Police have searched and cleared the house of a Berlin postal worker who kept thousands of undelivered letters in her flat, some of which date back to 2021. Now, the postwoman has explained the circumstances that motivated the hoarding.

Hohenschönhausen postwoman collected undelivered letters

The house of a postal worker in the Hohenschönhausen district of Berlin has been searched by police after the woman was found hoarding thousands of undelivered letters, catalogues, newspapers and packages in her small flat. Since police entered the flat on Wednesday, the postal worker has been named as Marion R. 

The 63-year-old’s employer, a private postal company, noticed that letters were going missing in the area and, before contacting the police, attached a tracking device to a number of letters going out for delivery.

After Marion R’s boss noticed that the letters had stayed in the same location for a prolonged period, the police were contacted, and crates of the undelivered letters were collected from her flat. Police have said that the delayed letters will be delivered to the intended recipients within the next few weeks.

Why did Marion R. heap undelivered letters in her house?

Since her flat was raided, many media platforms in Germany have speculated that Marion R. was keeping post at her house because she was a hoarder and that there might be pets or insect infestations in her house.

However, speaking to RTL news, Marion R. explained that she had had two accidents at work in 2017 and 2019. After injuring her knee it became more difficult to deliver letters as quickly as her employer demanded. So, for fear of losing her job, she began keeping the letters that she couldn’t deliver within her regular working hours. 

Though surprising, the series of events is part of a trend of overworked postal workers in Germany. In December 2015 another postal worker in Cologne was found storing 100 postal boxes of undelivered mail in his flat and a further employee in North Rhine-Westphalia was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for throwing away 800 letters.

Thumb image credit: Vytautas Kielaitis / Shutterstock.com