Published on 20 September 2016
After the unification of Germany, the Reich Railway Authority became an important institution in the Reich, which put into practice rules applying to all private and provincial railroads. It became an important tool of the Reich government for the control and organization of German railways, and was instrumental in the implementation of rules applying to all railway administration in Germany.
After the unification of Germany under the government of Prussia, headed by Wilhelm I, there was a growing need in the country for some control over transport infrastructure. There were a large number of railway companies in the German Empire which were either purely private, like the joint-stock company Bavarian Eastern Railway, or state-run (railways of the individual dukedoms, principalities and kingdoms.) The railways of these companies formed a tangled web and competed with each other.
For Germany as a political, economic and military empire, it became essential to centralize the control of its infrastructure. For this very purpose, on 18 September 1873 the imperial government established the institution called the Imperial Railway Authority (Reichs-Eisenbahnamt). This office was to provide communication between the central government in Berlin and individual railway administrations, whether provincial or private. In matters of transport, it also had the competence to negotiate with individual provincial governments about the development and running of the railway infrastructure. Its seat was, of course, in the capital of Germany - Berlin.
As far as the organization and its competences go, the Imperial Railway Authority was not the only institution in the world concerned with organizing railway transportation. Imperial Germany found its example in England. This “cradle of the railways” was also struggling with the problem of organizing a large number of mostly private railway companies. For their unification, the country used the Board of Trade. This was a central controlling institution, which had united all trade since the reign of King James I, i.e. from the first half of the 17th century. In the 19th century, the oversight of railway companies and the unification of their rules were among its competencies. This British authority served as an example for the Germans. Nevertheless, the neighbouring countries could also serve them as an example, in particular Austro-Hungary, where the role of railway authority was performed by the Royal and Imperial General Inspection of Austrian Railways.
The main duty of the German Imperial Railway Authority was to supervise the management of the running of railways in the Empire. Furthermore, it introduced constitutional regulations and laws concerning railway matters and supervised their implementation. This means it also had executive legal power. The imperial law of 27 June 1873 established a rule which further emphasised its power of legal authority: If anyone protests against the directive of the Railway Authority with the argument that is not sufficiently supported in the relevant law, in such a case the final decision will be given by a commission consisting of the representatives of the authority and court officials. The commission had the power to enforce the relevant directive. The commission was called the Reinforced Imperial Railway Authority (Verstärktes Reichseisenbahnamt). This reinforced institution was headed by the president of the Railway Authority and his deputy, and consisted of two councillors from the authority and three court officials.
The railway authority also advocated the removal of various shortcomings and faults related to railway transportation and its organization. It also had the right to intervene in the institutional rules and regulations of individual railway companies and affect their operation to suit the interests of the entire empire. For private companies, the authority had the same role as the provincial governments before them, i.e., overseeing the functioning of a company.
The major objective of the authority was the preparation of the Imperial Railway Act (Reichseisenbahngesetz). In addition, it dealt with complaints and issues concerning railways of various types; and finally, it served as an intermediary in negotiations between individual railway administrations and state authorities, mostly the Imperial military, telegraph and post administrations. Among its competencies was the unification of railway regulations, in particular about signals and safety devices. It set the opening hours of railway ticket offices and waiting rooms at railway stations, the exact names of stations, rules for lighting, heating and ventilation in carriages and the marking of carriages and wagons and locomotives. Simply put, it was to provide consistent rules for all railway companies, so the entire railway infrastructure could function as a whole and provide easy passenger and freight transport as well as being useful for military purposes.
The Imperial Railway Authority was headed by a president. Alber von Maybach (1822-1904) became its first president in 1874. He was put in the office by Otto von Bismarck, as a person with experience in the environment of railway companies. Maybach, a trained lawyer, worked from 1854 at the Prussian Railway administration, and from 1858 he held the office of Superior Counsellor at the Ministry of Trade in the Kingdom of Prussia. He gained further experience in the leadership of various railway companies: He was a chairman of the directorate of the Upper-Silesian Railway in Wroclaw, and between 1863 and 1867 he was the head of the directorate of the Prussian Eastern Railway in Bromberg. He ended his career in railroad companies from 1867 to 1874 at the Royal Prussian Railroad Directorate in Hannover (Königlich Preußische Eisenbahndirektion Hannover). Maybach obviously had extensive experience with directing railway companies and moreover, as a lawyer, he met the requirements for heading an authority that was intermediate between the state and the companies.
