Post: Letter delivery in Germany - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 2005 - 55 Euro Cent

This year's special postage stamps of the series »Post« represent the letter's special character as an individual message. Written information from person to person is as old as the writing itself and can be traced back to ancient Egypt. After the downfall of the great empires of antiquity there were neither public transport facilities nor a regulated postal service in the Middle Ages. It was not until the end of the 15th century that the Taxis family established an organized postal system in Germany. The postal code of 1710 mentions for the first time the work of a postman. Finally, the postal service of the 19th century created a quality of service that has now become a matter of course: fast mail transport - often over thousands of miles away - and reliable delivery. Despite the use of state-of-the-art technology during mail delivery, mail delivery in the 21st century is a service that people do every day for people - in wind and weather, in North and South, West and East. All suitable means of transport are used. For example, the ship and the dike railway are as important to the deliverer in the far north as the cable car and cog railway for his "extreme" colleagues on the Zugspitze in southern Germany. Even if today telephone, fax and e-mail allow an exchange of information within seconds, the letter remains a valuable form of human communication. Old and new means of communication do not compete with each other, but complement each other.