1865 and ran between the first main telegraph office (HTA in Französische Strasse 33b / c) and the telegraph station in the Berlin stock exchange (Burgstrasse / Neue Friedrichstrasse , later listed as HTA 2) . This made the actual impetus for the development of the pneumatic tube system clear: It was about the fast transport of stock exchange listings that arrived at the main telegraph office from home and abroad or were to be sent around the world from the Berlin stock exchange .
On March 2, 1868, the telegraph offices IV at the Brandenburg Gate and V at Potsdamer Platz were connected to the now 18 km long network. On December 1, 1876, the network expanded to 15 pneumatic post offices and a total length of 25.9 km was made accessible to the general public. Postcards and letters up to a weight of 20 grams (maximum size: 14 cm × 9 cm) could be sent.
Development up to 1945
In 1940 the Berlin pneumatic tube network reached its greatest expansion with a maximum route length of almost 400 km. 79 post and telegraph offices were connected and at that time processed around 8 million mailings a year. The operation of the Berlin pneumatic tube system as a publicly accessible system for transmitting messages was finally discontinued in 1976. In East Berlin , telegrams were still sent to the delivery offices by pneumatic tube until 1986. An analysis of the route plan of the Berlin pneumatic post shows that the development of the network first served economic interests. It was the connection between the main telegraph office and the stock exchange that was followed by the expansion of the pneumatic tube network into the newspaper district and the banking district . Later even the sparsely populated upper and lower middle class residential districts as well as the residential areas of the west (Charlottenburg, Grunewald, Lichterfelde, Schöneberg, Wilmersdorf, Zehlendorf) were connected, while the distinct working-class districts (Kreuzberg, Lichtenberg, Neukölln, Wedding) and the formerly still clearly rural dominated urban districts on the periphery received little or no pneumatic tube connection.
Pneumatic post service and destruction until May 8, 1945
During the Second World War, Allied air raids destroyed or damaged parts of the pneumatic tube system. However, the operation of some pneumatic tube routes in the center of Berlin is documented until the end of March 1945. The pneumatic post in Berlin remained in operation de jure until the surrender of the German Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945. The express courier service of the Post, on the other hand, was discontinued on August 14, 1944 due to the shortage of staff and an extremely high volume of mail.
State on May 8, 1945
Development since 1945
The effects of the war, illegal dismantling for the extraction of old materials, dismantling as reparations payments and weather influences left only one torso of the once large pneumatic tube network after May 8, 1945. The re-establishment of the pneumatic tube network is evidenced by the fact that an increasing number of telegrams arriving in Berlin - according to the original function of the pneumatic tube network - were transported by pneumatic tube. The picture shows a postage-free service envelope from the Berlin pneumatic tube station, which was used up in 1946 as an envelope for a service broadcast by the Telegraph Construction Office due to the general lack of materials. The use of this envelope at that time by the Berlin pneumatic post, which was not yet accessible to the public and largely destroyed in the war, can only be proven when the date of the commissioning of the connection between Berlin W 35 and Berlin-Wilmersdorf has been determined. The letter should have been transported from W 35 via W 30, W 80 to Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1 in the case of pneumatic post. The pneumatic post office W 80 was destroyed, so that it is questionable whether the letter could be transported by pneumatic post. An alternative would have been the connection from W 35 via W 9, W 8, NW 7, HTA, Berlin-Charlottenburg 2, W 15 to Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1. However, since the pneumatic post system of W 9 and the Tiergarten machine station on the way were destroyed, this connection should not have been passable. This means that the delivery of this letter by pneumatic tube can be largely ruled out.
It is now known that in December 1945 the line between the main telegraph office and Berlin N 54, and in early 1946 the line between Berlin N 4 and Berlin C 25 and between the main telegraph office and Berlin-Pankow (via Berlin N 54, Berlin N 58 and Berlin N 113) were opened. Since 1946, on the restored pneumatic tube lines, incoming telegrams and presumably also express mail between the offices and especially to the delivery offices have been increasingly transported. Such telegrams usually have a pink sticky note with the inscription Pneumatic Mail / Eilbote , but no minute stamp. These notes had already been introduced on April 9, 1936.
