In the first half of the 19th century, opinions about the emerging railways in Germany varied widely. While business-minded people like
Friedrich Harkort and
Friedrich List saw in the railway the possibility of stimulating the economy and overcoming the patronization of little states, and were already starting railway construction in the 1820s and early 1830s, others feared the fumes and smoke generated by locomotives or saw their own livelihoods threatened by them.
Development , built in 1866 The political disunity of three dozen states and a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the 1830s, but the growing importance of the
Zollverein made the construction of a coherent infrastructure a necessity. The initial impetus to build was hampered by complicated negotiations on land ownership. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines did link the major cities; each German state being responsible for the lines within its own borders. During the 1820s, the nobility favoured costly and economically inefficient (but prestigious) canal projects over railways. In the 1830s, the growing liberal middle classes supported railways as a progressive innovation with benefits for the German people in general as well as for the shareholders in the joint stock companies that built and operated the railroads. Though private concerns such as the Nuremberg-Fürth Railway were superseded by state railway companies in the 1840s, the government companies copied many of the private companies' methods and organizational structures. Economist
Friedrich List, speaking for the liberals, summed up the advantages to be derived from the development of the railway system in 1841: ::First, as a means of national defence, it facilitates the concentration, distribution and direction of the army. ::2. It is a means to the improvement of the culture of the nation.... It brings talent, knowledge and skill of every kind readily to market. ::3. It secures the community against dearth and famine, and against excessive fluctuation in the prices of the necessaries of life. ::4. It promotes the spirit of the nation, as it has a tendency to destroy the Philistine spirit arising from isolation and provincial prejudice and vanity. It binds nations by ligaments, and promotes an interchange of food and of commodities, thus making it feel a unit. The iron rails become a nervous system, which, on the one hand, strengthens public opinion, and, on the other hand, strengthens the power of the state for police and governmental purposes. Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. The following years saw a rapid growth: By the year 1845, there were already more than 2,000 km of railway line in Germany; ten years later that number was above 8,000. Most German states had state-owned railway companies, but there were several large private companies as well. One of these private companies, the
Rhenish Railway (
Rheinische Eisenbahn), built one of the first ever international railway lines. The line connected Cologne to
Antwerp in Belgium and was opened in 1843.
The first German railways In 1820,
Friedrich Harkort founded a consortium with the aim of building a wagonway from the Schlebusch Coal Region (
Kohlerevier Schlebusch) to
Haspe. The Schlesbusch-Harkort Coal Railway (
Schlebusch-Harkorter Kohlenbahn), with a length of one
Prussian mile (7½ kilometres), was largely completed by 1828 and was the first railway to operate over such a distance. The haulage of coal on this
narrow gauge railway was carried out by horses. On 1 April 1876,
steam locomotives took over the work. The railway is now closed and has been dismantled, although parts of the line may still be seen. The tracks and wagons were later used in a roughly similar way in the construction of the Deilthal Railway. With the laying of iron rails from
Essen by the
Deilthal Railway Company, founded in 1828, the first proper
railway line was built on German soil. According to one description, the tracks of this line consisted of oak
sleepers on which so-called
Straßbäume (
wooden rails), each 3.30 metres long, were laid in pairs and fixed with wooden nails. Iron rails, 40 millimetres thick, were fastened onto the
Straßbäumen, again with wooden nails. The
