GDR: Deutsche Reichsbahn: Silent and almost forgotten

Who was Elcano? Hardly anyone knows this sailor, who was the first to sail around the world in 1521/22 and was knighted by the Spanish king and honored with a coat of arms that, in addition to some spices that he brought back from the voyage, also showed a globe with the inscription: “Primus circum dedisti me.” (You were the first to drive around me.) And by the way: Juan Sebastián Elcano kept the logbook precisely, and when the “Victoria” docked in Seville, he was astonished to find that a whole day had been “lost.” which finally proved that the Earth is not only a sphere, but also rotates – around itself and around the sun. A groundbreaking discovery at a time that Friedrich Engels wrote was “the greatest progressive revolution that humanity had experienced up to that point,” a time “that needed giants and produced giants, giants in thinking power, passion and character, versatility and erudition”.

Elcano was such a giant. But hardly anyone knows him. And why not? Because he didn’t write a book. After his happy return from this mission, in which four (of the five) ships were lost and two hundred sailors died – only seventeen returned with him – instead of sitting down and writing down what he had experienced, he was already preparing for the next voyage. He shouldn’t survive that. He died, not yet forty, of malnutrition in the Pacific. So the fate of Elcano proves ex negativo that the sentence is true: whoever writes stays. Anyone who hasn’t written will be forgotten…

This insight, also invoked by historians, may have inspired Wolfgang Scherz when he left the railway and retired. He was the man who was commissioned to merge the Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1990. He set off into a world unknown to him. Professionally equipped, open-minded and unprejudiced towards the GDR state-owned company, Scherz ultimately accompanied this merger, which resulted in the founding of Deutsche Bahn AG in 1994. The trained civil engineer reports how this happened as an exclusive contemporary witness and mastermind. So silently that hardly anyone remembers it today. This is a largely unknown chapter of German reunification. Joke wrote it down. That alone is worth mentioning. But there is more that needs to be explicitly acknowledged.

Scherz worked at the DB headquarters in Frankfurt am Main. The Federal Railway was in great need of reform. Experts predicted a mountain of debt of 140 billion German marks by the end of the 1990s. If the status quo were maintained. The West German railway workers saw state unification as an opportunity to reform their own business – but at the same time they feared that they would slip even deeper into the red if they took over the largest company in the GDR. But when the open-minded joker studied the DR balance sheets at Easter 1990, he was amazed: “The leading transport company in the German Democratic Republic made a profit! The infrastructure of the Reichsbahn was dilapidated, not the staff. As a rule, the managers have had fantastic professional training: apprenticeships and high school diplomas and studies. This combination of an apprenticeship and a high school diploma at the same time was a benefit for the railway. In fact, these people were already trained in basic railway workers when they began their studies in Dresden or elsewhere. Many colleagues at the Federal Railway couldn’t keep up with the railways.” This is how the official describes his surprising discovery in standard official German. And he sings the praises of the ethics and work ethic of the GDR railway workers. For example: »Thanks to its experts, the Reichsbahn designed timetables that not only worked, but were also adhered to. This made the Reichsbahn a reliable partner for citizens and for the economy. Given the current problems facing the railway, such announcements make people think.

To the provocative question in the previous interview as to whether the GDR railway’s guidelines were not too ideological, Scherz answers: “No. At best the squad regulations. And even that was quite modern. They could have been used in any western company to successfully discover and promote managers. All you had to do was delete the words “socialist” and “SED” and then you could have worked accordingly. These were clear, technically excellent guidelines.«

Such judgments, albeit late, provide a certain satisfaction. In this respect, the memories, which are hardly influenced by the West German winning mentality, are also a solid contribution to the process of coming to terms with the situation. They are revising the prejudices and clichés that have been cultivated for three decades, the narratives that have been deliberately spread politically. Certainly the West German joke did not sit down to write with this intention, but he does so because he judges fairly and decently and objectively. Scherz also appreciates the fact that the Modrow government and the government in Bonn ensured that “the Reichsbahn did not come under the jurisdiction of the finance minister,” that is, that it was placed under the trust. In this way, among other things, “compulsory dismissals” were avoided. At that time, the DR had around 220,000 colleagues.

Scherz also touches on strange things, such as the traditional uniforms of the Reichsbahn workers. »At the Bundesbahn you only wore uniforms where there was customer contact. When Heinz Dürr became First President of the Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1991 and consciously saw a train driver climb down from the machine for the first time, he almost fainted. The colleague was wearing old jeans and a checked shirt. Where does something like that exist, said Dürr angrily, every ship captain and every Lufthansa pilot is proud of his work and therefore wears a uniform. – The train drivers immediately received new uniforms.«

And thoughtful things also flow into the memories. »So in the West German civil service we were largely civil servants, i.e. public servants. Why? So that we don’t go on strike. The emperor had introduced the professional civil service; the civil servants formed the backbone of the state and the corset to hold everything together. Ultimately, I say, in order to be able to wage wars, because peace was needed on the home front.

Seen this way, the title “On New Tracks” may not have been the right choice after all. But that doesn’t diminish the respect for the author. Unlike Elcano, he will not be forgotten. Both have discovered a new world that is foreign to them. But Scherz wrote it down.

Wolfgang Scherz: On new tracks. The winding up of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. The New Berlin, 224 pages, br., 20 €.