Telephone booth (Germany)

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On the left a telephone hood TelHb82, also suitable for wheelchair users, on the right a telephone booth TelH78 from the times of the German Federal Post Office

A telephone booth is a booth or house with a floor area of ​​about one square meter, on the inner rear wall of which a telephone is attached. In Germany it is called a public telephone and can be used by anyone. The charges for the call are paid with coins , a telephone , credit or debit card , depending on the circumstances . Telephone booths are usually in public places .

Use of language

In the administrative language of the former German federal postal authorities and their successor companies, telephone booths are called 'Telefonhäuschen' (TelH). Until the beginning of the 1980s, the official name was 'Fernsprechhäuschen' (FeH). A distinction is made between closed houses that are accessible through a door, telephone or telephone hoods (FeHb or TelHb) in an open design, as well as so-called telephone booths in the narrower sense (FeZ or TelZ), which are located within closed buildings. Telephone pillars (TelS) have also existed since the turn of the millennium. Telephone booths, hoods and pillars are typically found in public spaces; Telephone booths within public buildings or facilities can also be located in semi-public or private areas, but are publicly accessible. In general usage in Germany, all public telephones are usually referred to as 'telephone booths' without distinction, at least if they are constructed in the form of a house, (half) cabin or cell or, in the case of telephone pillars, have at least a roof.

history

Under monument protection standing telephone FeH32 house in Berlin-Lübars
Telephone booth in Frankfurt am Main (1961)
Be brief - signs adorned German telephone booths until the 1970s
Modern telephone column with LTE small cell extension and WiFi hotspot
Former telephone booth in the BND property in Pullach

The first telephone booth, then still called a telephone kiosk, went into operation on January 12, 1881 in Berlin . From 1899 there were payphones, before telephone tickets were sold. The oldest closed cells were still in buildings, post offices, in the reception areas of hotels and catering establishments. They replaced smaller telephone opportunities, mainly separated by room dividers, for whose use there were as yet no uniform rules.

From the 1920s onwards, telephone booths with payphones were a familiar sight in public places and streets. Their design and color scheme was standardized across the empire from 1932. Initially blue and yellow were mandatory, from 1934 red; From 1946 onwards, the uniform yellow prescribed in West Germany in 1951 was changed. In the mid-1990s, the color scheme was changed to white, gray and magenta in line with Telekom's corporate design .

Public phone booths were generally very popular after their introduction and were not only used for making phone calls. They were also popular meeting places. The models introduced in the 1930s with a protruding roof and horizontal door and window bars shaped the image in both parts of Germany for a long time after the Second World War . The postal yellow color scheme was also a common distinguishing feature in both German states.

The FeH53, introduced in 1953, and above all its immediate successor, the FeH / TelH55, became the standard telephone booth in West Germany well into the 1980s. Compared to the pre-war models, the unadorned little house with large, undivided glass windows in the doors and side walls still consisted of sheet steel in the load-bearing parts and could be delivered with a door hinged on the left or right. From April 1972 there was an operational test with houses made entirely of plastic. From 1979 the telephone booth with the type designation TelH78 was used as standard, the penultimate yellow Federal Post Office model, which was also introduced in the new federal states after the reunification of Germany and was very common until the end of the telephone booth era. In this design, which differed from its predecessor in its noticeably rounded edges and corners, the housing and roof as well as doors, mounting plates and protective cabinets were made of fiberglass-reinforced polyester resin.

The last yellow Bundespost model was the TelH90 Sh house, which was introduced throughout Germany after reunification. It was offered in yellow and white and should blend in particularly well with historical cityscapes. A striking feature was the pointed, pyramidal roof. The model had eight square pane windows on the side walls and in the door and also had windows on the back. It was made of glass fiber reinforced polycarbonate and weighed 300 kg.

From 1983 the public telephone systems were supplemented by new developments:

  • barrier-free hexagonal telephone booths. The door opened for wheelchair users at the push of a button.
  • cashless public telephones, so-called card phones. A start was made in 1983 for test purposes in Frankfurt am Main with the equipping of 29 telephone booths; In 1984 telephones followed in other cities, including Aachen, Bonn and Goslar. Until 1984, however, with 129,000 telephone booths, the majority were pure payphones. At the end of the 1980s, the Deutsche Bundespost introduced card phones across the board, some of which replaced coin-operated machines. It was not until the late 1990s that combination devices (telestations) were used that accept both coins and telephone cards .
  • callable telephone booths. Starting in 1983, over 300 telephone booths were retrofitted in around 25 cities so that they could also be called. In some cases, the existing payphones were only converted into call-back telephone booths in which only calls could be received. In the event of a delay, users had the option of reaching those waiting or calling each other at agreed times. The callability of the telephone booths could later be technically restricted. These phone booths were recognizable on the outside by an adhesive pictogram with the symbol of a bell, which marked the device as callable; The phone number was printed under the bell symbol on some of these adhesive pictograms or was on the device's operating pictogram. These callable devices were internally called “aMünzFw”. Even in the German Democratic Republic, many phone booths could be called, provided the phone number was known. In the 1990s the callability of the public telephones was partially reduced again; u. a. was one reason why the devices were occupied by incoming calls and speakers who wanted to make a phone call could not do so, which led to losses in the income that is essential for the economic operation of a public telephone.
  • Pay phone for the hearing impaired. From 1984 onwards, 2,000 telephone booths in Hanover and 2,500 telephone booths in Stuttgart were equipped with telephone receivers which acted directly on the user's hearing aid .

