Museum for Communication Berlin – about pneumatic tubes and letters

The Museum for Communication Berlin is located in Berlin-Mitte in the former Reichspostministerium. In this museum, I realized how rapidly technical development has progressed in recent years.

I stand quietly by a letterbox and listen to a father explaining the past to his almost 5-year-old daughter. “No, there were no cell phones back then and people didn’t send voice messages. If you wanted to write a message to grandma, you wrote a letter and put it in this box….” . Phew, I’m old. I grew up “back in the day”, I learned how to write on an envelope at school…. And that was just 50 years ago. What developments will our children experience in the next 50 years?

Museum of Communication Berlin – the story

The year is 1872: the Postmaster General of the German Empire has a grandiose idea – a museum dedicated to what was then a revolutionary cause, the history of technology. Thus was born the Reichspostmuseum, one of the first museums in the world to bring the history of technology to life. And this very museum is the forerunner of today’s Museum of Communication Berlin. But how did such an impressive place come to be and how did it reinvent itself again and again over the decades?

A building with history and giants on the roof

The heart of the museum was and is an impressive building in Leipziger Straße, which was built between 1871 and 1874. Known at the time as the “General Post Office”, it later became the Reichspostamt and finally the Reichspostministerium. Just a few years after its completion, the building was extended (1893-1897) and the extension also served as the Reichspostmuseum from then on.

A real highlight? An almost 6-metre-high sculpture of a giant holding a globe was enthroned on the roof – a real eye-catcher that symbolized the power and importance of the postal service!

Wars, destruction and a new beginning

The two world wars also left their mark here. The building was badly damaged during the Second World War. Fortunately, those responsible made a clever move. The valuable exhibits were moved out of storage in good time. However, some of these treasures were lost after the end of the war – who knows where they are today? In the post-war period, the ruins of the museum were located in the Soviet sector of Berlin. It took until 1958 for the building to be rebuilt. A small stamp exhibition was held in the same year. This was a modest but important start. A permanent exhibition soon followed, focusing on the development of the postal system, telegraphy, telephony, radio and television. And yes, of course there was also a permanent stamp exhibition!

GDR, reunification and new plans

During the GDR era, it was decided to completely rebuild the building for Berlin’s 750th anniversary celebrations. However, as is often the case with large construction projects, the work was not completed in time. The work was only completed after reunification. The vision of a modern museum was born.

The Museum of Communication comes to life

Things really got going in 1992. An architectural firm was commissioned to restore the building – always with an eye on the listed building status. The result was a new utilization concept that combined the charm of history with modernity. A special highlight: a new basement was created under the atrium to house the museum’s treasure chamber. The most valuable exhibits soon awaited curious visitors here. In 1997, the time had come to celebrate the topping-out ceremony. The building shone in new splendor and the giant sculpture above the entrance had even been reconstructed. And just one year later, the Museum for Communication Berlin officially opened its doors.

Museum visit

We actually only wanted to visit the museum. Because we were interested in the special exhibition on Asterix and Obelix. We really hadn’t expected what else awaited us!

We were amazed as soon as we entered the building. What a fantastic atrium!

We hadn’t even bought our tickets when I was already standing at the edge of the atrium taking photos. I only entered the atrium once I had bought my ticket and the small admission sticker, which was clearly visible on my sweater. Here I was greeted by two robots, whose display told me more about the history of the building.

Then we started our tour. I found it a little confusing that the special exhibition was located in some areas between the exhibits of the permanent exhibition. In hindsight, however, it was just right for us. We actually “only” wanted to visit the special exhibition and certainly wouldn’t have been able to see the areas where the permanent exhibition would have been. And that would have been a real mistake. I haven’t seen such an interesting exhibition for a long time!

The collection

The aim of the Reichspostmuseum was to collect objects that were commonly used in the postal and telegraphic services. These included apparatus, models, pictorial and written evidence of the time. However, the museum at the time not only exhibited historical objects, but also newly developed technologies such as airmail, radio, video telegraphy and television.

Unfortunately, many of the exhibits were lost or looted in the turmoil of the war and post-war period. Some were also kept by the occupying powers and only returned to the museum many years later.

The current management of the museum (a foundation) has painstakingly put together an amazing collection that still reflects the areas of interest of the Reichspostmuseum.

There are now three main themes:

• Transport history and traffic
• History of the postal service and its successor companies
  Archive and photo collection
• History of correspondence
  Letters and postcards, writing utensils, printing blocks, stamps and stamp designs

This collection is so extensive that it cannot be shown in its entirety in the Museum of Communication. There are “only” 2,000 objects on display here, which tell the story of over 40,000 years of communication history.

We will be back!

The tour was impressive, full of memories and exciting. We spent much more time in the Museum of Communication than we had actually planned and it was worth every minute.

The treasure chamber was impressive. The dark room with its many columns was visually exciting. When you step in front of one of the columns, the glass display case lights up and a not-too-loud voice tells you something about the exhibit. I really liked the fact that although there were several visitors there, the room almost encouraged people to only talk in whispers and the sound recordings were so acoustically controlled that I could barely understand what was happening on the next column.

The various themed areas on the upper floors were also very appealing to me. I really liked the fact that there was the opportunity to try something out from time to time. For example, we were able to watch children exploring the pneumatic tube principle and finding out about certain topics at interactive stations.

My “favorite areas” were definitely the telephones and the mailboxes. Dial telephones with a long cord definitely brought back memories of hours of phone calls. As you only had to pay 20 pfennigs for every phone call within West Berlin, no matter how long it took, I often only had to stop when my parents needed the phone.

What I found particularly interesting about the letterboxes were the stamp machines and the postcard machines. There must actually have been places that offered postcards with stamps in the machines. I didn’t know that either…. And to be honest, I asked myself why I don’t write a postcard from vacation every now and then?

Visitor information

Address

Leipziger Straße 16
10117 Berlin