Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft
Encyclopedia
The Deutsche Reichsbahn ("German Imperial Railway") – was the name of the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 national railway
Rail transport
Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of wheeled vehicles running on rail tracks. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles merely run on a prepared surface, rail vehicles are also directionally guided by the tracks they run on...

 created from the railways of the individual states of the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

 following the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

It was founded in 1920 as the Deutsche Reichseisenbahnen when the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

  (formally Deutsches Reich
Deutsches Reich
Deutsches Reich was the official name for Germany from 1871 to 1945 in the German language.As the literal English translation "German Empire" denotes a monarchy, the term is used only in reference to Germany prior to the fall of the monarchies at the end of World War I in 1918...

 – "German Empire" – hence the usage of "Reich
Reich
Reich is a German word cognate with the English rich, but also used to designate an empire, realm, or nation. The qualitative connotation from the German is " sovereign state." It is the word traditionally used for a variety of sovereign entities, including Germany in many periods of its history...

" in the name of the railway) took national control of the German railways, which had previously been run by the German states.

In 1924 it was reorganized under the aegis of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG), a nominal private railway company, which was 100% owned by the German state.

In 1937 it was reorganized again as a state authority and given the name Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB). After the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....

 in 1938 the DR also took over the Bundesbahn Österreich (BBÖ, Federal Railway of Austria).

In 1949 the newly created German Democratic Republic
German Democratic Republic
The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

 took over the control of the DR on its territory and continued to use the traditional name Deutsche Reichsbahn, while the railway in the new Federal Republic of Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 became the Deutsche Bundesbahn
Deutsche Bundesbahn
The Deutsche Bundesbahn or DB was formed as the state railway of the newly established Federal Republic of Germany on September 7, 1949 as a successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft '...

 (DB, German Federal Railway). The Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n Österreichische Bundesbahnen
ÖBB
The Austrian Federal Railways is the national railway system of Austria, and the administrators of Liechtenstein's railways...

 (ÖBB, Austrian Federal Railways) was founded in 1945, and was given its present name in 1947.

In January 1994, following the German union, the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn merged with the West German Deutsche Bundesbahn
Deutsche Bundesbahn
The Deutsche Bundesbahn or DB was formed as the state railway of the newly established Federal Republic of Germany on September 7, 1949 as a successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft '...

 to form Germany's new national carrier, Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn AG is the German national railway company, a private joint stock company . Headquartered in Berlin, it came into existence in 1994 as the successor to the former state railways of Germany, the Deutsche Bundesbahn of West Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany...

 AG, technically no longer a government agency but still a 100% state-owned joint stock company
Joint stock company
A joint-stock company is a type of corporation or partnership involving two or more individuals that own shares of stock in the company...

.

1920: Deutsche Reichseisenbahnen

The Deutsche Reichseisenbahnen ("German Reich (Imperial) Railways") were established on 1 April 1920 as a union of the existing state railway companies (Länderbahnen
Länderbahnen
The German term Länderbahnen generally refers to the state railways of the German Empire in the period from about 1840 to 1920 when they were merged into the Deutsche Reichsbahn after the First World War....

) of Prussia
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...

, Bavaria
Kingdom of Bavaria
The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Bavarian Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806 as Maximilian I Joseph. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918...

, Saxony
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony , lasting between 1806 and 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. From 1871 it was part of the German Empire. It became a Free state in the era of Weimar Republic in 1918 after the end of World War...

, Württemberg
Württemberg
Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....

, Baden
Grand Duchy of Baden
The Grand Duchy of Baden was a historical state in the southwest of Germany, on the east bank of the Rhine. It existed between 1806 and 1918.-History:...

, Mecklenburg
Mecklenburg
Mecklenburg is a historical region in northern Germany comprising the western and larger part of the federal-state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern...

 and Oldenburg. The union of the state railway companies became necessary due to the new constitution of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

 of 1 August 1919, which placed responsibility for railways with the national government; like the prewar German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

, it was known as the German Reich. The state railways that merged were the:
  • Prussian state railways
    Prussian state railways
    The term Prussian state railways encompasses those railway organisations that were owned or managed by the State of Prussia...

    , including the former Grand Duchy of Hesse State Railways
    Grand Duchy of Hesse State Railways
    The Grand Duchy of Hesse State Railways belonged to the Länderbahnen at the time of the German Empire. In the 19th century, the Grand Duchy of Hesse consisted of three provinces. Between the rivers Rhine, Main and Neckar the province of Starkenburg embraced the Odenwald and the Hessian Ried...

