BONN (dpa-AFX) - The end of an era: Deutsche Post will discontinue its telegram service at the end of the year. The service has hardly been used recently, a company spokesman said Thursday, explaining the move. The post office follows thereby the example of many other postal enterprises world-wide. Previously, the consumer portal "Paketda" and the "Welt" had reported on it.

Invented in the 19th century, the telegram was one of the fastest ways to transmit important information until well into the 20th century. The text, dictated in person or by telephone at the post office or telegraph office, was usually transmitted by teletype to a post office or telegraph office near the recipient and then delivered by messenger.

Since the price of a telegram was usually quite high and depended on the number of words, a special style of language developed with short forms instead of complete sentences. A typical formulation was, for example, "Arrive Saturday 8 p.m. Grandma. With the spread of the telephone, and even more so with the advent of the Internet and smartphones, the telegram lost its importance dramatically.

Recently, it was hardly used by private customers, said the postal spokesman. Companies sometimes used it for reminders or as a token of appreciation for long-serving employees on company anniversaries, but even that has become increasingly rare.

However, this is no wonder: The prices for a telegram were still high despite the loss of importance. A mini telegram with up to 160 characters last cost at least 12.57 euros, a maxi telegram with up to 480 characters 17.89 euros - in the simple variant. With a decorative sheet, the price was 21.98 euros.

However, the telegram is not the only aging telecommunications service that consumers in Germany will have to say goodbye to in the coming year.

At the end of January, Deutsche Telekom also switched off its last remaining public telephones, as it announced in October. Since the end of November, it has no longer been possible to pay with cash at the 12,000 or so remaining devices. At the end of January, the option of using telephone cards to pay at the telephone kiosks will also come to an end.

The first "telephone kiosk" was set up in Berlin in 1881. At its peak, there were more than 160,000 telephone booths in Germany. But they gradually disappeared from the cityscape in recent decades because hardly anyone used them anymore, at the latest with the spread of mobile communications. Almost one in three public telephones did not generate a single euro in revenue last year, Telekom reported in October. The average revenue per location is also only a few euros per month. That was out of all proportion to the costs of maintenance. However, according to the company, it will probably be 2025 before the last telephone pillars and telephone booths are dismantled./rea/DP/jha