For the 1920-1945 company of the same name, see Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft. The Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR, German Imperial Railway) was the name of the German national railway founded in 1920 in the Weimar Republic, formally Deutsches Reich, hence the Reich in the name of the railway. ...

The Deutsche Reichsbahn or DR (German Imperial Railways) was the East German national railway. In 1949 occupied Germany's railways were returned to German control after four years of allied control following World War II. Those in the Soviet occupation zone (which became the German Democratic Republic or GDR on October 7, 1949) continued to run as the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the name given to the German national railways in 1920. In West Germany, the Reichsbahn was succeeded by the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB). Both the Reichsbahn and the Bundesbahn continued as separate entities until 1994, when they merged to form the Deutsche Bahn. Image File history File links Logo of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. ... National motto: none Official languages German Capital East Berlin Largest city East Berlin Area  - Total  - % water Ranked 106th 108,333 km² Negligible Creation -Abolition 7 October 1949 3 October 1990 Currency East German mark Time zone  â€“ in summer CET (UTC+1) CEST (UTC+2) National anthem Auferstanden aus Ruinen Internet... 1949 (MCMXLIX) is a common year starting on Saturday. ... The group of countries known as the Allies of World War II came together, to fight the Axis Powers, as World War II unfolded and progressed. ... Combatants Allies: • Soviet Union, • UK & Commonwealth, • USA, • France/Free France, • China, • Poland, • ...and others Axis: • Germany, • Japan, • Italy, • ...and others Commanders Strength Casualties Full list Full list World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a large scale military conflict that took place between 1939 and 1945. ... The Soviet Occupation Zone (German: Sowjetische Besatzungszone (SBZ) or Ostzone) was the area of eastern Germany occupied by the Soviet Union from 1945 on, at the end of World War II. It became East Germany. ... East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR), German Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a socialist country that existed from 1949 to 1990. ... Disambiguation Page Global Depositary Receipt East Germany ... October 7 is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years). ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) is a common year starting on Saturday. ... The Deutsche Reichsbahn Gesellschaft was the German State Railway Company between 1920 and 1945. ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... Plaque commemorating 5,000 kilometers of electrification. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV in Roman) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... Germanys main train operator, the Deutsche Bahn AG (German Railway Corporation, also known as DB or DBAG) provides passenger and freight service via federally owned tracks. ...

Organization

The DR was the largest employer in the GDR and as a state-owned firm was directly subordinated to the GDR Ministry of Transport (Ministerium für Verkehr der DDR). From November 1954 - November 1989, the GDR Minister of Transport also occupied the position of the Director General (Generaldirektor) of the DR. The headquarters of the DR was located in East Berlin at No. 33 Voßstraße, close to the Berlin Wall and across from the site of the former Reich Chancellery. The company was administratively subdivided into eight regional directorates (Reichsbahndirektionen) with headquarters in Berlin, Cottbus, Dresden, Erfurt, Greifswald, Halle, Magdeburg and Schwerin. Mitropa furnished catering services to the DR, both on board trains and in stations. East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. ... Remnant of the Berlin Wall near Potsdamer Platz, June 2003. ... The Imperial Chancellory (German Reichskanzlei) is the traditional name of the office of the German Chancellor. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Map of Germany showing Cottbus Cottbus (Sorbian: ChoÅ›ebuz, Czech: ChotÄ›buz, Polish: Chociebuż, archaic German: Kottbus) is a city in Brandenburg, Germany, situated around 125 km southeast of Berlin on the Spree river. ... From left to right: Brühls Terrace; the Hofkirche and the castle; the Semper Opera House. ... Map of Germany showing Erfurt Mariendom and the Severikirche Erfurt [ˈɛrfÊŠrt] is a city in central Germany. ... Greifswald (German Greif=griffin, Wald=forest) is a city in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. ... Halle (also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish from Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia) is the largest town in the German Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. ... View of Magdeburg with the cathedral, from the tower of the Johanniskirche Magdeburgs center has numerous Stalinist neo-classicist buildings Interior of the Cathedral of Magdeburg, looking towards the Grave of Otto I. The cathedrals twin spires, seen from the courtyard Unser Lieben Frauen Monastery Magdeburg, the capital... Schwerin is a town in northern Germany. ... MITROPA is a catering company best known for having managed sleeping and dining cars of different German railroads for most of the 20th century. ...