track gauge was initially just 82 cm. The line was one Prussian mile (7,532 meters). On 20 September 1831, the Deilthal Railway was ceremonially opened by
Prince William, a son of the Prussian king,
Frederick William II, and was to be called from then on the
Prince William Railway Company (PWE). Until 1844 it was operated as a
wagonway for the transportation of
coal, but as early as 1833
passenger wagons were available "for enjoyment". In 1847, the railway was converted to
standard gauge and was worked between
Steele South and
Vohwinkel as a steam-driven railway with the name Steele-Vohwinkel Railway (
Steele-Vohwinkler Eisenbahn). The trackbed is used today by
S-Bahn line no. 9. The majority and official view, however, is that the
Bavarian Ludwig Railway, built in 1835 by the private Ludwig Railway Company in Nuremberg (
Ludwigs-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in Nürnberg) by engineer
Paul Camille von Denis, was the first railway in Germany, because it introduced the new type of steam engine. It was officially opened on 7 December 1835 with a journey from
Nuremberg to
Fürth after earlier test runs had been carried out with the locomotive
Adler, built by
Stephenson and Co. in
Newcastle upon Tyne. The Englishman
William Wilson drove the locomotive on this first journey and became the first engine driver in Germany. In contemporary publications, this first journey by a steam locomotive was seen as the beginning of a new era. The decision of the Ludwig Railway Company to opt for the English system, including its
rail profile and
track gauge, flanges, wagons and so on, also had a normative effect because subsequently, the German railways adopted the same standards based on what was clearly a mature system. The development of the German railway network bypassed this line and it was never connected to other railways. Finally, it had to compete with electric
trams running between
Nuremberg and
Fürth. On 31 October 1922, it was closed and used for a tramway. This was followed by the first railway in Prussia, the
Berlin-Potsdam Railway: the 11-kilometre-long stretch from
Zehlendorf to
Potsdam which opened on 22 September 1838; its 12-kilometre extension from Zehlendorf to Berlin was opened on 29 October 1838. From 1 December 1838, the
Duchy of Brunswick State Railway operated between
Brunswick and
Wolfenbüttel. This was the first railway in Germany to be in state ownership, probably intended to prevent a takeover by Prussia, but it was later sold to Prussia in 1869 due to the financial difficulties which the duchy found itself in. The
Düsseldorf-Elberfeld Railway opened the line between
Düsseldorf and
Erkrath on 20 December 1838, thus becoming the first steam railway in the
Rhineland and the Prussian
Rhine Province. The first railway line in
Hesse was the 41.2-kilometre-long
Taunus Railway between the
free city of Frankfurt and
Wiesbaden, the capital of the
Duchy of Nassau, which was taken into operation in four stages between 26 September 1839 and 19 May 1840.
1840s 's concept for a German railway net from 1833 The takeoff stage of economic development came with the railroad revolution in the 1840s, which opened up new markets for local products, created a pool of middle managers, increased the demand for engineers, architects and skilled machinists and stimulated investments in coal and iron. Political disunity of three dozen states and a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the 1830s. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines did link the major cities; each German state was responsible for the lines within its own borders. Economist
Friedrich List summed up the advantages to be derived from the development of the railway system in 1841: Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. For example, in 1837-39, Thomas Clarke Worsdell (1788–1862), chief coachbuilder of the Liverpool and Manchester Company, came to help engineer the railway linking Leipzig and Dresden. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as 1890, their engineering was inferior to Britain's. However, German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of industrialisation, and so, heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives, pulling 43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight per year per locomotive, and its rail network forged ahead of France.