  • Royal Bavarian State Railways
    Royal Bavarian State Railways
    As a nation-state, Germany did not come into being until the creation of the German Empire in 1871 from the various German-speaking states such as Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Baden and Württemberg. By then each of the major states had formed its own state railway and these continued to remain...

    , including the former Palatinate Railway
    Palatinate Railway
    The Palatinate Railway or Pfalzbahn was an early German railway company in the period of the German Empire prior to the First World War. It was formed on 1 January 1870, as the United Palatinate Railway based in Ludwigshafen, by the amalgamation of the following railway companies:*The Palatine...

  • Royal Saxon State Railways
    Royal Saxon State Railways
    The Royal Saxon State Railways were the state-owned railways operating in the Kingdom of Saxony from 1869 to 1918...

  • Royal Württemberg State Railways
    Royal Württemberg State Railways
    The Royal Württemberg State Railways were the state railways of the Kingdom of Württemberg between 1843 and 1920...

  • Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways
  • Grand Duchy of Oldenburg State Railways
    Grand Duchy of Oldenburg State Railways
    The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg Railway was the railway company that was run as a state railway for the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg , part of the German Empire....

  • Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg Friedrich-Franz Railway
    Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg Friedrich-Franz Railway
    The Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg Friedrich-Franz Railway was the state railway company in Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz...


1924: Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG)

Among the provisions of the 1924 Dawes Plan
Dawes Plan
The Dawes Plan was an attempt in 1924, following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany...

 was a plan to utilize the state railway completely for the payment of war reparations
World War I reparations
World War I reparations refers to the payments and transfers of property and equipment that Germany was forced to make under the Treaty of Versailles following its defeat during World War I...

. Following the plan's publication, on 12 February 1924 the Reich government announced the creation of the Deutsche Reichsbahn ("German Reich Railway") as a state enterprise under the Reich Ministry of Transportation (Reichsverkehrsministerium). As this was not enough to satisfy the reparations creditors, on 30 August 1924 a law was enacted providing for the establishment of a state owned Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG) (German Reich Railway Company) as a holding company
Holding company
A holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...

 to operate the national railways. The aim was to earn profits which, in accordance with the Dawes Plan, were to be used to contribute to Germany's war reparations. These terms were later amended in the Young Plan
Young Plan
The Young Plan was a program for settlement of German reparations debts after World War I written in 1929 and formally adopted in 1930. It was presented by the committee headed by American Owen D. Young. After the Dawes Plan was put into operation , it became apparent that Germany could not meet...

. In total, about 3.87 billion Goldmarks was paid in reparations to the Allied powers.

The beginning of the DRG was characterised by the acquisition of new rolling stock built to standard types, such as the standard steam locomotives (Einheitsdampflokomotiven). The stock already in use was inherited from the various state railways and comprised a great number of designs, many of them quite old. In the latter part of the 1930s, high speed trains like the "Flying Hamburger" and streamlined steam engines with matching cars were developed. The Class 05 streamlined express engine
DRG Class 05
The Deutsche Reichsbahn's Class 05 was a German class of three express passenger steam locomotives of 4-6-4 wheel arrangement in the Whyte notation, or 2'C2' in the UIC notation used in continental Europe...

 reached a speed of 200.4 km/h (124.5 mph).
Before the Second World War the most important rail lines ran east and west. The most modern high speed lines were the Prussian Ostbahn which ran through the Polish corridor
Polish Corridor
The Polish Corridor , also known as Danzig Corridor, Corridor to the Sea or Gdańsk Corridor, was a territory located in the region of Pomerelia , which provided the Second Republic of Poland with access to the Baltic Sea, thus dividing the bulk of Germany from the province of East...

, the line from Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 to Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 on which high speed diesel trains ran, the line from Hannover to the Ruhr
Ruhr
The Ruhr is a medium-size river in western Germany , a right tributary of the Rhine.-Description:The source of the Ruhr is near the town of Winterberg in the mountainous Sauerland region, at an elevation of approximately 2,200 feet...

, the line from Frankfurt am Main to southwest Germany, and the line from Berlin to Breslau (Wrocław).

1937: Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB)

During the Nazi dictatorship, along with other measures of gaining total control
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...

 (see Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung , meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line", is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J...

), the rail network was again placed under direct government control on 10 February 1937, through a newly enacted law re-organizing the Reichsbank
Reichsbank
The Reichsbank was the central bank of Germany from 1876 until 1945. It was founded on 1 January 1876 . The Reichsbank was a privately owned central bank of Prussia, under close control by the Reich government. Its first president was Hermann von Dechend...

 and the DRG. To emphasize this, swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...

s were added to the Hoheitsadler symbol (the eagle, Germany's traditional symbols of national sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...