In detail, the use of the Berlin pneumatic tube network, measured using the example of telegrams transported by pneumatic tube, between 1946 and 1948 is as follows:
| Telegrams | from Berlin | to Berlin | total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1946 | 452,882 | 450.015 | 902.897 |
| 1947 | 1,646,369 | 908.418 | 2,545,787 |
| 1948 | 1,256,428 | 739.725 | 1.996.153 |
Pneumatic tube blockade in 1949
However, this development of the reconstruction was steered decisively in a different direction than in the course of the intensifying East-West conflict (June 20, 1948: currency reform in the western zones , June 23, currency reform in the Soviet zone ) by connecting the western sectors of Berlin of the currency to the western zones were removed from their administrative context: On June 22, 1948, the Soviet side voted against the proposal that emerged in four-power talks to introduce a jointly controlled currency in the divided city. Marshal Vasili Danilowitsch Sokolowski , on behalf of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD), ordered the Lord Mayor of Berlin in order no.111 to carry out the currency reform planned for June 23, 1948 in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) in all four Berlin sectors. The western city commanders immediately declared this instruction to be ineffective in their city area. On June 24th, the DM, marked with a "B" stamp to distinguish it as a currency issued in the city, was handed out in the three western sectors. The USSR responded to this by blocking the access to the western sectors ( Berlin blockade ).
When, in January 1949, the Soviet side cut the pneumatic tube connections between the Soviet sector and the western sectors of Berlin at the sector borders (so-called pneumatic tube blockade ), the postal situation was aggravated. Since the Berlin pneumatic tube network was historically developed from the main telegraph office in Berlin in the Französische Strasse ( Berlin-Mitte , part of the Soviet sector), the center of the entire network was now in the Soviet sector.
Based on the situation that resulted from this, the pneumatic tube network in Berlin was now definitely divided and developed further as two pneumatic tube networks that functioned independently of one another until it ceased operations (1963 in West Berlin, 1977 in East Berlin). It is still officially unknown whether there were still connections between the East and West Berlin networks maintained by an Allied order. However, there are telegrams from the 1950s between East and West Berlin, which, as the corresponding telegram forms printed in the east show, were obviously received and made out in the main telegraph office, and then stamped with pneumatic tubes were also sent to the western sectors for delivery.
Express mail service Berlin 1949 to 1955
While the East Berlin pneumatic tube network continued to function due to the central position of the main telegraph office, the newly established West Berlin postal administration devised a new system of express mail. This replacement system, which was introduced on March 1, 1949, connected the remaining pneumatic tube lines with the possibility of transporting mail, which had to be transported quickly, also by motor vehicle, motorcycle, tram, bicycle and pedestrian. In this way, the missing connections were bridged and West Berlin was provided with a high-speed mail system that was highly efficient: the Berlin express postal service . This was later - as the pneumatic post became more important within the system and even new routes were built - renamed the fast pneumatic tube service .
The fees for simple shipments within the express postal service were initially 1 DM East from March 1, 1949 to March 31, 1949. Of course, you could also pay in DM West, but hardly anyone did that. Therefore, franking on items of the express postal service in March 1949 with red overprint stamps from Berlin or with stamps from the Bauten I series is rare. From April 1, 1949, the West Berlin Post recognized DM-West as the only valid means of payment for their services, which meant that only 1 DM-West was now payable. The fee was later reduced to 80 pfennigs. If the postage for the express postal service was a uniform postage that was not composed of individual services, then with the abolition of the express postal service a composite postage was levied again if one wanted to use the combination of pneumatic tube transport and express delivery as in the times of the express postal service. The pneumatic tube delivery cost 20 pfennigs and the express delivery fee 60 pfennigs. There were also the fees for a local postcard of 8 pfennigs or for a local letter of the first weight level of 10 pfennigs. The abolition of the express postal service was tantamount to an increase in postage.
