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Everyday Faces


By Anne Elmer

Four new stamps marking the opening of Post & Tele Museum this autumn is a new departure of Danish stamp tradition: For the first time ever unknown persons have been portrayed on Danish stamps.


The number of celebrities portrayed on stamps is substantial. But young graphic designer Lisbet Skovbo Carlsen chose to show recognisable portraits of everyday people, which is highly unusual. Previously, when pictures of anonymous people have been used on stamps, they have been reproduced so that the persons would appear blurred and in this way become symbols of functions, events, or actions.

Each of the four stamps is built up by three elements: text, background motif, and portrait. The background motifs describe the development within the history of post and telecommunication from King Christian the 4th’s "Ordinance Concerning Postmen" from 1624 and the introduction of postmarks in the 19th century to pushbutton phones and digital technique.

In the foreground of the stamps we see four persons who are immediately recognisable as a postman, a male telegraph operator, a female telephone operator, and a postwoman. The portraits have been reproduced so clearly that our curiosity is tickled. Who are these four persons?

Postman Nissen

The portrait on the first stamp of the series (value DKK 3.75) was found in the archives of Post & Tele Museum. The matching file card tells us that it is "Higher Grade Postman Nissen, Copenhagen, delivering letters" and that the photograph is from about 1922. At that time the letter boxes of the city were emptied 11 times a day on weekdays, and the letters were delivered 6 times a day!

As luck would have it, the Danish postal service has carefully kept records of all employees and by means of these we are able to follow the career of postman Nissen.

Karl Kristian Lauritz Nissen was born on 9th July 1875. He started as a postman under the Head Postmastership in Copenhagen on 1st may 1898 and was promoted higher grade postman at Købmagergade Post Office on 1st January 1922. Maybe it is on the occasion of his promotion that the picture has been taken of Nissen in his higher grade postman’s uniform.

From the records it appears that Karl Kristian Niessen was attached to several of the large Copenhagen post offices during the years and the last time we meet him is in "Official Messages from the General Directorate of the Post & Telegraph Service" of 24th May 1945 where the following is announced: "At the end of the month of July 1945, on application due to old age, higher grade postman Karl Kristian Lauritz Nissen (No. 10), Copenhagen, has been dismissed with a pension by The Post & Telegraph Service".

Telegraph Operator Reiffenstein-Hansen

The second stamp (DKK 4.50) introduces us to a telegraph operator who seems deeply preoccupied with his work at the telegraph apparatus. The portrait is a section of an interior picture from 1911 from the picture archive of Tele Danmark. The picture shows five employees working in the branch department at the Central Telegraph Office in Copenahgen.

Our telegraph operator is jurist J.C.G. Reiffenstein-Hansen. The staff register of the State Telegraph Service tells us that he was born in 1861 and employed in the telegraph service on 1st December 1877. We find him again in a large photo collage which was made on the occasion of the State Telegraph’s 50th Anniversary in 1904.

In 1919, Reiffenstein-Hansen published the book "Tråden fra den røde Gaard" [The Thread from the Red Post Yard] with the subtitle "Recollections from 40 years in the Telegraph Service". The book is a committed going through the history of Danish telegraphy from the optical telegraph to about 1919, spiced with his own and other people’s memories.

Reiffenstein-Hansen described the development from the hand-operated Morse apparatus to automatic telegraphy as follows:

"The same thing has happened in the Telegraph Service as in so many other firms. The stamp of personality on the work has disappeared as machines have replaced such a large part of the human work. When in the old days you were sitting by the same Morse apparatus day after day, you knew so to speak the persons with whom you were working. From the speed and the writing you would know who was at the apparatus at the opposite end of the line and all the time you would feel in contact with and collaborating with a human being. You could almost grow fond of the apparatus you had been assigned to operate and embrace it with an interest as if it were your personal property. Such feelings are unknown in the work with the automatic telegraph".

Telephone Operator Estrid Jensen

The third stamp (DKK 5.50) features the portrait of a young female telephone operator in uniform and with a mouthpiece around her neck. It is a section of a photo from 1910 in the picture archive of Tele Danmark. It has previously been shown in MuseumsPosten (Vol. 1/1997, p. 8).

When Post Denmark published the series of four stamps, she was recognised by her family. "Look, it is grand-ma!" Luckily, the family did not keep their discovery to themselves and we therefore know quite a lot about our telephone operator.

Estrid Elisabeth Jensen was born on 21st December 1891 as the daughter of Jørgen and Emma Kirstine Jensen, née Zinglersen. The couple, who married in 1881, were both working in Amalienborg Palace and accompanying the royal family on their journeys abroad. In 1903, when Estrid was 11 years old, her father died of tuberculosis. In 1908, at the age of 16 Estrid Jensen was employed with KTAS in Nørregade in Copenhagen where she worked as a telephone operator, probably until 1918 when she married Niels Viktor Th. Nystad. Only in 1920 it was allowed telephone operators too keep their jobs once they had married.

Niels Th. Nystad was a teacher who later became MA in English, headmaster of Gasværksvejens School, deputy director of education of Copenhagen Municipality, and knight of the Dannebrog. Niels and Estrid Nystad had three children, the sons Jørgen and Henning who both became lawyers, and a daughter, the artist Gerda Nystad. Gerda Nystad is married to cartoonist Jørgen Mogensen who in 1992 drew a stamp of his well-known and beloved strip characters, The Poet and the Little Woman.

Postwoman Marianne Sørensen

With the last stamp (DKK 8.75) we get to present time and meet postwoman at Østerbro Post Office, Marianne Sørensen, in her new uniform from 1993. Marianne Sørensen was employed in the postal service in 1984 and has been working as a postwoman in the district of the post office during all the years.

Besides being a representative of the modern postal worker, Marianne Sørensen is also one of the many female employees who have arrived on the scene since postman Nissen went on his mail route. The first tenured postwoman was employed in 1971. At the latest survey of 31st August 1997 Post Denmark was occupying 12,816 women and 18,235 men and disposing of 3,883 ladies’ bicycles and 2,778 gentleman’s bicycles.


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