Exhibition in Markt Schwaben – By train into the past – Ebersberg

There is hardly any other artifact that allows the turbulent and ambivalent history of the 19th and 20th centuries to be understood as well as the railroad. The steam locomotive symbolizes modernity and industrialization, with its technical innovations, the beginning of the exploitation of huge coal and human masses, the acceleration of life in general. The twentieth century saw the expansion of rail transport and its use both for travel and freight, but also for mobilization and mass destruction, before it was pushed back more and more by the car. 150 years ago the railway came to Schwaben and Poing (at that time still without a “market”) – and a new exhibition in the local history museum Markt Schwaben, which opens this Saturday, is dedicated to the eventful history of this means of transport. Reason enough to take a closer look at the history of the railways in the region.

Karl Bürger, born in 1956 and a passionate railway connoisseur and historian since childhood, will give a lecture there. He dealt with the history of the route “Munich – Mühldorf – Simbach”, on which Markt Schwaben and Poing are also located and which was put into operation in 1871. “For various reasons, it almost didn’t happen,” he says. For example, various other routes to Austria were planned, to which one wanted to connect with the rail network. For example via Anzing and through the Ebersberger Forest. “But the royal forest administration resisted.” The route via Mühldorf to the border town of Simbach was then chosen because of its relatively low cost (15.4 million guilders were planned) and effort. The emphasis here is on “relative”, because the entire route was built by hand and only in four years.

In 1863 it was decided by law to build a route, in 1867 a contract was signed with Austria on it, and construction began in 1868. “To complete the route, a huge army of cheap migrant workers was necessary.” The work was difficult and dangerous and often had to be carried out by the simplest means, with a spade, cart, pickaxe.

But there were other obstacles as well. In 1866 Bavaria and Austria waged the so-called “fratricidal war” against Prussia – and lost. As was customary at the time, full reparations were due, under which the respective state coffers, which were already tight, groaned tremendously. However, the war had also shown that a well-developed railroad represented a decisive strategic advantage, so there was no need to forego the route. The railroad as a continuation of the war by other means, so to speak. After commissioning, some stations and, ultimately, entire towns such as Hörlkofen were completely recreated, expanded, expanded and new routes laid out.

The rail network in the region became more and more dense. Accordingly, people used it extensively, despite the high prices, as Bürger describes it. Compared to carriages and other means of transport of the time, the railways had “incomparable travel comfort”, even in the third class, which ran together with mail and freight trains. The proletariat, mail and products went under one roof, while the “gentlemen” bought the more expensive second and first class tickets.

Open detailed view

Even then, the reasons for traveling were very diverse. You could now travel faster and further, but that was also required for work – commuting was invented. Certainly others drove simply for pleasure, many went to places of pilgrimage or one traveled to “markets, authorities and court hearings”. But more extraordinary things also took place on this route. For example, the route of the legendary Orient Express, also called “Lux”, ran through the region. Bürger goes on to describe that “Empress Elisabeth of Austria (the” Sissi “) often made use of the route when she traveled via Simbach to her home village of Possenhofen and back”.

The beginning of the 20th century was still marked by ambivalences. On the one hand, the rail network was expanded, until 1911, for example, the line to Markt Schwaben had two tracks. After the First World War, however, when the railway was used again for mobilization, there was both a lack of coal and great need among the population, so that a fourth class was introduced from 1918 to 1928. One would rather not imagine the travel conditions there.

Open detailed view

When the NSDAP came to power, the railroad became more important again, but Bürger still speaks of a “pseudo-bloom” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ebersberg/. “The expansion and traffic increased again, but it was all now programmed for war. ” Freight traffic to and from the so-called “Chemiedreieck”, which was roughly between Ampfing, Simbach and Traunreut, was particularly important for the Nazis. A particularly large number of companies in the chemical industry who were indispensable for waging war were based here.

The concentration and extermination camps, which were spread all over Germany, including in southeast Bavaria, were just as indispensable for the functioning of the Nazi regime. The Dachau concentration camp is probably the best known in the Munich region, but its satellite camp complex around Mühldorf was almost even more feared by the persecuted. Instead of the “Lux”, the dark “DA” trains now drove through the district. “DA stands for a transit train for emigrants,” explains Bürger. “But actually meant the death trains.” They conscientiously and smoothly transported prisoners (including the writer and painter Max Mannheimer, who survived the Holocaust), for example to Mettenheim, where they were supposed to build an aircraft factory under the most inhuman conditions and be destroyed by work. “Without the ingratiation of the Reichsbahn, the mass extermination of the Nazis would not have been possible.”

In post-war Germany, the railway increasingly lost its importance. Even innovative developments, such as new diesel trains or battery-powered “rail buses”, ie mini-trains with only one wagon that ran on the Munich-Erding route, could not change anything. “From the 1960s onwards, politicians were fully committed to automobiles. From an economic point of view, the Federal Railroad was in deficit, and in the 1970s and 1980s attempts were made to remedy this with cost-cutting measures.” The result: a clear cut in the rail network, many lines were closed or not renewed. For example, a line from Grafing to Glonn in 1971. The rail connection to Wasserburg should also disappear, but the “Pro Bahn Passenger Association” successfully defended itself, reports Bürger.

Nevertheless, despite individual successes, the now frequently invoked traffic turnaround suffers both from the mistakes of the past decades and from the lack of political will of the time, the historian complains. A good example of this is the “upgraded route (ABS) 38”, which is to connect Munich to Salzburg via Mühldorf and Freilassing. It has been part of the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan since 1985, and not much has changed since then.

The railway has been part of the district for 150 years, bringing good and bad, connecting many people and excluding others. Now, in the context of the task of the century of environmental and climate protection, the role of the railways is being struggled with. The means of transport of choice or the unpopular alternative to the electric car: where is the journey going?