End of the pneumatic tube in West Berlin from 1963
On February 28, 1963, as the western part of the city was increasingly equipped with telephones and telex machines, pneumatic post for public transport was discontinued. At the same time, in other cities such as Hamburg, it was found that, in view of the increasing road traffic, the mail volumes could no longer be handled above ground if they were to be fast, and new pneumatic tubes were therefore required.
For internal purposes, the pneumatic tube in West Berlin was still used for a while for the public, despite the closure. In 1972, the operation of the pneumatic post Berlin West was finally stopped.
Cancellations of the Berlin pneumatic tube
Brief chronological overview
Cancellation of pneumatic tube deliveries was initially carried out with the usual stamps kept at the post office counters. Shortly after the opening of the public pneumatic tube service, stamps with the letter R were used . These were largely replaced by stamps with the exact designation of the pneumatic tube line. As the pneumatic tube traffic was switched to a schedule for pneumatic tube trains every 10 minutes, stamps with the setting of a 10-minute group were then used. This type of stamp was used in Berlin until the pneumatic post service was discontinued.
Secondary postmark
In order to ensure the rapid delivery of shipments to their destination beyond any doubt, a number of secondary stamps were used, which contained information on the type of transport by pneumatic tube . This was particularly necessary for shipments that were not prepaid as pneumatic tube shipments but were to be forwarded by pneumatic tube mail for the purpose of speeding up.
- Onward by pneumatic tube.
Sample card: Postcard from abroad from Romania to Berlin from May 6th, 1902, from there on May 8th, 1902 with the corresponding additional postmark by pneumatic post. fed to the pneumatic tube, put into the pneumatic tube by the Berlin office 62 and then delivered
- To the pneumatic tube!
Sample letter: Letter from June 30, 1901 from Munich to Karlsruhe and forwarded from there to Berlin, there on July 2, 1901 with the corresponding additional postmark Zur Rohrpost! fed to the pneumatic tube and delivered. On the reverse, besides the forwarding stamp from Karlsruhe, the small pneumatic post stamp of the Post Office Berlin 58 (line IV) and the stamp of the delivering Office Berlin 8 can be seen.
- Time clock stamp
Sample letter: Long-distance letters of the second weight level by pneumatic tube from Berlin N 113 to Dresden on January 15, 1952. The stamp of the time stamp with the letter R (for pneumatic tube ) can be clearly seen on the back.
To the pneumatic tube! - front
To the pneumatic tube! - back
Time stamp - front
Time stamp - back
House pipe post with connections to the Berlin pneumatic tube
Offices and departments
Admiralty staff of the Kriegsmarine in the First World War
Like almost all government offices in Berlin, according to the information available, the admiral's staff of the Imperial Navy had a pneumatic tube connection that was only accessible for official purposes. Since April 2, 1915, postage was exempt from postage for service mail from military authorities due to a replacement agreement concluded with the Deutsche Reichspost (Order No. 96 of March 30, 1915), which, however, did not include items to be transported by pneumatic tube. For its urgent local deliveries, the Admiralty's staff had envelopes printed with a stamp for the pneumatic tube fee. Since no official stamps existed at this time, the official value stamp was used in the Germania / German Reich drawing .
All envelopes have a stamped black numerator number that runs from 1 to 1000 on the front . Although the envelopes exceeded the permissible size limit of 140 × 80 mm in Berlin and were often heavier than 20 g, they were carried without additional fees. The circulation of all five published issues totaled almost 5000 copies. It was intended to be used until the day the Admiral's staff was dissolved on August 1, 1919, but subsequent uses could be proven until August 27, 1919.
Reichsbank
It can be assumed that a large number of offices and offices in the Reich, which had a large volume of mail, also had their own pneumatic post connection, even if their own in-house mail processing was perhaps not provided. This can be proven in the case of the Reichsbank . There are, for example, line plans from the end of the 1920s, in which the branch of the pneumatic post line from the main telegraph office to the Reichsbank is shown. The former pneumatic post connections can only be reconstructed from such construction plans that are not open to the public.
