High-speed Railways in Germany

When the railway appeared as a new means of transportation in the first half of the 19th century, its top speed of 30 to 40 km/h was considered dangerous. In Germany, where Adler transported two barrels of beer between Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835 as the first German rail freight, physicians warned people against such perilous adventures and farmers were worried that their cows grazing alongside the tracks would ‘go mad’ at the sight of the ‘rushing steel monsters’ and that the milk would sour. Although these worries turned out to be unfounded, there were renewed warnings against further speed increases when railways were already well developed. In Paris in the Twentieth Century (writ ten in 1863 but not published in English until 1997), Jules Verne (1828–1905), the famous French author of science fiction literature including Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea described a future fantasy world of shiny skyscrapers made of glass and steel, high-speed trains, gas-driven automobiles, computers, fax machines and a global communications network. Verne’s farsighted vision of future technologies is set against the background of the tragic struggle of an idealistic young man searching for happiness in an unmerciful materialistic dystopia. In this gloomy picture, Verne fears the approach of a future in which loss of humanity is the price paid for the unscrupulous application of perfected technology. Friedrich List (1789–1846), the founder of the German macroeconomic science, had a different attitude toward the new means of transportation. He was a champion of Germany economic unity and had a profound impact on German railways; he establ ished the Leipzig–Dresden Eisenbahngesellschaft in 1834 as the basis of his planned railway system covering all Germany. In The National System of Economic Policy (1841, uncompleted), his main work on economics, he countered Adam Smith’s (1723–90) classic doctrine of free trade with a ‘theory of productive forces’ orientated toward economic practice and describing the impac t o f a speed inc rea se i n transportation on industrial and economic issues. Subsequent modern experience proved his hypothesis of the extraordinary economic development set in motion by shortened travel times and expansion of people’s range of action. His appraisal was shared by Goethe (1749–1832) who did not experience rail travel but realized that such an effective means of transport could have political repercussions as well. Goethe said he was not worried about German unity (at that time Germany consisted of several states) because the railways would solve the problem. History proved him right! The railway’s greater speed compared to previous means of transportation played a major role in the huge industrial boom in Europe and America at the end of the 19th century and railway’s pre-eminence was only jeopardized by the later advent of the more-flexible automobile and the faster aeroplane. The s t r ugg l e f o r sup remacy i n transportation is not a recent phenomenon and railway advocates have long pondered how to compete against air and road. The earliest and obvious solution was found by increasing speed and the early years of the 20th century were marked by successive breakings of various rail speed records. In 1903, Germany set an early record of 200 km/h with an