Telehaus (Mainz)

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Telehaus on Münsterplatz

The former telegraph office in Mainz , popularly known as the Telehaus , was built between 1928 and 1930 on the south side of Münsterplatz with the confluence of Schillerstraße as the result of a competition announced in 1926, together with the tax office, with express consideration of the neighboring baroque Erthaler Hof , at Münsterplatz 2-6 built.

prehistory

For almost a year from 1813 to 1814 there was an optical telegraph line from Metz to Mainz . After that, the Austrian administration set up a telegraph company in 1849. Mainz was then a fortress of the German Confederation and a garrison for Austrian, Prussian and Hessian troops . The new telegraph company, which closed again in 1853, served mainly to connect the Austrian garrison with the mother country . It was also used for private traffic, but due to the high costs it had little significance for the general public, it was probably the reason for the closure of the station.

It then took until October 15, 1883 for the leading industrial and commercial circles to set up a city telephone system with 30 participants. The number of telephone stations in the Mainz local telephone network and the number of calls originating from them rose considerably at the end of the 1920s, as in all other large cities. In the telegraph business, telegram traffic also increased considerably and in the first years of occupation from 1919 to 1922 it had assumed an extraordinary extent because all telegrams destined for the Mainz bridgehead or originating from it had to be routed via the Mainz telegraph office. The occupation of the Ruhr did not pass without a trace, operations were idle from February 22 to October 1, 1923 and numerous officials had to migrate to the unoccupied area.

Telegraph director with 7 branches was Jacob Seitz from Ibersheim from 1909 to 1921 .

building

The building is a rare example of the factual aesthetics of modernism in Mainz in the 1920s, with its cubically structured, height-graded assembly, which was created under the responsibility of city planning officer Fritz Luft . The entire complex, which also includes the tax office at Schillerstraße 13, was built on the site of the former Altmünster monastery based on award-winning designs by the Frankfurt architects HFW Kramer and Gottlob Schaupp , commissioned by the Frankfurt am Main Post Office .

It is one of the rare examples of the accommodation of two authorities with completely independent operations in a closed structure, which, due to its dimensions, gives the viewpoint of a square and whose outer shape fits into the soloistic, colorful environment in a determining and yet not disturbing way .

The angled, six-and-a-half and four-storey brick-lined reinforced concrete skeleton construction enabled a variable room design by removing and adding partition walls inside the building. In the wide niches below the stylized imperial eagle on the front, the inscription TELEGRAPHENAMT was originally placed on cubes .

The strictest economic aspects were decisive for the construction. The building ground, filled, partly boggy terrain with acidic groundwater over an old tributary of the Rhine that was drained in an unknown time , required a 5 to 7 meter deep pile foundation made of reinforced concrete and insulated with acid-resistant clinker , over which the lined reinforced concrete construction with full ceilings, wide-spreading main ledge is as well as the lightweight walls made of plaster leg panels. The reinforced concrete roof structure of the central building was originally covered with massive cover and sealed with double cardboard. The four-storey structure has a flat roof that can be walked on. Oak straps were laid on the massive steps and platforms of the two stairwells; Linoleum was used as the floor covering in almost all other rooms . Few of the service rooms had washable wallpapered walls; otherwise single-colored oil and glue paints were predominant. The plywood doors inside the building slammed into iron frames; the double windows were pushed into the soffits with little external depth. The external structure is simple. With the exception of some shell limestone and cladding on the ground floor on the sides of the street, in the two vestibules and in the drive-through, the bright plastered facade with the dark-painted window crosses did not show any architectural decoration.

During the heavy Allied air raid on Mainz on February 27, 1945 , all floors burned down and the technical equipment was largely destroyed. At the end of May 1945, a makeshift telephone exchange resumed operations, but it was not until 1950 that the building and technology were completely restored.

Today the building still houses Deutsche Telekom AG facilities and a Telekom shop for business customers. Other offices are used by Ver.Di (Rhineland-Palatinate district and Rhein-Nahe-Hunsrück district). Together with the Mainz-Mitte tax office (Schillerstraße 13) it is part of the Münsterplatz monument zone .

business

1930 to 1945

The office went into operation in 1930 with a capacity of 2,000 subscriber lines . The inauguration took place on February 7, 1931, after the self-connection office housed there had been handed over to operation a few weeks earlier. Local telephone traffic, for example, was still mixed in operational terms, partly manual and partly self-connected. Some of the local network connections remained in the old building on Brandplatz in the city center. It was also automated about a year ago, so that two self-connection offices, "Münsterplatz" and "Gutenberg", were available. This type of operational change saved significant cable laying costs, etc. Just like the self-connection operation, the facilities for long-distance traffic were built with the latest technical equipment at the time. Both self-connection offices could accommodate up to 10,000 connections, so that at the time it was assumed that they would have satisfied the traffic needs for many years.

