Right from the entrance area at Schaumainkai in Frankfurt, it is clear that the museum does not offer a ‘classic’ exhibition: A flock of sheep with heads made from the grey telephones of the 1960s and a coat of spiral telephone cords greets visitors. For older people, this is pure nostalgia, for younger people it’s an immersion in a distant time.
The aim of the museum is to retell media history(ies). In the basement, 44 themed islands on four central phenomena – acceleration, networking, control and participation – create a variety of incentives to engage with the past, present and future of communication. The focus is not on the technology itself, but on how it is used by people. In today’s age of digital transformation, the museum also aims to teach media skills.
(left to right): In front of the entrance: Pre-Bell-Man (Nam Jo Pam, 1990), In the foyer: ‘Telephone Sheep’ (Jean Luc Cornet, TribuT, 1989), 44 themed islands for ‘surfing’ according to individual interests, 21 video steles on digitalisation in the 21st century
From King Hammurabi to Mark Zuckerberg
During the tour, you will encounter many well-known and unknown personalities: The Babylonian Hammurabi published his code of law in cuneiform script on a stele over two metres high in around 1800 BC. An unknown monastery messenger informed 240 other monasteries and churches between the Rhineland and Tyrol of the death of monks on a ten-month journey at the beginning of the 16th century and had the visit confirmed on a death rotel. From 1781 onwards, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sent countless short love letters to Charlotte von Stein, which the museum asks whether he would have used SMS today.
Philipp Reis presented the prototype of a telephone in Frankfurt am Main on 26 October 1861, but unfortunately lost the competition to Alexander Graham Bell a few years later. From 1933 onwards, Adolf Hitler had to slow down his pace of speech at his mass rallies in order to avoid reverberation and echo from the large loudspeakers. Radio reporter Herbert Morrison witnessed the Zeppelin fire in Lakehurst on 6 May 1937 and reported on a disaster live on the radio for the first time. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg initiated a completely new form of networking between billions of people with social media.
In 4 hours or in real time from Frankfurt to Berlin
The exhibition traces in a fascinating way how communication has accelerated over the centuries and created new platforms for networking. Travelling in person from Frankfurt to Berlin for a visit took 14 days by country coach in 1680, whereas today the journey by ICE Sprinter takes just under 4 hours, allowing you to be back in Frankfurt by the evening after your outward journey in the morning.
If you only wanted to send a message or – in today’s parlance – data, you had to rely on messengers, whose speed was determined not least by the possibility of changing horses. From the 18th century onwards, short messages were transmitted using masts with movable wooden wings on mountains and hills, before Morse code, telegraphy and telephony ushered in the modern era in the 19th century. Today, milliseconds have become the standard.
The exhibits include a magnificent stagecoach, an electric postal motor vehicle from 1925, a clay shard with a land charge receipt from 131 AD, tickers for transmitting stock market prices around 1900, letterboxes, letter distribution systems, Morse code machines, telephones, cipher machines, a phonograph from Thomas Edison, a television camera for the 1936 Olympic Games, concert chests from the 1950s as well as mobile phones and smartphones from recent years. One themed island deals with fake news and image manipulation from earlier decades, thus building a bridge to the fake news of today.
The ‘classic’ post office (from left): original stagecoach (wheeled sledge, 1890), first motorised post bus for regular services (1905), VW small delivery van ‘Fridolin’ (1964-1974), historical postal signs
Voice and image transmission (from left): wall telephones (around 1900), radio communication during the sinking of the Titanic (1912), television camera for outdoor shots of the Olympic Games (1936), loudspeakers from the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg (1937)
What are your feelings about the future?
The museum dedicates a lot of space to looking into the future. To assess the digital transformation, the museum invited 21 experts to present their views on the opportunities, risks and side effects of digitalisation – realised in 21 steles with video messages. A themed island on artificial intelligence will follow in the near future. The museum also offers young people and adults media education workshops and selected events on digitalisation.
Interaction is a recurring theme throughout the exhibition. You can analyse what type of ‘networker’ you are, have an anti-stress recipe printed out, record comments on exhibits in a small recording studio, use a wall-mounted telephone that is connected to a second intercom station via a pole and cable. There is no museum supervisor in the traditional sense. Ladies and gentlemen dressed in blue are available to answer individual questions and provide information.
Almost an entire floor is reserved for children. In a workshop, young visitors can develop their view of communication from electronic waste. If you look on the shelves, you will find an ‘amorous electro-phant’ as well as a ‘funny telephone’ with which you can talk to the dead. On the roof, the German Amateur Radio Club operates a radio station from which contacts have already been established all over the world using a satellite 36,000 kilometres above the Indian Ocean.
Left: Made by children from e-waste: the ‘enamoured electric elephant’ Right: For an individual answer: Which ‘networking type’ are you?
From „Postmuseum“ to „Museum für Kommunikation“
The origins of the institution lie in the relocation of the holdings of the Berlin Postal Museum to Hesse during the Second World War. In 1958, the ‘Bundespostmuseum’ was opened in a Wilhelminian-style villa. In 1990, it was extended by the current award-winning new museum building by Günter Benisch, in which green spaces and old trees were to be preserved, which is why the permanent exhibition was built underground.
The museum is part of the Post and Telecommunications Museum Foundation, which was created in 1995 as part of the German postal reform. The museum is funded by Deutsche Post AG and Deutsche Telekom AG.
Information
The “Museum für Kommunikation” at Schaumainkai in Frankfurt is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10 am to 6 pm (Wednesdays until 8 pm). Since 21 March, the special exhibition ‘New Realities: Fashion Fakes – AI Factories’ has been exploring the connection between fashion, photography and AI visualisation. In addition to special exhibitions, the gallery with works of art on communication, e.g. works by Christo and Dali, will also be open again from 17 April. For lovers of historic postal vehicles and objects from the history of post and telecommunications, guided tours of the collection depot in Heusenstamm are offered regularly.
More information at www.mfk-frankfurt.de
translated by deepl.com
text and photos: Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt.