The Koreas Struggle to Resume Railroad Ties, But Divided Germany Had It Worse

By Tracy Dove, Ph.D
Editor, The Russia News Service

November 16, 2007

Although Kim Jong Il only travels by train, he will most likely never ride this new line to its final destination. After years of pouting and paranoid name-calling, the Democratic Republic of Korea is ready to allow South Korean trains to cross northern territory on their new and less expensive route to Europe. The engineers all agree that the technical feat was not much to write home about, but the political gesture from the North was grand. East and West Germany, during their Cold War, had a much more complicated task in unifying the two train systems after 1989; in the realm of transportation, the Koreans have gone to great lengths to learn from the German reunification and its costs in 1990.

The division of Germany's railway would have been simple had it not been for West Berlin. This geographic abnormality began to cause the East Germans an extreme amount of grief long before the Berlin Wall went up; once it became clear in 1948 that reunification was not about to happen, all parties stuck to the letter of transit agreements drafted by the allies and from then on any negotiations were tiresome and mostly a waste of time. In regard to train service, it was the East Germans who were at a disadvantage in West Berlin; for starters, the brand-new German Democratic Republic was forced to keep the national railway name it had carried since 1920- Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Imperial Railways). This was an unfortunate propaganda blow to the GDR, since the word "Reich" stunk of capitalism and imperialism, which were the two systems that gave rise to Soviet Communism in the first place. Had they replaced the prefix "Reich" with "Staat" as they had done with everything else that was nationalized then the three western allies probably wouldn't have recognized their presence in West Berlin, since the original transit documents were expressly with the Deutsche Reichsbahn and nothing else. So persnickety and tit-for-tat had the relations between the 6 parties become, but it would get more difficult in the years to come.

The East Germans were determined to keep control over the train service in both West and East Berlin, despite the organizational and financial headaches this caused. In West Berlin, for example, the GDR employed Bahnpolizei who were supposed to keep order, and because of their placement in West Berlin they were constantly under scrutiny by the Ministry for State Security. This is bizarre, because in reality those East German police- just like the entire East German State- were not recognized by the Allies, and so West Berlin placed its own Railway Police into the train stations in order to do what the East Germans weren't allowed to do. The Communist Party of East Germany- the SED- also had to stomach transporting British, French and American trains across their rails between West Germany and West Berlin, and these transports, too, had their military police that made the East German Bahnpolizei truly redundant. This stubborn desire to remain in West Berlin cost the East German government dearly, but the Cold War was raging and Berlin was the center of it, so East and West Berliners survived and traveled nonetheless with the tongue in cheek humor that they are well known for.

Once the city was split in August, 1961, it was all downhill after that for the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Rail lines were interrupted all round West Berlin, and East Germans who had previously taken trains through West Berlin on their way to work in the East now found their trip painfully long and cumbersome. Train maps for Easterners were cosmetically changed to make West Berlin seem like a tiny black hole, while slow, Hitler-era S-Bahn trains took op the slack where they could on the outside of West Berlin. On the inside, West Berliners were so angry that they simply boycotted the S-Bahn, which had been running the inner city train service which complemented the West Berlin subway system, which was growing quickly. It was a security headache as well, since trains had to be checked when leaving or entering West Berlin, and the West German subway lines that ran through East Berlin territory simply closed down, further complicating the GDR's socialized public transportation system.

Understandably, the S-Bahn within West Berlin finally went broke and in 1980 the East Germans abandoned it for the West Berlin transit authority to run. But long haul and cargo shipments were still handled by the Deutsche Reichsbahn. By 1984, however, this presence was costing the East Germans dearly; estimated losses in West Berlin were between 120 and 140 million German Marks per year, and no let up seemed to be in sight. But within 6 years East Germany would no longer exist, and the name Deutsche Reichsbahn would be retired forever with the reunification of Germany in 1990.

The South Koreans will have it considerably easier that the Germans, both from a planning aspect as well as a financial one. There exists in the south Korean government a Unification Ministry which took serious lessons from the German reunification debacle of 17 years ago. The South Koreans are investing in the future by giving Kim Il Jong most of what he wants in return for improving transportation relations. South Korea, in this way, is hoping to fix now, what could potentially be a problem later, which is a luxury that Germany didn't have.

Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of History and Dean of Summer Programs for the Lessing Institute. He also teaches history at the Anglo-American College in Prague.

See all previous articles by Tracy Dove here.