However, his career in the railway office was not very successful. Together with Bismarck, Maybach promoted the expropriation of the major railway lines under the Imperial administration, but met with the resistance of the individual provincial states of the united Germany. If the central German railway company was created and governed from Berlin, then the provincial states would lose their control over strategic railways in their regions. However, this was not the only issue in which Maybach was not successful. The second arose shortly afterwards, in 1875. Maybach presented the Bundesrat in Berlin with a proposal for the Imperial railways act, which was not passed. The lack of political achievement at the head of the Imperial Railway Authority led Maybach to resign from the post of president of the authority in 1876.
Maybach’s efforts as the head of the railway authority show his attempt to gain a decisive political influence for this authority in the matter of railway transportation in Germany. Maybach tried to promote the policy of Chancellor Bismarck, according to which the main transport infrastructure in the country should be unified, centralized and put under the control of Imperial government authorities. In this matter the railway authority would function as the unifying institution, with decisive political influence in the matter of the railways. On the other hand, Maybach’s failures showed that the individual kingdoms, principalities and dukedoms refused to give up their influence on transportation infrastructure, and that the unification of the German railway network would be possible only to the extent allowed by the individual provinces.
After leaving the railway authority, Maybach remained in politics, standing alongside Bismarck but on the provincial level, in the Kingdom of Prussia. From 1878, he led the Prussian provincial ministry for public affairs. In this post, he was fully responsible for the Prussian state railways.
Another important figure at the head of the Imperial Railway Authority was Karl Hermann Peter von Thielen (1883–1906). This Prussian politician also connected his career with the management of the railways before becoming president of the railway authority. In 1864, he joined the Prussian Railway administration at the Railway Directorate in Saarbrücken (Eisenbahndirektion Saarbrücken). From 1865 he worked at the Prussian ministry of trade. A year later he worked at the Railway Directorate in Wroclaw (Eisenbahndirektion Breslau), which he left in 1867 for the private company Rheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft. In 1881, when the company was expropriated, Thielen became the director of expropriated railways in Hannover. His career is greatly reminiscent of that of Maybach.
In 20 June 1891, Thielen took over the position of Prussion minister of public affairs after Maybach, and a few days later, on 5 July 1891, he became president of the Imperial Railway Authority. Unlike Maybach, Thielen gained greater responsibilities, especially over the issue of tariffs.
Thielen’s work at the head of the authority brought great advantages to the German, and especially Prussian, railway. In 1892 in Prussia, Thielen pushed through the law on small railways and private railway sidings (Gesetz über Kleinbahnen und Privatanschlußbahnen) which allowed the local railways to be built with less strict parameters, making their construction cheaper than the conventional main lines. In practice, the implementation of this law brought considerable development of local lines in Prussia.
Thielen also managed to increase the importance of state railways. In 1895 he issued new rules for state railways that adjusted their running. In this way, he managed to nationalize several private companies, the most important of them being the Hessische Ludwigsbahn. Thus he stood behind the creation of the first large-scale state project in Germany which exceeded the borders of a single province – the Prussian-Hessian Railway Company (Preußisch-Hessische Eisenbahngemeinschaft). Another of Thielen’s achievements was in passenger transportation. He introduced an “express” (D-Zug) as a category of train and adjusted and unified railway tariffs. For his merits, Wilhelm II gave him a peerage in 1900. Thielen headed the railway authority until June 1902.
Hermann von Budde (1851–1906), who chaired the railway authority between 1902 and 1906, promoted in particular the modification of railways and their rules for military purposes. The last president of the railway authority, Paul von Breitenbach (1850–1930), came to office in 1906. After World War I the Imperial Railway Authority lost its purpose, and it was dissolved on 3 January 1920.