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1st September 1936
Berlin - Rohrpost

Berlin Rohrpost
Berlin Rohrpost

Rohrpostbrief sent from Berlin Wilmersdorf 1 at 18.00 and received at Berlin Charlottenburg 2 at 18.10. Postcard imprint 'Adler (12. 31)'. Ref: 01.09.1936


Berlin - Rohrpost

 

The Rohrpost in Berlin, was a pneumatic tube postal service, which existed from 18th November 1865 until 1963 in West Berlin and in East Berlin until 1976.


In 1940, the Berlin pneumatic post 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 about 8 million shipments annually.



Registered cover sent from Berlin (via Rohrpost - pneumatic mail - at 19:20 from SO 36 - see map below) to an address in Plauen. Featuring various stamps, including Mi.902 & Mi.903 (German Association for goldsmith art issue). The complete value of the postage is 52 Pf. This can be broken down to 12 Pf for the letter being sent inland at the 'distant' rate, 30 Pf for the letter being registered (signed for) and 10 Pf for it being posted via pneumatic mail within Berlin. Ref: 19.09.1944

The operation of the Berliner Rohrpost as a publicly accessible system of message transmission was finally discontinued in 1976. In East Berlin, telegrams were still delivered to the delivery offices by pneumatic post until 1986


An analysis of the route plan of the Berliner Rohrpost shows that the development of the network first served economic interests. It was the connection between the main telegraph office and the stock exchange, which was followed by the expansion of the pneumatic delivery network into the newspaper district and the banking district of Berlin.


Later even the sparsely populated upper and lower middle-class residential districts as well as the villa areas of the West were connected (Charlottenburg, Grunewald, Lichterfelde, Schöneberg, Wilmersdorf, Zehlendorf), while the pronounced working-class districts (Kreuzberg, Lichtenberg, Neukölln, Wedding) and the formerly clearly rural urban districts on the periphery received little or no coverage by pneumatic postal network.


The pneumatic mail system, Berlin 1945 (Source: Wikipedia)

Parts of the pneumatic postal network were destroyed or damaged during the Second World War due to allied air raids on Berlin. However, the operation of some pneumatic post lines in the centre 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 8th May 1945. The express delivery service of the post office, on the other hand, was discontinued on 14th August 1944, due to a shortage of personnel and an extremely increased volume of mail.


Source: Wikipedia

 

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Berlin Rohrpost

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