COMMUNICATIONS MUSEUM BERLIN
Talking Robots and Exploding Postal Coaches
“Follow Me” say
the signs you’ll find around Berlin
inviting you to visit Berlin’s Museum für Kommunikation,
the world’s first museum
to illuminate a state postal service, and one of the more entertaining
museums in Berlin.
Located in a grand German imperial era building built in 1893 to house
a collection established in 1872 by the Postmaster General, the Museum
of Communication has continued into the age of the computer and robotics.
Known for its three playful robots which inhabit the shiny floor on the 
building's
four story high columned rotunda atrium. Like rambunctious youngsters
allowed to run loose, one looking like an upside down vacuum
cleaner,
like a child with autism totally focused on kicking a large rubber
ball around the floor, while another with friendly enthusiasm follows
you around wherever you might go, asking questions (in German). As a
deadly
robot
soon visits our world in the movie remake of “The Day The Earth
Stood Still” here are a few harmless and playful curious metallic
kids to play with.
The
collections at the Berlin Communications Museum represent means of
communication over the ages.
Much of the
displays are of the postal
service, beginning in the middle ages to the present, postal stamps of
wax seals, post cards, post marks of the German Post system. A wall of
antique telephones through the century, rooms of teletype and
telegram
wire machines. A mail coach of the 1800’s hangs suspended from
the ceiling dissected into parts like an engineers exploded view CAD
design diagram. Finding remnants of WWII Nazi artifacts in Berlin is
now quite rare, but here you’ll find evidence of the efficient
postal workings of the Third Reich. In the pitch black basement in a
vaulted security room illuminated by only individual lighted displays
like windows on secrets you can find Graham Bell’s first telephone. 
The
Berlin Communications Museum offers special temporary exhibits as well
as the permanent collection. Learning activities for real live children
are offered and on the second floor computer interactive displays present
chances to further commune with the machines. The Museum for Communication
Berlin is one of four of its kind, the network representing the history
of the Bundespost was established in the 90’s. The three others
are in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Nuremberg.
The Kommunication Museum building itself, one of best surviving of 19th
Century Berlin and worth a visit alone for its elegant architecture,
suffered damage in the war and neglect in the socialist era. It was renovated
and reopened in 2000. The museum is located at the corner of Mauerstrasse
and Leipziger Strasse in the former east, about half way between Checkpoint
Charlie (see Mauer
Museum at Checkpoint Charlie) and the Potsdammerplatz
(see Film
Museum Berlin) a casual walk from either. The nearest U-Bahn
station is Mohrenstraße. Best of all, admission is free. © Bargain
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See Also:
BERLIN DDR MUSEUM - LIFE IN EAST GERMANY
BERLIN
FILM FESTIVAL AT
POTSDAMER PLATZ
AIR
BERLIN-LTU DUSSELDORF-BERLIN
TECHNIK MUSEUM BERLIN - AUTOS, TRAINS & PLANES
