Their whistles can be heard from afar, their pounding and steam announce them: The Brockenbahn with its around 700 hp locomotives is one of the tourist highlights in the Harz Mountains with a special history. If you want to climb the 1141 meter Brocken, you need a ticket or rely on your own muscle power and hike or cycle. The highest mountain in northern Germany is taboo for car traffic.
What seems completely natural today was not at all at the time of the German-German division. The Brocken directly on the inner-German border was considered a strategically important point for the former Eastern Bloc. It had been declared a restricted military area: the western airspace was to be spied on from its plateau, there were monitoring systems and directional radio transmitters. There was no way up the mountain for civilians. This was visible from east and west, but inaccessible.
On December 3, 1989, people fought to gain access to the hilltop, which was surrounded by a wall. However, it would be several months before the Brockenbahn was able to travel the steep route from Drei Annen Hohne via Schierke to the Brocken station again.
More than 100 years old steam locomotives
At noon on September 15, 1991, the first passenger train for 30 years and 33 days rolled into the Brocken station – pulled by two almost 100-year-old steam locomotives. Thousands of visitors greeted the vintage car on the summit plateau in bright sunshine. According to reporters, hunting horn melodies such as “Such a day, as wonderful as today” and “Bergvagabunden” were mixed with the cheerful whistling of the locomotive. That was 30 years ago, this Wednesday the Harz Narrow Gauge Railway (HSB) commemorates the resumption of Brocken traffic.
According to the HSB, the trains were completely overcrowded in the first few days after the reopening and many guests did not come along. Up until October 31, 1991, another 28 special trains with a total of 6160 travelers traveled up the Brocken. After that, urgent construction work on the line was due, so that regular traffic between Schierke and the Brocken could only be started on July 1, 1992.
Today, the Brocken line is the driving force for the Harzer Schmalspurbahn GmbH, which operates the longest connected narrow-gauge line network in Germany. More than 600,000 people are on their way to the Harz summit every year. According to the company, there were 664,000 guests in 2019, for example. The corona pandemic has also brought the Brockenbahn to a standstill: in spring 2020, operations were initially suspended for 62 days, and in the second lockdown from November 2020 to June 2021 for 219 days.
The resumption of train services to the Brocken after reunification was quite controversial. Environmentalists feared a “destructive chunk of tourism,” as Friedhart Knolle – today spokesman for the Harz National Park and the National Park Association – remembers. Even then it was clear that the Brocken would become a mountain of tourism. At that time, conservationists even hired a lawyer to take action against the Brocken road. After all, they couldn’t prevent anything.
Nevertheless, the railway is an encroachment on the environment, loses oil and can cause forest fires due to flying sparks, Knolle notes. But the permission for the Brockenbahn has been around for 100 years. “What is approved is approved.” And the fact is: “People love the smoking monster.”
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