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Communication through Centuries at the P&T Museum

By J. Henrik Jørgensen and Vagn Jørgensen

The collection of objects started in 1856, and today the collection contains something for anyone who is interested in communication through centuries.


With its situation in 9, Valkendorfsgade in downtown Copenhagen, the Danish Post and Telegraph is placed centrally and in a very postal environment near the old Post Yard in the busy street Købmagergade.

"Most visitors come in the summer; some of them from far away to see the rarities at the museum," says director A. Morell Nielsen. He has been looking after the museum for 25 years and claims that it has something of interest to everybody. "It is a special museum with many groups of subjects of which the common denominator is communication through centuries with post and telecommunication as the main groups". The collections are frequently perused by historians. Drawings, photos, and descriptions are systematized so they are easily found in the large archives. Each of the exhibits holds a story about a development or an event.

The History of the Museum

Already in 1856, the later head postmaster Jens Wilcken Mørch laid the foundation of a postal museum, when he started in private to collect objects. In 1907, the collection was handed over to the postal service and placed in the Post Yard in Købmagergade – close to the present museum. The space was, however, so narrow that the public was never admitted. It happened only in 1913 when some offices in the Central Post Building in Tietgensgade were transferred to the museum. At the same time the museum was given the responsibility for the General Directorate’s collection of postage stamps. A few years later – in 1919 – the museum closed and was only reopened in 1926. During the intervening years, the National Giro Office used the premises.

When the Postal Service and the Telegraph Service merged in 1927, it was decided to extend the museum by a collection of teletechnical objects. As a consequence of this, the museum changed its name from the Danish Postal Museum to the Danish Dansk Post & Telegraph Museum.

Censorship of Letters

During the occupation the museum had been packed away because the Germans needed the premises for censorship of letters. However, at the collection of objects continued, the museum had already at the reopening in 1945 grown out of the frames. The space problems were temporarily solved when the museum moved into a side wing of the Museum of Copenhagen in Vesterbrogade whose collections were opened in 1956.

Also here, the space became too narrow and in 1985 it became possible to take over the Danish Telecom’s property in Valkendorfsgade 7-9. In this way the museum has ended up on postal historical ground, as this was a stamp printing house during the period from 1852 to 1933 when the postal service took over the production themselves.

The oldest house which contains the museum was built in 1730 right after the conflagration of Copenhagen that laid Valkendorfsgade, which by the way was called Hellig Geist Stræde at that time, in ruins. Through the years the number of visitors has varied a lot. At present it is increasing.

"We are registering this in different ways. Among other things we see more rucksacks in the cloakroom than previously. Perhaps we are getting more visitors because admission to the museum is free. In the old days in Vesterbrogade we were the neighbours of the Museum of Copenhagen and many of their visitors also dropped in on us. Today we are the neighbours of the toy museum. We can feel that, too, because many children are visiting us", A. Morell Nielsen concludes.



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