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Regulations - Alterations


by Birgitte Wistoft

On Christmas day 1624 King Christian the 4th signed an "Ordinance concerning Postmen". The ordinance forms the basis of the oldest public postal service in the Nordic countries. It is about conveyance of letters. After 375 years of constant changing the postal service is today back where it started: with the letters. In the meantime it has been undertaking an abundance of different tasks.


On Private Hands

The Ordinance of 1624 formed the framework of a simple letter conveyance system. By 9 different routes with Copenhagen as the starting point postmen on horseback and on foot were sent out in the country according to fixed schedules. The postmen delivered the letters at the post offices on the routes from where the addressees could pick them up. The postage rate was supposed to cover the expenses. This was, however, difficult in the beginning although the king’s postal service had a monopoly of conveyance of letters.

The son of Christian the 4th, Frederik the 3rd, took the consequences and in 1653 the postal service was leased by merchant Paul Klingenberg. He took over the monopoly and the incomes in return for paying all the expenses. It became good business as he got the opportunity of expanding the conveyance of letters with transport of passengers and goods by his own carriages and ships. After Klingenberg’s retirement in 1685 Christian the 5th surrendered the postal service to his son Christian Gyldenløve. He and later his widow, Dorothea Krag, enjoyed the incomes from the growing postal service until 1711 when the king took over again.

A National Golden Egg

Frederik the 4th needed money and the incomes from the postal service did not let down his expectations. Through the entire 18th century the postal service yielded a comfortable profit which was mainly used for paying pensions to the Crown’s public servants and their surviving relatives. It also afforded to support missionary work, as well as social and commercial initiatives like the Orphanage, Frederik’s Hospital, and the Royal Porcelain Factory.

A tremendous increase in the extent of the postal service took place in the late 18th century with the take-over of the transport services on land and at sea. The postal service was now also running road delivery business and ferry service.

Stagecoaches and Stamps

The stagecoach was introduced in 1829 in line with the postal service’s interest in conveying more than letters. The initiative for regular passenger and parcel coaches between the Danish towns was taken by the postmaster of Køge, Captain Johan Andreas von Mühlensteth. The stagecoaches became extremely popular although Hans Christian Andersen soon would praise train rides as being much more com-fortable. The stagecoaches of the postal service remained a travel possibility for common people even long time after the first train had rolled from Copenhagen to Roskilde in 1847.

Another novelty became decisive for an immense growth in sending letters: the stamp, which was introduced in 1851 as a cheap and uniform postage rate, paid in advance by the sender who soon learned to use the letterbox instead of the time-consuming walk to the post office.

Telegraphy etc.

A brand new form of communication saw the light of day during the last years of the 18th century: the semaphore. Inspired by the Frenchman Chappe’s signalling system, which has been immortalized in the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo", a system of poles with suspended wooden plates was developed in Denmark. The messages were read in code from height to height through the Danish landscape. In clear weather a message could be sent from Schleswig to Copenhagen in less than half an hour! The postal service managed the system from 1802 until it was taken down in 1862. In this way the service had reached its years of telegraphic discretion.

It was also under the organization of the postal service that the electric telegraph was placed when it was operation-alized in 1854. The telegraph service developed into an independent unit eventually including telephony, broad-casting, and network communication among its fields of activities.

In1927, the telegraph service became an integrated part of what was then called the Post and Telegraph Service, P & T.

The Largest Work Place in the Country

Already in 1920, the postal service had fallen upon another lucrative business: transaction of payments via the post office giro system. The number of postal offices and employees increased remarkably as the post office giro became the Danes’ preferred mode of payment.

Also indirectly the Danish citizens were big customers of P & T through their regional telephone companies and the Danish Broadcasting Company as these used P & T which took care of the technical connections between towns, regions, provinces, and abroad. Together with DSB [the Danish state-owned railway company] P & T became the largest work place and owner of property in Denmark through the 20th century.

Termination

The technical development has claimed its victims, even within the postal service. Conveyance of passengers was the first to succumb to railways and buses. The last postal stagecoach route was discontinued in 1912 and the ferry services were eventually alienated. The last postal ferry route from Esbjerg to Fanø was taken over by DSB in 1977.

The political development has, however, caused far the majority of changes in the national postal service. The entire post office giro business was separated as an independent state-owned company in 1988 although still under P & T. In 1991, it became GiroBank Ltd. with the state as the main shareholder and later it merged with the Bikuben savings bank. The company is today called BGBank and is a public limited company. However, the historical background still reveals itself in the branch network collaboration with the postal service.

Also the lucrative telecommunication activities have now been completely separated from the postal service. As a parallel to the giro story the telecommunication services were at first turned into the National Telecommunications Service in 1986, then into the stage-owned TELECOM Ltd., and then placed under Tele Denmark Ltd. just as the regional telephone companies.

The Future

In 1995, P & T became the state-owned company Post Denmark. It has not yet been turned into a limited company. It is still undergoing extensive trimming with sale of proper-ties and reduction of the number of employees on the agenda. We can follow the efforts in the daily newspapers: New technique, modern organization, vigorous staking on the core area, the letter, and creative exploitation of the postal service’s great potential: the retail trade.

Through centuries the Danish postal service has established a unique contact surface to the Danish citizens consisting of a wide network of postal offices and, not least, of the post-man’s daily contact to each and every household in Denmark. Only the imagination seems to set the limits as to how such a communication system can be exploited – besides the competition, of course. There is no doubt that competition will be keen.

Will the Danish postal service remain national or will it be privatized? The answer to this question is undoubtedly more important to the employees than to the customers. Letters will not cease to be delivered quickly, safely, and cheaply. But it will certainly be exciting to see if in 2024 we will be able to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christian the 4th’s postal service in the red and yellow colours of the House of Oldenburg embellished with the monogram of the Danish sovereign.

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