Private connections
Among others, the following companies and institutions had their own connection to the Berlin pneumatic tube network:
Hotel Adlon
In October 1907 the Hotel Adlon is opened on Pariser Platz . Similar to the Hotel Stadt Rom (Unter den Linden 10), which was even more important at the time, the house is equipped with a pneumatic tube system. To what extent this system was connected to the postal pneumatic tube system is not known. However, pneumatic post deliveries to guests of the Adlon are known which have an Adlon minute arrival stamp on the back, as has been shown to have been used in the telegraph offices since 1888. The inscription on the stamp reads "Hotel Adlon / Date - Time / Berlin". The "briquette stamps" on the back of the letter speak in favor of express delivery by appropriate couriers. The responsible delivery office in Berlin W 64 (back then: Unter den Linden 12) was only four blocks away from the Hotel Adlon and would have been easily accessible for a messenger. In the case of express delivery, the Adlon's minute clock stamp on the reverse would be evidence of the in-house, minute-by-minute documentation of the receipt of the consignments. On the other hand, since March 2, 1868, a pneumatic post line ran under the pavement of Unter den Linden in a westerly direction to Pneumatic Post Office VII at the Brandenburg Gate, with which this shipment would have been quickly transported from Post Office W 64 to Pariser Platz directly in front of the Adlon's entrance door can. All in all, these early time clock stamps - especially from the time before the First World War - are far too rarely documented to be able to make more precise statements about their function in the documentation of the handling of pneumatic tube deliveries in Berlin.
Front of a pneumatic tube letter from Berlin SW 29 addressed to a guest of the Adlon, 1910
Back of a pneumatic tube letter with minute clock stamp
enlarged illustration of the minute clock stamp
Wertheim department store and Rudolf-Mosse-Haus
In-house post offices with pneumatic tube connections and their own minute stamps were in the Wertheim department store ( Leipziger Platz ) and in the Rudolf-Mosse-Haus ( Friedrichstrasse 60 / Leipziger Strasse ). It is not known when these connections were established. These offices were assigned to the higher-level post offices as branches.
Private connections in East Berlin
Private pneumatic tube connections existed at least in East Berlin until the 1980s. A private connection between the post office 1020 ( Alexanderplatz ) and the editorial office of the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland , which was probably operated via the old connection between post office 1020 Alexanderplatz (formerly C 2) and post office 1017 (formerly O 17) , has now been proven . There was also a pneumatic tube connection between Post Office 1020 and the Berliner Zeitung daily newspaper on Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, just a few hundred meters away . Pneumatic post deliveries could be sent back and forth between the two newspaper editorial offices by means of a manual feed and transfer of the tubes in the post office 1020.
Identification of pneumatic tube deliveries
Colours
The characteristic color of pneumatic tube deliveries in Berlin and Munich is the color pink. The postcards and envelopes that the Deutsche Reichspost had been issuing since 1876 for delivery by pneumatic tube were in this color. It was only in the 1920s that this color pattern was deviated from and the lettering of the shipments was left with the words pneumatic post card , pneumatic post letter or pneumatic post .
Colored markings
Since the pneumatic post operation began, the shipments have mostly been identified by handwritten numbers and abbreviations, which indicated the post offices where the shipments were to be sent and, if applicable, the routes. These were initially in the color blue, then later in the color red. The express postal service in Berlin used the color green for handwritten identification of the items.
Sticky notes for Berlin, Munich and Vienna
On April 9, 1936, a special sticker made of transparent glassine paper with the inscription Pneumatic Post / and Eilbote and another made of the same material with the inscription Pneumatic Post was issued to identify the shipments. At the same time there was a return to the issue of pneumatic postcards in the color salmon to pink with red stamps.
