The Birth of a Postal Service

The humble birth certificate of the Danish postal service is Christian IV's "Ordinance concerning Postmen", signed on Christmas Day 1624. It begins the history in the first exhibition room which is a replica of the City Square in the "Absolute Monarch's City" and covers the period from 1624 to the abolition of the absolute monarchy in 1848. In those days the postal service constituted an important element in the King's efforts to control and strengthen his kingdom, but also a boon for the literate minority. 

All the symbols in this section exude power and control. In our democratic, modern Denmark, some of these symbols are still linked to the postal service: the crown, the post horn, and the red and yellow colours. Christian IV ordered that all post yards on his mail route between Copenhagen and Hamburg should advertise by means of a post rider. The wind vane from 1663 is one of the oldest preserved Danish examples of the post rider with the well-known post horn which is still adorning the Danish letter boxes. You can even hear pieces of post horn compositions in the exhibition.

Our oldest preserved uniforms show the red and yellow colours of the house of Oldenburg associated with the postal service ever since Christian V´s daughter-in-law Dorothea Kragh ran the service. She and her predecessor, the commoner Klingenberg were two central figures of the early postal service.

The crown is still part of the symbol of the postal service indicating that the service was once a royal prerogative, the King's monopoly. It appears on eraly branding irons for marking of mail coaches, on signs, emblems, and many other objects in the exhibition. 

Travelling through Denmark with the Post

In the middle of the first exhibition room - with its horces facing the Sound and Belt in the next room - is a strange an original Danish invention: the spherical mail coach. It is a full-size reconstruction built according to the original 1815 drawings and incorporating what little remained of the original pumpkin-like vehicle. Letter post was transported all over Denmark in spherical mail coaches, protected from weather damage - and without the driver being tempted to earn an extra penny or two by taking passengers. There was quite simply no room for them!

The requirement for a rapid, regular post service always on time and along fixed routes soon encouraged the Post Office to improve roads and monitor delivery times. This exhibition includes old street maps, timepieces, and "timetables". 

 In the fine painting by af C.D. Gebauer from 1808, the post arrives at a post yard in the countryside.  The painting is hanging in the small "art cabinet" in the first exhibition gallery together with other old pictures of the post in Danish sceneries. The stagecoach in the painting is a so-called "Holsteiner". Insured letters and the like were secured in locked, iron-bound chests, placed in the bottom of the carriage. Conveyance of letters, parcels, and passengers gave the postal service occasion for production of many different types of model carriages, original drawings, and contemporary art. 

The Postmen

In the first exhibition gallery stand the old Copenhagen food postman with his gong somewhere in a dark urban setting amidst a group of men, all of them wearing colourful uniforms and impressive hats. Besides the uniforms, there are post signs, buttons, ornamental weapons, and the more serious items: the cutlass and pistol. Travelling the length and breadth of the realm in service of the king was not without its dangers. 

"Loyal and Vigilant" is still the motto of the Danish postal service. It stems from a period when blind obedience was demanded of its employees: loyalty to their royal employers and willingness to serve the monarch's interest vigilantly, even on occasions when to do so was tantamount to what we would call censorship and espionage nowadays. For example: The order to confiscate any correspondence between Queen Caroline Mathilde  and Christian VII's physician-genral, Struensee.

The walls are decorated with a number of portraits of postal officials. A position with the postal service was often given to officers as a comfortable redundancy arrangement. And it was not unusual that the postmastership was granted to a person who was already well-established in the town in question; e.g. a merchant.