Atlantis

Budapest, Eastern Railway Station, yesterday afternoon

These days, the vast majority of the traveling public opts to go to Szombathely, on the Hungarian-Austrian border, only for lack of a better option, and from there they continue their way on foot, but I actually have a meeting today in Szombathely. All the displays, and even the clocks in the Kelenföld railway station, in the western outskirts of Budapest, are dark, like in times of war, to prevent unauthorized access to information about the movement of trains. “A ticket for the 10:11 intercity, please.” “Unfortunately, all tickets have been sold out for second class, and for first class… checking… also for first class. You should perhaps choose a different train.” “A later train, you mean?” “Well, yes. There is one at 10:37 via Székesfehérvár, and somewhat later via Győr.” “And you think that there will be space on these?” “Well, I think yes, since they start from the Buda railway station, not from the Eastern one in Pest.” “And which one do you recommend?” “Er, I do not know. The one via Székesfehérvár is slower, and the rails are being repaired between Ajka and Boba, there you have to change for the bus, and then back to the train. But via Győr, towards Vienna, they are walking the entire length along the rails.”

Kőrösmező, Terminus

This postcard was sent on 16 June 1910 from the Kőrösmező railway station, which it also depicts, the former Hungarian-Galician border station at the pass of the Carpathians, to the Galician railway station of Sokoliki next to Lesko, from where the Lemberg-Ungvár train starts to climb up to the Hungarian-Galician border station of Uzsok at another pass in the Carpathians. It was addressed in German, the official language of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, as was right and proper – state office! – for a railway station. Thanks to this – from the gender of Wohlgeborenes – we know that the Polish addressee, Klimcia Hołowska was still Fräulein, and perhaps this is the reason why there is neither a sender nor a message on the postcard: the recipient obviously knew, and no one else needed to know, who had sent this sweet little sign. After that, Kőrösmező became Frasin, and then Jasiňa, and finally Ясиня, and it ceased to be a border station. Even its former name was forgotten: the pencil inscription by the modern Russian collector tries to identify the mountain village either with Кёрёш-Большой, Nagykőrös or with Кёрёш-Малый, Kiskőrös, both lying in the Great Hungarian Plain. Meanwhile, for a short time between 1939-44 it was Kőrösmező again, just until the stateless Hungarian Jews were handed over to the German authorities at precisely this station, and the son of Emanuel Rosenblüth, the publisher of the postcard in 1908, was taken to Mauthausen, just like the local small guide, Artúr Blutreich. In contrast, Sokoliki became a border station on the German-Soviet border drawn by the Ribbentropp-Molotov pact at the San river, and it has remained so to this day. Its 244 Jewish inhabitants were deported by the Germans, its 247 Polish inhabitants were killed or driven away by the Ukrainians, and its 926 Rusyn inhabitants were resettled by the Polish army to Silesia during the Vistula Action in 1946. Today it is a ghost village, only its church still stands, which is used as a vantage point by the border guards. This is how this postcard without a message summarizes the twentieth-century history of this multiethnic, beautiful and tragic region, which has been discussed so many times here at río Wang.

A postcard sent to a Hungarian prisoner of war from Sokolik to the Russian POW camp, after 1918

But this is not why we publish the photo of the station. It is an excuse to tell one more story from the Subcarpathian travelogue of Sándor Török. Having said goodbye to the little guide, Nyumi Blutreich, he goes to the Kőrösmező railway station, to travel further to Rahó. We are in the summer of 1939, several months after the Hungarian administration replaced the Czech one, but the Hungarian authorities have not yet been able to keep up with the changes. This inspires gloomy thoughts in the traveler. As history has proved, it is not without reason.

“A Polish train has just arrived at the station. It only came this far, and will go back soon. It has the table on its side: Stanislau – Voronienka. An old watchman is looking at it, and reading it: It has come from Veronica – he says.
The traveler goes into the traffic office, and showing his ticket, he professionally says: please, give me a date-stamp. The clerk looks around on his table, and then says to the others: – Where’s the stamp?
The question runs through three or four people: where is the stamp? – Who has the stamp? – Have you not seen the stamp? – Finally the stamp is found, the clerk takes it in hand, and presents it to the traveler, apologetically:
– We are not quite equipped yet – he explains –, in fact, this is not the proper stamp. This, you know, is a cash-stamp. Twenty years ago, at the change of state the cashier took it with her. And now, after twenty years she has brought it back, and so there you are, I have kept the stamp. And now we use it.
The railway clerk is a young man, around twenty-two or twenty-three. The stamp is obviously older than he, since just the time it spent out of service was twenty years. And where and how? At a former cashier, as a souvenir. It was more or less a knick-knack in her glass cupboard… Or more: a Legion of Honor, a symbol of loyalty to the office, of an oath upheld. Something like the gun or the flag salvaged at the capitulation at the end the war of independence in 1849. This might have been a central fact in the life of the cashier, and it must have been a great experience, when after twenty years she reported to the new stationmaster, and handed over the stamp: here you are. She certainly put on her Sunday clothes… – thinks the traveler, and the stamp is now promoted from a souvenir to an official object again.

How beautiful is this!… the traveler thinks, while sitting in the restaurant of Rahó’s Tourist Hotel in this evening. However – the traveler needs to say – he feels that the old stamp should have been used for one stamping only, in a solemn way, and then it should have been sent back to its master, the former cashier, who had kept it; yes, sent back to her with a beautiful letter from the President Director of the Hungarian Railways, such as: please keep this precious souvenir in the future, since we have as many new stamps as we need. – The traveler would have written this letter like that, or perhaps in a less formal tone. He would have been much happier if the story of the stamp had been only told to him, but his ticket had been stamped already with a brand new stamp of Kőrösmező.”