After 1945

The official area included large parts of Rheinhessen from Ingelheim to Worms. At the end of 1975 the office had 1,132 employees and looked after a room in which almost 400,000 people lived. In the first half of 1976, the number of new telephone connections in Mainz exceeded the national average by far; the rate of increase was 101 percent. The number of main lines in the Mainz district was aiming for 100,000 at the end of the 1970s.

In the Mainz telecommunications office, the telex and data technology facilities were still largely connected to electromechanical systems until 1977. By the end of the 1970s, these were replaced by electronic switching and transmission systems worth 1.3 million DM.

With the new construction of the SWF state studio on Wallstrasse and the construction of the ZDF broadcasting center on the Lerchenberg, a focus has been placed on audio and television broadcasting. The Federal Post Office therefore relocated the neutral point of the exchange to a central control point in Mainz. It was built next to the Ober-Olm telecommunications tower .

The first payphone for worldwide calls in Mainz was set up on April 5, 1977 on the station square.

In November 1983, a cable television reception system was put into operation on one of the Bonifazius towers . In September 1985, a national record was set with 10,000 cable connections.

The first card phones in Mainz were put into operation at the beginning of August 1989 on Gutenbergplatz opposite the State Theater , as well as at the northern barrier of the main train station and in the main post office .

In March 1990 there were 210,000 telephone connections in the Mainz area, or about 50 connections for every 100 inhabitants.

Head of office

  • February 1, 1956 to December 31, 1975: Chief Postal Director Dipl.-Ing. Peter Maria Bayer
  • April 1, 1976 to August 31, 1998: Post superior Dipl-Ing. Eckhard Joerg

Further use

The ground floor was and is still used commercially. The Café Münstertor was a popular meeting place in Mainz until the post-war period .

See also

literature

  • Deutsche Verkehrs-Zeitung : weekly for the post, telegraph, telephone and radio system, printing and publishing: Georg Koenig, Berlin NO 43, Georgenkirchstraße 22. Editor: Berlin W 56, Leipziger Straße 15.
    • 80 and 75 years of the Telegraphenamt Mainz ; Volume 53, August 31, 1929, Issue A, No. 35, pp. 639–640
    • Oberpostrat Klingelhöffer; The new telegraph office in Mainz ; Volume 55, May 16, 1931, edition A, no. 20, pp. 393–394
  • Dr.-Ing. Freund: Telegraph Office and Tax Office in Mainz ; in: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung united with the magazine for building , with news of the Reich and state authorities, published in the preuss. Ministry of Finance, Editor: Dr.-Ing. Gustav Kampmann, 52nd year, Berlin, No. 15, April 6, 1932, pp. 169–173
  • Information board "Historisches Mainz" on the building

Web links

Commons : Telehaus  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Chronicle: Tax Office Mainz-Mitte
  2. ↑ a b 80 or 75 years of the Telegraphenamt Mainz, p. 640
  3. ^ Siegfried Kirsch: Listed Trapezoid - The housing estate on Fichteplatz has an eventful past ; in: Gott & die Welt, district magazine of the parish council St. Stephan in Mainz; No. 7, Pentecost 2012, p. 7
  4. ↑ a b Freund, p. 169
  5. ↑ Klingelhöffer, p. 393
  6. ↑ Telecommunication technology is being expanded - Big tasks for the new head of the Mainz remote office ; in: Allgemeine Zeitung of August 13, 1977
  7. ↑ From the station square around the world - since yesterday also in Mainz: long-distance calls overseas in direct dialing from the telephone booth ; Allgemeine Zeitung of April 6, 1977
  8. ↑ Headquarters for the broadband cable network - commissioning of the head end for the broadband network in Mainz in November 1983 ; Allgemeine Zeitung from 5./6. November 1983
  9. ↑ Allgemeine Zeitung, October 1, 1985
  10. ^ First card phone in Mainz ; Mainzer Wochenblatt, No. 26 of August 10, 1989
  11. ↑ Telephones are still very rare in Erfurt ... Telecommunications chiefs exchanged information. Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz from Wednesday, March 21, 1990
  12. ↑ Great appreciation for the boss - Telecommunications chief Bayer retired

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 59.8 "  N , 8 ° 15 ′ 51.3"  E