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There is a tiny little museum in Berlin that you probably don’t know about.
And if you don’t know about it, you will never find it. Actually, even if you do
know about it, you might not find it. But, the prize at the end is worth the
scavenger hunt.
The Letter Museum, or Buchstabenmuseum, is tucked away in a shop front
of an apartment building in Berlin-Mitte. It is a bit of an unusual area—typically
full of East-Berlin high-rise apartment buildings. But it’s just a 10-minute walk
from “Unter den Linden,” “Alexanderplatz” and “Potsdamerplatz.”
The museum is, for lack of a better term—jam packed with letters and signs.
Each of them represents a little bit of Berlin’s history, and all, yes every single
one, have been donated to the pint-sized museum.
The museum is owned and operated by Barbara Dechant, 39 and Anja
Schulze, 33. These two smart ladies saw the value in the old signs as little pieces
of history. “The Museum of Letters wants to awaken the public’s interest in
typography and the collection itself,” wrote Dechant and Schulze.
“They started the museum because Barbara Dechant has an obsession with
typography, and realized that there's nothing in the entire world that holds
onto the history and the personal stories of each letter and each sign,” said
photographer Mercy Southam.
Dechant realized she needed to showcase the fruits of her collection to the
public, and so the Letter Museum was born.
“So she's a huge typography fan, and she was really interested in each letter,
and why each letter is chosen for a particular message or symbol. She thinks of
each one of these signs as a symbol. They're like her children, she said, they're
like her little babies.” Passion can go a long way, and the passion Dechant and
Schulze have for their typography museum is evident in the wares.
People donate the signs and letters to the ladies because they like the idea of
holding on to a piece of Berlin history.
“All the letters are from Berlin—a lot of them are from old Berlin when it was
divided. One of the signs that they have is the old East Berlin train station, which
has been torn down, and that's a really big deal,” notes Southam.
the letter museum