VEvery author dreams of this edition. At the beginning of 1993, the then Deutsche Bundespost had a book printed 40 million times, which was to become the standard work for everyone who sent letters, parcels or parcels immediately after publication. “The Postal Code Book – Arranged Alphabetically” was written at the top of the book cover, the three words of the subtitle printed in black, red and gold: “Shaping Unity Together.”
That’s what it was all about: Germany hadn’t been reunited very long, and like so many other things, the two four-digit postal code systems of the formerly separate German states needed to be merged and reorganized. On July 1, 30 years ago, the time had come: the new five-digit postcodes came into force.
O for “East” – W for “West”.
The reform had become necessary, among other things, because after reunification there were 800 duplicates in the postal code systems of the Federal Republic and the GDR, according to Post 800. For example, the then federal capital Bonn and the classic city of Weimar could be reached under the numbers 5300. Anyone who wrote the number 6000 on an envelope could have ended up either in Frankfurt am Main or in Suhl without further information. Shipments under 6100 went to Darmstadt or Meiningen. In order to avoid misdirections in the early days after the fall of the Wall, Swiss Post called on its customers to put an “O” for East or a “W” for West in front of the four-digit postal code.
New zip codes
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Five was trump
However, the new number system was not only intended to avoid misdirections, but also to increase the efficiency of the Federal Post Office, which many then regarded as sluggish and clerical. At the beginning of the 1990s, Swiss Post set up 83 new letter centers and 33 new parcel centers in reunified Germany. The five-digit postcodes should make it possible to make the processing of the shipments more economical and faster. That was also successful, according to the Post today. In 1992, which was still in the middle of the four-digit postal code era, fewer than 80 percent of domestic letters reached the recipient the next day. Today that rate is 86 percent.
fear of chaos
Despite these lofty goals, there were quite a few skeptics in 1992 and 1993 who saw pure chaos and the downfall of written communication with the introduction of the five-digit postcode. At the beginning of February 1993, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, a member of the SPD at the time, called on the CSU postal minister, Wolfgang Bötsch, to call off the introduction altogether. A bureaucratic concept had been developed at the green table, which would lead to worse delivery and to confusion for the citizens.
In order to keep such irritations to a minimum, Swiss Post spent a lot of money 30 years ago. All in all, the conversion cost 400 million marks. The money not only flowed into the 40 million postal code books and into employee training, but also into a large-scale advertising campaign.
This included the TV show “Die Post geht ab” with the entertainer Rudi Carrell, commercials by film artists such as Doris Dörrie or Helmut Dietl, and cartoons with the slogan “Fünf ist Trumpf”, in which the talking and dirty comic hand Rolf warned the Germans about the new zip code system pointed out. All of this apparently with success. On July 1, 1993, 57 percent of the letters bore the new number, one week after the start the rate was 78 percent, two weeks later more than 90 percent.
An oak tree with its own zip code
As of today, according to the Post, there are exactly 27,048 different postcodes active in Germany, including almost 8,200 for locations, around 15,000 for PO boxes and 3,100 for major customers. As far as the federal states are concerned, North Rhine-Westphalia has the most postcodes, while Bremen has the fewest. A total of five buildings in Germany have their own postal code, including four skyscrapers in Frankfurt am Main, such as the Messeturm and the Opernturm, as well as the Schneefernerhaus on the Zuspitze.
And even a single tree has its own postal code: the groom’s oak in the Dodauer Forest near Eutin in Schleswig-Holstein. According to an old legend, she is said to bring together people who write love letters who are willing to marry. For those who want to know exactly: The postal code is 23701.
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