Fasse dich kurz: public telephones and stamp machines, Berlin 1937

On a tree-lined street of ornate apartment houses with a cigar shop, a small glazed kiosk lettered Fernsprecher stands on the pavement, the enamel sign Öffentlicher Fernsprecher on its door. A man waits beside it with his hands behind his back, a woman steps briskly out, and inside a man in a bowler hat lifts the receiver of the wall telephone. A woman in a dark hat also speaks beneath the Reichspost plate Fasse dich kurz! At a wooden kiosk a man lights a cigarette, and men feed coins into machines for 6-Rpf. stamps and postcards and turn the handle until the bell rings.

Most Berliners had no telephone at home, and booths like these, run by the Reichspost, served whole streets. The curt command on the wall had been there since the 1920s; in a state whose secret police listened to telephone calls, it came to sound like advice.