) on the railcars, and the initials DR were held to stand for "Deutsches Reich," although this was legally ambiguous. Mail transport cars sported Deutsche Reichspost.

1938: Absorption of the Austrian Railways

On 18 March 1938, following the annexation of Austria, the Bundesbahn Österreich (BBÖ, Federal Railway of Austria) was integrated into the Deutsche Reichsbahn. On 27 April 1945, the Austrian railways became independent again as the Austrian State Railway (Österreichische Staatseisenbahn or ÖStB). On 5 August 1947 the Austrian railroad was renamed Austrian Federal Railways (Österreichische Bundesbahnen or ÖBB
ÖBB
The Austrian Federal Railways is the national railway system of Austria, and the administrators of Liechtenstein's railways...

).

1939-1945: The Reichsbahn in the Second World War and the Holocaust

During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the Reichsbahn was an essential component of German military logistics, providing essential transportation services for the Reich throughout the occupied lands of Europe. In addition, the Reichsbahns participation was crucial to the effective implementation of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...

" (Endlösung der Judenfrage). The Reichsbahn was paid to transport
Holocaust trains
The Holocaust trains were railway transports run by German Nazis and their collaborators to forcibly deport interned Jews and other victims of the Holocaust to the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps....

 Jews and other victims of the Holocaust from thousands of towns and cities throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 to meet their death in the Nazi concentration camp system, using Holocaust trains
Holocaust trains
The Holocaust trains were railway transports run by German Nazis and their collaborators to forcibly deport interned Jews and other victims of the Holocaust to the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps....

.

The following is an excerpt from the testimony of Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...

:


"The Reichsbahn was ready to ship in principle any cargo in return for payment. And therefore, the basic key — price controlled key — was that Jews were going to be shipped to Treblinka, were going to be shipped to Auschwitz, Sobibor
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...

 …so long as the railroads were paid by the track kilometer, so many pfennigs per mile. The rate was the same throughout the war. With children under ten going at half-fare and children under four going free. Payment had to be made for only one way. The guards of course had to have return fare paid for them because there were going back to their place of origin..."


Beginning in November 2007, a museum train, the "Train of Commemoration" (Zug der Erinnerung), began a 3000 km tour of Germany as a rolling memorial to the thousands of youth and children who were deported from all over Europe, many via the Reichsbahn, to the camps. A certain amount of controversy has surrounded the train's tour through Germany, in part because of the apparent lack of cooperation on the part of Deutsche Bahn AG
Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn AG is the German national railway company, a private joint stock company . Headquartered in Berlin, it came into existence in 1994 as the successor to the former state railways of Germany, the Deutsche Bundesbahn of West Germany and the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany...

 (DB AG) concerning such matters as compensation for the use of the DB AG's right of way (during the tour) and the stationing of the train, during its visit to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, at the Ostbahnhof
Berlin Ostbahnhof
Berlin Ostbahnhof is a mainline railway station in Berlin, Germany. It is in Friedrichshain, now part of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, and has undergone several name changes in its history. It was known as Berlin Hauptbahnhof from 1987 to 1998, a name now applied to Berlin's new central station...

 station instead of the more centrally located Hauptbahnhof
Berlin Hauptbahnhof
' , is the main railway station in Berlin, Germany. It began full operation two days after a ceremonial opening on 26 May 2006. It is located on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof, and until it opened as a main line station, it was a stop on the Berlin S-Bahn suburban railway temporarily...

main railway station. The tour was scheduled to end on 8 May 2008 (the 63rd anniversary of the end of the European portion of WWII) when the train arrived at Auschwitz. However, it continued to make appearances through 2009, and as of January 2010 the website requests visitors to look for further travel plans at the end of February.
The following awarded the Knights Cross of the War Service Cross
Friedrich Agatz 21.2.45
Karl Remy 7.12.42
Erich Goudefroy 7.12.43
Fritz Wilhelm Grimm 7.12.43
Emil Beck 11.7.44
Gustav Dilli 14.8.44
Josef Muller 12.9.44
Gunther Wiens 7.12.44
Maximilian Lammertz 7.12.44
Julius Metzger 20.2.45.
Wilhelm Schell 20.2.45
Heinrich Zechmann 20.2.45
Otto Bohrmann 21.2.45
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