The German pneumatic tube stickers in the drawing from 1936 were also used by the Vienna pneumatic tube post after 1945, because there were still enough labels available there after the war. It is not known whether these stickers were also in stock in post offices outside of Berlin, Munich and Vienna. Since 1940, for reasons of communication strategy during the war, the presumption was launched that the Schwabacher script used here (previously always regarded as "the German script" with considerable ideological value) was made in the 18th century by a script cutter of Jewish origin (hence "Judenschwabacher "Or" Schwabacher Judenschrift ") was invented. (In fact, the Schwabacher came from the 15th century.) For this reason, Hitler forbade the use of this font, especially on documents of a state character, in the so-called “ Normalschrift ” on January 3, 1941. The reason: In the occupied territories, people could not read the orders placed and printed in Schwabacher. Since Hitler had polemicized against Fraktur / Schwabacher early on in party congress speeches and always preferred the Antiqua because of its better legibility and therefore propagandistic effectiveness, new stickers were now printed in an antiqua font despite the precarious war situation, but these were hardly used. In March 1945, the large post offices in Berlin had corresponding sticky notes in Schwabach script.
Sticker used since 1936 to identify pneumatic tube deliveries that were also to be delivered by express courier.
Sticker used since 1936 to identify pneumatic tube deliveries
A sticker placed in an Antiqua to identify pneumatic post deliveries until the pneumatic post is canceled.
Sticky notes from the express service in Berlin
When the express postal service began operating in the western sectors of Berlin on March 1, 1949, a green sticker with the white inscription Postschnelldienst / Berlin was issued, which was later replaced by a green sticker with the white inscription Rohrpost / Schnelldienst . With the conversion of the express postal service to a normal pneumatic express delivery service from 1955, the old stickers from 1936 were put back into use - as had been the case with the East Berlin pneumatic post.
See also
literature
- Ingmar Arnold: Air trains: the history of the pneumatic tube in Berlin and elsewhere. Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89218-061-X
- Carl Beckmann: The automatic Schnellrohrpostlinie Berlin Haupttelegraphenamt - PA O 17 developed and built 1927/28 (printed as a manuscript). Mix & Genest , Berlin 1929
- Helmut Eikermann : Under the red lantern of the pneumatic tube. In: Berliner Bookmarks , Issue 12/1993, pp. 102-104
- Paul-Jürgen Hueske: The Berliner Stadtrohrpost in the period from 1933 to 1945. History and reference work. (= New series of the Poststempelgilde e.V., 169) Lünen 2006
- Rainer Linden: The pneumatic tube in Berlin. 1.12.1876 to 31.12.1902 , manual and catalog. Self-published CD-Rom, 2005
- Günther Steinbock, Günter ceiling: express mail service Berlin - Berlin pneumatic post 1948–1963. Manual - On-Demand Mail. Hamelin 1976
- Günther Steinbock, John H. Gunn: 1948–1963 - express postal service in Berlin - express rapid delivery service in Berlin - Berlin pneumatic post. Manual of a mode of transport that is unique in the world. Berlin 2006
- Fritz Steinwasser: Berliner Post. Events and Memories since 1237 . Berlin (GDR) 1987, pp. 290-299
- Wolfgang Wengel: Comeback of the pneumatic tube? / 125 years of the Berlin city tube post - still a role model for technical innovations today . In: Das Archiv , Hrsg .: German Society for Postal and Telecommunication History ; Issue 1/2 from 2002, pp. 6-19
- Andreas Kopietz: The capital had the world's largest pneumatic tube network / Berlin's small subway . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 16, 2000
- Ina Brzoska: The pneumatic tube once traversed Berlin's underground . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 28, 2008
- Ludger Breil: The number of copies of the service pneumatic tube envelopes of the Admiral's staff of the Navy . In: Bulletin of ArGe Germania-Marken eV, Issue 111 from June 2014, pp. 52–58
Web links
- The Berlin pneumatic tube (archive link)
- The Berlin pneumatic tube at berliner-unterwelten.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfram Grallert: Globe without borders. A book from the Post , Leipzig / Jena 1958, 184.