First trunk lines The first section of the
Leipzig-Dresden Railway, from
Leipzig to
Althen, was opened on 24 April 1837, becoming the third German railway to be built. The line was completed through to
Dresden on 7 April 1839. With a total route length of , this was also the first German trunk or long-distance railway and the first exclusively steam-powered railway in Germany. The
Dresden Leipzig railway station was the first railway station in Dresden, the capital of Saxony, and was the terminus of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway. Its route also included the
first German railway tunnel. On 29 June 1839, the first section of the
Magdeburg-Leipzig Railway, from
Magdeburg to
Schönebeck was opened. After being extended to Halle and Leipzig in 1840 it became the first international
main line and had a route length of . Between 1839 and 1843, the
Rhenish Railway was built from
Cologne to the
border station of
Herbesthal, with its connection to
Antwerp. The line was opened on 15 October 1843 and was the first railway line that crossed an external border of the
German Confederation. On 12 September 1840, the Grand Duchy of Baden opened a
state railway: the route from
Mannheim to
Heidelberg and the first section of the
Baden Main Line from Mannheim to
Basel, which reached
Freiburg im Breisgau on 1 August 1845, and which was completed in 1855. Unlike all the surrounding railways, Baden used a
broad gauge of 1600 mm until 1854/55. On 12 September 1841, the
Berlin-Anhalt Railway Company began working the route from the
Anhalter Bahnhof in
Berlin to
Köthen (Anhalt), where the line met the
Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg Railway. As a result, Köthen became the first
railway hub in Germany. With the opening of the Berlin-Frankfurt Railway on 31 October 1842 from Berlin's
Silesian station to
Frankfurt (Oder) the now loosely connected German railway network now had a total length of just under 1,000 km. On 22 October 1843, the
Kreuzbahn ("cross railway") was opened from
Hanover to
Lehrte, the first line operated by the
Royal Hanoverian State Railways. Lehrte became an important railway hub, with routes to
Berlin,
Cologne,
Hildesheim and
Harburg in front of the gates of
Hamburg. The first section of the
Cologne-Minden Railway, from Deutz to Düsseldorf, was opened on 20 December 1845; the second section to
Duisburg followed on 9 February 1846. The line was extended the following year, reaching
Hamm via
Dortmund on 15 May. On 15 October 1847, the entire line to
Minden was completed, initially just single-tracked. On the same day the
line from Hanover to Minden was opened by the
Royal Hanoverian State Railways. On 1 September 1846, the last section (Frankfurt (Oder) –
Bunzlau) of the
Lower Silesian-Märkisch Railway was opened, linking the two great cities of Prussia, Berlin and
Breslau. At the same time the main line of the
Upper Silesian Railway that started in Breslau reached
Gleiwitz in October of that year. Within three years the railway network in the German Confederation had more than doubled in length. Three and a half months later, on 15 December 1846, the
Berlin–Hamburg Railway went into service: a diagonal connection between the two largest cities of what became the
German Empire. Likewise in 1846 the
Main-Neckar Railway from
Frankfurt (Main) to
Mannheim and
Heidelberg went into service.
Central European network In the north the
line from Celle to Harburg owned by the Hanoverian State Railway in the
Kingdom of Hanover reached
Harburg on the
River Elbe on 1 May 1847. In autumn of that year continuous east-west links were established: • On 1 September 1847 the
Saxon-Silesian Railway Company connected the railway network Lower Silesia to Central Germany when it opened the
Dresden–Gorlitz railway. • On 15 October 1847 the last section of the
Cologne-Minden Railway and the
Minden branch of the Hanoverian State Railway were opened simultaneously creating the first through railway link from the
Rhine to the
Oder via Berlin. The route was more complicated than today however: the link from Brunswick to Magdeburg ran, in July 1843, via
Wolfenbüttel,
Jerxheim and
Oschersleben to
Magdeburg. Until the completion of the
Buckau Railway Bridge in 1848, traffic from Berlin ended at the station of Magdeburg-
Friedrichstadt on the eastern bank of the Elbe. After crossing the Elbe, passengers had to re-board the train at Schleinufer (Elbbahnhof), the terminus of the
line from Oschersleben. Berlin's termini were not linked within the city until 1851, when the
Berlin Link Railway entered service. On 18 October 1847, there was a continuous line from
Breslau to
Kraków for the first time when the
Upper Silesian Railway was linked to the
Kraków-Upper Silesian Railway. With the completion of the railway within Breslau on 3 February 1848 that connected its termini, there was now a continuous rail link from the
Rhine to the
Vistula And with the closure of a short gap between the