Up to 1984 a call unit in the Federal Republic of Germany cost 0.20 DM. On October 1, 1984 the price per unit increased to 0.30 DM, with the exception of the first unit, which still cost 20 pfennigs. Nevertheless, the telephones remained unprofitable for the Deutsche Bundespost, as the operating costs for the 130,000 telephone booths that existed in 1984 exceeded the annual income of around 250 million DM. However, at that time around 2.3 million households in West Germany were still dependent on telephone booths in order to be able to communicate by telephone. With the widespread introduction of private household telephones, the importance of the telephone booth as a point of contact in the Federal Republic of Germany declined significantly.

With the privatization in reunified Germany, the corporate design changed and the newly created Deutsche Telekom gradually replaced the yellow telephone booths with gray - white - magenta ones . Fears that the new, more inconspicuous color scheme would not find the phones in an emergency and that the alerting of rescue workers could be delayed because more time would have to be spent looking for the phone booths dissipated with the general spread of mobile phones.

Since the end of the telecommunications monopoly in Germany, other providers have also been setting up telephone booths. However, they were mostly limited to selected, lucrative locations such as pedestrian zones in large cities. In addition to the “normal” telephone booths, so-called multimedia terminals have also been installed there since the end of the 2000s . Additional services such as Internet and SMS dispatch or local information such as hotel directory or bus timetables can be called up on these via a touchscreen .

Because of the rapid growth in mobile phone use - there were 112 million mobile phone connections in Germany in 2015 - the fixed public telephones became unprofitable. Payphones with a monthly average turnover of less than 50 euros will be dismantled by Telekom with the consent of the community concerned. In order to guarantee the "basic service in the area of ​​public telephony", the municipality must agree to any dismantling and the Federal Network Agency must be informed. If necessary, the telephone booths are replaced by simple telephone pillars called “base telephones”. “The base phone is cheaper to run, it does not need a power supply, is not housed in a cell and has no casing. The disadvantage, however, is that the user is not protected from wind and weather without a cell and cladding. In addition, the base phone can only be operated with telephone and cash cards, because coin-operated machines only work with electricity. ”( Udo Harbers, Telekom spokesman for the South Region ). In this way, by 2008, a fifth of the 80,000 telephone booths operated at the time had been replaced by base phones. At the end of the 2000s, around 40 percent of all public telephones operated by Deutsche Telekom were still coin-operated telephones that accepted Deutsche Mark as well as euro coins and telephone cards .

According to the supply contract that Telekom has to fulfill, public telephones in urban areas must be within walking distance, which, according to the supply contract, means a distance of around 2.5 kilometers. In 1997 there were still 165,000 public telephone stations in Germany (mostly as yellow and gray telephone booths).

The last yellow telephone booth on St. Bartholomä was integrated into the boathouse for monument protection reasons.

According to Telekom, the last yellow telephone booth of the type TelH78 from the times of the German Federal Post Office in Bavaria was in the pilgrimage site of St. Bartholomä on the southwestern bank of the Königsee and was dismantled in October 2018.

Discarded telephone boxes have been used as public bookcases for exchanging books since around 2011 .

Number of phone boxes

Telephone booths are becoming less economical for entertainment due to the growth of mobile communications and have almost disappeared from the townscape. There were around 110,000 telephone booths in Germany in 2007 (Telekom and competitors), in 2008 there were more than 100,000, at the end of 2009 around 90,000 public telephones from Telekom, and at the end of 2013 48,000, 40,000 of which from Telekom. At the end of 2015, a total of 27,000, in May 2017 20,000 and at the beginning of 2019 around 17,000 telephone booths remained. Public telephones are mostly found at airports and train stations.

Influence of vandalism

Vandalism on a base phone

The payphones in telephone booths have always been hit by break-ins and vandalism, which has influenced their design. On the one hand, depending on the location, they kept a small or quite large amount of coins ready, which was sometimes looted, and on the other hand, there are closed rooms that can be used for other purposes. The introduction of telephone cards was able to effectively reduce the number of broken payphones, but it was an additional burden for the customer. In all public coin-operated telephone models introduced by the Deutsche Bundespost from the 1970s, the coins from the telephone fall into a separate cassette attachment or heavily armored coin safe, which is located under the device and in which the coin cassette is inserted. In the event of a break-in, the device itself is no longer destroyed, as was the case with the old coin-operated telephones MünzFw 56, 63 and 57.