Passenger service

The DR was centrally directed according to socialist principles within the context of a centrally-planned command economy. By 1989, 17.2% of the passenger transport volume in the GDR was handled by the DR - three times the market share of the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) in West Germany. Fares were rather cheap, but the trains tended to be overcrowded and slow, owing in part to the poor condition of most rail lines in the GDR. The DR did offer a limited number of express trains such as the "Neptun" (Berlin - Copenhagen), "Vindobona" (Berlin - Vienna), "Karlex" (Berlin - Karlovy Vary) and "Balt-Orient-Express" (Berlin - Bucharest). A planned economy is an economic system in which economic decisions are made by centralized planners, who determine what sorts of goods and services to produce, and how they are to be priced and allocated. ... Plaque commemorating 5,000 kilometers of electrification. ... Copenhagen (Danish: København) is the capital of Denmark, and the name of the municipality (Danish, kommune) in which it resides. ... Vienna (German: Wien [viːn]; Slovenian: Dunaj, Croatian and Serbian: Beč Romanian: Viena, Hungarian: Bécs, Czech: Vídeň, Slovak: Viedeň, Romany Vidnya;) Vienna is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. ... Karlovy Vary ▶ (help· info) or Carlsbad (German: Karlsbad), is a spa city situated in the western part of the Czech Republic on confluence of Ohře and Teplá rivers. ... Bucharest (Romanian: Bucureşti ) is the capital city and industrial and commercial centre of Romania. ...

Electrification

Steam engines were the work horses after the war and remained important for a long time. On regular tracks the last steam engines were phased out in 1988. Much of the electrified tracks present in eastern Germany in 1945 had been removed and sent to the Soviet Union as war reparations in the early years of Soviet occupation. By the early 1970s, only a small portion of the tracks in the GDR had been electrified in comparison with those in Western Europe; the GDR leadership chose to reduce the pace of electrification and instead relied on mostly Russian-made diesel locomotives due to the easy availability of fuel from the Soviet Union at subsidized prices. When energy costs began to rise in the early 1980s (in part because the Soviet Union ceased to subsidize the price of fuel sold to the GDR), the DR embarked on a large rail electrification campaign as the GDR's electrical generators could be powered using domestically-produced lignite. Even so, not much progress had been realized by the time of reunification with West Germany. Reparations refers to two distinct ideas: Reparations for slavery of groups or individuals War reparations: Payments from one country to another as compensation for starting a war under a peace treaty, such as those made by Germany to France under the Treaty of Versailles. ... Great Western Railway No. ... Coal Coal is a fossil fuel extracted from the ground by mining. ...

The DR in Berlin during the Cold War

Due to a quirk in the Four-Power Occupation Agreements for Berlin, the DR operated the long-haul railway service (Fernverkehr) in both East and West Berlin throughout the years of the Cold War (and also after the reunification of Germany) until the merger of the DR and DB in January 1994. This led to some rather unique situations due to the occupied status of West Berlin and the presence of the DR there. For example, the transport police (Transportpolizei) in the West Berlin railway stations were controlled by the GDR Ministry of Transport, although the three Western Allies (the United States, Great Britain and France) never recognized the authority of the GDR government in the Soviet (Eastern) sector of Berlin, let alone in West Berlin. The DB also maintained a ticket office in West Berlin for many years in the Hardenbergstraße near the main Zoological Garden train station. One reason for this was due to the generally poor customer service offered at the DR's ticket counters. Another oddity was the presence of a ticket counter at the station Berlin-Ostbahnhof (renamed Berlin-Hauptbahnhof in 1987) operated by the Soviet (later Russian) military to facilitate transport of their personnel to and from Russia. A special military train operated regularly between Berlin and Moscow until 1994 when the Russian military finally withdrew from Germany. The presence of the DR in West Berlin was also costly to the GDR - the operating deficit for the DR in West Berlin in the early 1980s was estimated to be around 120-140 million Deutsche Marks annually. Boroughs of West Berlin West Berlin was the name given to the western part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. ... Combatants {{{combatant1}}} {{{combatant2}}} Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties {{{casualties1}}} {{{casualties2}}} {{{notes}}} The Cold War was the protracted geostrategic, economic and ideological struggle that emerged after World War II between the global superpowers of the Soviet Union and the United States, supported by their respective and emerging alliance partners. ... The Transportpolizei was the East German police force that dealt with modes of transit. ... The Deutsche Mark (DEM, DM) or German mark was the official currency of West and, from 1990 onwards, unified Germany. ...