William Railway in
Upper Silesia and the
Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway in
Austrian Silesia on 1 September 1848, the first contiguous Central European network was formed, reaching as far as
Deutz, right of the Rhine, in the west, Harburg in the north, Warsaw and Kraków in the east and as far as
Gloggnitz at the northern foot of the
Semmering Pass in the south. Among the northern lines there were still small gaps in Berlin and Hamburg. In the following year, 1849, a connexion from Berlin to
Kassel via
Halle (Saale)/
Gerstungen was established when the
Halle–Bebra railway owned by the
Thuringian Railway and the
Frederick William Northern Railway in the
Electorate of Hesse were completed. The connexion of the southern German states of
Baden and
Bavaria took somewhat longer: • Berlin – Frankfurt/Main (
Main-Weser Railway, 1852), continuing via Mannheim (
Main-Neckar Railway) to
Freiburg im Breisgau (
Rhine Valley Railway, 1855) • Berlin – Munich (
Ludwig South-North Railway, 1853)
European network Following the takeover of
Cöln-Crefeld Railway at the turn of 1855/56, the Rhenish Railway Company, which was founded to build the line to Belgium, began work on a railway from Cologne upriver along a section of the left bank of the Rhine. This line reached
Rolandseck on 1 January 1857, Bingerbrück in 1859, today
Bingen Central Station, to where in the same year the main line of the
Hessian Ludwig Railway was extended, linking
Mainz with
Ludwigshafen from 1853. With the opening of Cologne's
Cathedral Bridge on 3 October 1859 the west European rail network, consisting of the
French and
Belgian networks and German lines west of the Rhine, were joined to the central European network that, meanwhile, had been extended to
Flensburg,
Königsberg (Prussia) (now Kaliningrad),
Rzeszów in
Galicia, Hungary beyond the
Theiß, and to
Triest on the
Mediterranean. In 1860 the
Prussian Eastern Railway was extended to the Russian border beyond
Eydtkuhnen (today
Chernyshevskoye) in German
East Prussia. With the opening of the branch from
Vilnius (German:
Wilna)–
Kaunas–
Virbalis (German:
Wirballen, Russian:
Вержболово and Polish:
Wierzbałowo) on the
Saint Petersburg–Warsaw Railway to this border crossing near
Kybartai, the first junction between the European standard gauge and the Russian
broad gauge networks was established.
State railway ambitions , built 1866 The governing bodies of the German states had differing attitudes to the railway. Some left the initiative to private operators, others attempted to establish a state-owned railway, especially in the southern German
monarchies of the
Grand Duchy of Baden,
Kingdom of Bavaria and
Duchy of Württemberg.
Prussia, on the other hand, initially encouraged private railways, but later took several railway companies into state ownership that had run into financial difficulties, such as the
Berg-Mark Railway Company. Following the
unification of Germany in 1871, attitudes changed in Prussia;
Otto von Bismarck, in particular, pressed for the development of a state railway system. The railway was seen as having great
military-strategic importance. Numerous ways were tried in order to create a common, German state railway. This was finally achieved during the
inter-war years (1918–1939): in accordance with the
Weimar Constitution the
Deutsche Reichsbahn was founded. Prior to that, there were the following early and significant approaches to the creation of national "state railways" (
Staatsbahnen): • In Baden an "Act Concerning the Construction of a Railway from Mannheim to the Swiss Border near Basel" was passed on 29 March 1838 and announced on 2 April 1838. Several other acts followed that dealt with the financing, forced acquisitions, the establishment of a railway division and operating regulations. • In
Württemberg King William I announced on 18 April 1843 the "Act Affecting the Construction of Railways", according to which railways were to "be transferred to the administration of the state or built at the cost of the state". Apart from the state railways the construction of other branch lines was left to private concerns. However, relatively few private railways were built in Württemberg. • In
Bavaria the private
Munich-Augsburg Railway Company began railway construction in 1839 and opened its route from
Munich to
Augsburg on 4 October 1840. The period of the Bavarian state railways began with the nationalisation of the Munich-Augsburg line in 1844. The
Royal Bavarian State Railways began by building the
Ludwig South-North Railway from 1844 to 1853; a line 548 kilometres long between
Hof and
Lindau. • The
Frankfurt National Assembly advised on the constitution of a German Empire as a federal state in 1848/1849. In doing so, they considered nationalising the railways and placing their management under the imperial government in order to strengthen the power of the empire. == The
Länderbahn era (1871–1920) ==