In addition to cleaning and electricity costs, the high costs of vandalism were also a major reason why Deutsche Telekom began replacing telephone booths with TeleStations (in which the BluePhone device and a safe are installed) that do not have wind and offer more noise protection. Optionally there was a small roof and side walls as well as a bag shelf. Since 2003, telephone booth locations have been replaced by telephones that do not accept coins or telephone cards as a means of payment, but can only be used with calling cards and 0800 freecall numbers. These "basic telephones" are manufactured in Nordhausen and are essentially a standard wall-mounted telephone for outdoor use with a special housing and modified firmware . These phones are very simple in design, but have remote diagnostic capabilities to make troubleshooting easier. In order to rule out vandalism as much as possible, they have neither display elements nor a card slot. The maintenance costs for a conventional telephone booth are 7500 euros (excluding maintenance costs), those for a basic telephone are 500 euros. The main reason is the lack of a power grid connection.

As an example, in 1982 the damage caused by vandalism on the 115,217 public payphones at that time amounted to around DM 13.6 million.

damage Number of cases
Glass damage 18,000
Stolen listeners 7,800
Stolen coin boxes 1,270
Destroyed apparatus 287
Destroyed telephone booths 226
Damage to dials and mounts 49,000

For a long time it was customary to provide phone books for the site in a phone booth . The books were hung in a special device so that they could rotate. Usually the spine of the book hung up so that the lettering on the back was legible. So the desired book could be turned with the cut up and opened. However, these telephone books were often deliberately destroyed or damaged (e.g. users simply tore out the page with the number they were looking for if they had no writing material to write down the number), so that they were ultimately abandoned.

Emergency alarm

Emergency alarms in German telephone booths. Lever to the left: fire department. Lever to the right: emergency call (police)

Emergency call alarms (NRM) became necessary from the 1970s after the line of the coin operated telephone only became "free" with the insertion of a coin. Since emergency calls should also be possible without coins, the telephone booths in the Federal Republic of Germany were equipped with emergency call alarms.

By moving the lever a connection to the next was by a cam control, so even during a power failure, police station or control center of the fire department constructed. The NRM also re-dialed a location identifier that was displayed at the office. As a result, the location from which the emergency call came was automatically known without the user having to explain this over the phone.

In today's telephone booths, a separate emergency caller is no longer necessary, since the emergency numbers can be dialed directly without inserting a coin or phone card or - as with the base phone - can be reached via a special "SOS button" (see picture base phone ).

Emergency Call Abuse

Telephone booths are not infrequently misused for deliberate false alarms by the police and fire brigade. This happens mainly due to the lack of video surveillance of the telephone equipment and in less frequented locations. In contrast, both fire brigades and the police are legally obliged to follow up every emergency call. Misuse of the emergency number is punishable by imprisonment for up to one year or a fine in Germany.

literature

Web links

Commons : Telephone booths in Germany  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Bernhardt: Telephone booth. History and history (PDF; 95 kB). In: Archive for German Postal History 2/94.
  2. ↑ Pay phone on the website of the Museum for Communication Frankfurt
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Horn: The telephone booths - just a piece of contemporary history. In: Klinterklater 3/2018 (PDF; 3.8 MB), p. 8.
  4. ↑ Our Post: Information folder 2, Ed .: Deutsche Bundespost, status: 01/1984
  5. ↑ http://www.macerkopf.de/2015/07/16/millionen-mobilfunkanschluesse-deutschland-telekom-vodafone/
  6. ^ Nikola Vogt: Freiburg Tuniberg: Telephoning becomes difficult. Badische Zeitung, April 19, 2012, accessed on July 21, 2016 .
  7. ↑ heise.de: Telephone booth shrinkage-goes-on. November 1, 2010
  8. ↑ a b c d Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz, January 5, 2010, p. 6
  9. ↑ Here went the last yellow telephone booth - a goodbye in style from Hubertus Kischkewitz; on Blog.Telekom from April 23, 2019
  10. ↑ The last yellow phone booth is history. In: FAZ , April 24, 2019, accessed on the same day.
  11. ↑ According to a company spokesman for Deutsche Telekom on request, telephone booths will be dismantled at the request of cities and municipalities if the monthly turnover of the telephone falls below 50 euros.
  12. ↑ Public telephone exchanges in Germany ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2009 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. on the website of the Federal Network Agency @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesnetzagentur.de
  13. ↑ Nationwide only 48,000 telephone booths ( Memento from March 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Abendzeitung München with dpa, from February 23, 2014
  14. ↑ Ousted by mobile phones - only 48,000 phone booths on Heise online from February 24, 2014
  15. ↑ http://www.computerbase.de/2016-01/wlan-hotspots-piratenpartei- sucht-modernisiert-telefonzellen /
  16. ↑ https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Einige-Telefonhaeuschen-trotzen-noch-Handy-WhatsApp-Co-3713597.html
  17. ↑ https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Schleichender-Tod-Wie-das-Mobiltelefon-der-Telefonzelle-den-Garaus-macht-4292398.html
  18. ↑ to: VDI-nachrichten No. 22, May 29, 2015, Technology & Economy, page 17: Telephone booths
  19. ↑ according to § 145 StGB .