The status of Berlin is also believed to be the reason the East Germans retained the name Deutsche Reichsbahn as it was mentioned as such in transit treaties. Had the railway been renamed, for example, Staatseisenbahn der DDR (State Railways of the GDR) along the lines of other East German institutions, the Western Allies would probably have refused to recognize it as the same or a successor organization and removed its right to operate in West Berlin.

The S-Bahn in West Berlin during the Cold War

The DR also operated the S-Bahn local train service in West Berlin during much of the Cold War period. Following the erection of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, many West Berliners boycotted the S-Bahn in West Berlin. After a strike by West Berlin-based DR employees in September 1980, the S-Bahn service in West Berlin was greatly reduced. On January 9, 1984, a treaty between the GDR and the West Berlin Senate entered into force and turned over the responsibility for operation of the S-Bahn in West Berlin to the West Berlin transport authority BVG. The BVG gradually restored much of the service that had been previously reduced, although service on the circular ring railroad (Ringbahn) was not restored until after reunification and, even then, it took several years to realize full restoration of all S-Bahn services throughout Berlin. Following the reunification in October 1990, the DR again assumed operation of the S-Bahn throughout the Greater Berlin region. The Berlin S-Bahn is a metro system operated by S-Bahn Berlin GmbH, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Bahn. ... Remnant of the Berlin Wall near Potsdamer Platz, June 2003. ... August 13 is the 225th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (226th in leap years), with 140 days remaining. ... 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1980 (MCMLXXX in Roman) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... January 9 is the 9th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (German: Berlin Transporation Company), often abbreviated the BVG, manages the Berlin U-Bahn, the Berlin Straßenbahn, and the Berlin bus network, as well as several ferry lines. ... This article is about the year. ...

The DR after the Reunification of Germany

Article 26 of the Unification Treaty (Einigungsvertrag) between the two German states signed on August 31, 1990 established the DR as special property (Sondervermögen) of the Federal Republic of Germany. Upon reunification, the DR and DB continued to operate as separate entities in their respective service areas, albeit under a coordination agreement. On June 1, 1992 the DB and DR formed a joint board of directors which governed both entities until they were formally merged on January 1, 1994 to form the "privatized" Deutsche Bahn Aktiengesellschaft or AG (Corporation). August 31 is the 243rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (244th in leap years), with 122 days remaining. ... This article is about the year. ... January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. ... 1994 (MCMXCIV in Roman) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... Germanys main train operator, the Deutsche Bahn AG (German Railway Corporation, also known as DB or DBAG) provides passenger and freight service via federally owned tracks. ...

Miscellany

The DR marking on rolling stock was also used by its predecessor (the DRG) where the abbreviation meant "Deutsches Reich", not "Deutsche Reichsbahn".

Directors General of the DR

Willi Besener 1946-1949

Willi Kreikemeyer 1949-1950

Erwin Kramer 1950-1970 (Note 1)

Otto Arndt 1970-1989 (Note 1)

Herbert Keddi 1989-1990

Hans Klemm 1990-1991

(Note 1) Was also GDR Minister of Transport during his term of service as Director General of the DR.

Chairman of the Board of the DR

Heinz Dürr 1991-1992

Dürr was also concurrently chairman of the board of the DB. He later served as the chairman of the joint board of directors of the DB and DR from June 1992 - December 1993.

See also

• Berlin_S-Bahn
• Deutsche Bahn

The Berlin S-Bahn is a metro system operated by S-Bahn Berlin GmbH, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Bahn. ... Germanys main train operator, the Deutsche Bahn AG (German Railway Corporation, also known as DB or DBAG) provides passenger and freight service via federally owned tracks. ...

References

Erich Preuß, Der Reichsbahn-Report, Stuttgart: transpress Verlag, 2001. ISBN 3613711605