“Elektron”, Emma Cadwallader-Guild
Frankfurt, 1895

The Ohio-born sculptress Emma Cadwallader-Guild (1843 – 1911), who had been working in Germany since 1887, was one of the
few women who were successful as artists at the end of the 19th century. Her statue of Electron is based on the seated Mercury of Herculaneum, a classical Greek sculpture by Lysippos (340-300 BC). The messenger of the gods, Mercury, who operates a Morse key
becomes an allegory of telegraphy as electron.

“The eavesdropper”, unknown artist
Beelitz, 1960s

This bronze sculpture stood in the courtyard of the Beelitz radio reception centre, which was closed in 1991. The “overseas reception station” in Beelitz was built in 1928 to receive radio telegrams from the USA, South America and Southeast Asia. Distributed over the several-kilometre site
More than 30 large antennas with heights of up to 75 metres Beelitz was therefore considered to be the German “ear to the world” . The sculpture of the eavesdropper adopts the idea of Beelitz as an “ear to the world”. It was created for a new building in the 1960s. Unfortunately, the artist is not documented.

“Hermes”, Willy Meller
Cologne, 1929

This figure of the messenger god Hermes stood above the entrance portal of the parcel post office built between 1927 and 1929 in Stolkgasse, a 67-metre-long four-storey building in the centre of Cologne. When the building was demolished in 1984/85 to make way for a new building, the statue was salvaged by Ulrich Kleine-Rüschkamp of Deutsche Post Bauen GmbH, who donated it to the museum in 2021.