The railway station after 1920. The new state power of that time was also not really prepared: the Czech Ž and one of the Russian Я’s were written mirrored, and a н has been omitted from Станція.

A letter to a sweethart in Vienna. Military field post, 5 August 1915. The road to the eastern front went through this station just like in 1917 or 1941.

Not that stamp, but from the same time. From here

The name of the rose

The name of the Görlitzer Bahnhof has been given to the third stop from the east of the 1st U-Bahn in Berlin, in the middle of Kreuzberg. You travel through it a couple of times, before you realize: but where is the Bahnhof here? The stops of the U-Bahn, as you learn it from the loudspeaker, are called Haltestelle, and where you hear Bahnhof, there is in fact a train station standing next to it. However, in the neighborhood of Haltestelle Görlitzer Bahnhof there is no train station whatsoever.

But the name is the imprint of a former reality. The Oranienstraße stop, established in 1902 along the line then called “Elektrische Hochbahn”, was renamed in 1926 Görlitzer Bahnhof, to warn the passengers: here they have to get out if they want to travel from the nearby train station to Silesia, Görlitz, Breslau, and from there with a change to Vienna.

The U-Bahn stop Görlitzer Bahnhof

The Görlitz Train Station, once standing around the corner, was built in 1865 by the “Railway King” of Berlin, Bethel Henry (originally Baruch Hirsch) Strousberg (1823-1884). He was called the Railway King not as if he devoted all his life to the railway: he traded with anything which benefited him, from machine production through newspaper foundation to living cattle. His fame and fortune was nevertheless linked to the Prussian railway constructions, primarily due to his ingenious financing construction, which allowed a fast realization of a large amount of railways through the involvement of the capital of subcontractors. He did not pay them in cash, but in the shares of the new railway line, which at the time of the industry’s boom brought extraordinary profits to them, while he did not have to spend a cent.

The former building of the Görlitz train station

The Prussian railways were built initially as private enterprises, and only later went over to the possession of the German state. Berlin’s large, representative terminuses were the main stations of private railway construction companies. The Görlitz Train Station united Strousberg’s private railway lines. From here the trains started to Silesia, Berlin’s traditional cultural hinterland – jeder zweite Berliner stammt aus Schlesien, every second person in Berlin comes from Silesia, said the 19th-century proverb –, first to Görlitz, and then changing to the province’s capital Breslau, but the planned end goal was Vienna, so that a direct line would link the two imperial cities. Accordingly, the two streets flanking the station on the north and south were named Görlitzer and Wiener Straße, while the newly opened streets of the area, whose value was increased by the construction, received their names after the cities of Silesia, like Sorau, Oppeln, Lausitz, Liegnitz, Glogau, Ratibor.

The Görlitz Train Station and the surrounding area on the Pharus-Plan of Berlin, around 1905

The first train that left the station on September 13, 1866, carried soldiers to the Austro-Prussian war, which broke out a few months earlier, but whose outcome was already determined by the Königgrätz Battle of July 3. The war ended with the victory of Prussia and of the “Little German solution”, which meant the realization of a German Empire without the participation of Austria. The direct Berlin-Vienna connection lost its importance, and the Görlitz railway was never continued to Vienna. Only the name of the Wiener Straße recalls the old plan to this day.




The plans of the station were made by the great architect of historicist Berlin, August Orth (1828-1901), who at the beginnings of the Prussian railway constructions in the 1850s seized his first practice with one of the greatest railway construction company, developing it further on many railway buildings until the end of the century. He built, next to the Görlitz Train Station, and in an architectural unity with it, the new Lutheran church of the increasingly growing neighborhood, the Emmauskirche (1890-93), which had the largest capacity among Berlin’s churches until 1945, when, shortly before the end of the war, its nave was hit by a bomb. The perilous nave was demolished in 1949, and the tower stands now on the square as a memento for itself.

The Emmauskirche on a postcard sent in 1925 to Austria, with the Hoch- (today U-)Bahn in the foreground. To the right, the Görlitz Train Station just falls behind

The consecration of the Emmauskirche, 1893

The tower of the Emmauskirche today, seen from the Wiener Straße, in the foreground the swimming pool standing at the corner of the former Görlitz Train Station

In 1867 the Railway King commissioned August Orth also with the building of his own palace at Wilhelmstraße 70, at the corner of Brandenburger Tor. The Strousberg Palace, which, due to its perfect realization of the Schinkelian classicism, its stunning interior decoration, and a number of technical achievements first introduced here – such as gas lighting, hot water supply, central washing machine and bathrooms – was called “Berlin’s first palace” even at the turn of the century, was purchased in 1884 by the British Embassy. In 1939 the embassy was closed down, and afterwards the Reichsministerium für Ernährung, the Ministry of Supply moved into the building, which thus became the target of repeated air attacks. Although after the war the protection of monuments classified it among the buildings to be restored, in October 1950 this palace, which fell in the Soviet sector, was simply demolished, together with the legendary Adlon Hotel standing next to it. On the property, vacant for decades, only after the unification of Berlin, in 1998 they built the new building of the British Embassy, which reminds the pre-war palace, beyond its name and function, also with an original iron grid built into the gate.

The British Embassy – the Strousberg Palace  – in the 1920s

The 1998 building of the British Embassy

Sectional view of the Strousberg Palace, August Orth, 1867

The Adlon Hotel, built in 1907, bombed in 1945, demolished in 1984, and rebuilt in 1995-97, and the same seen from the top of the Brandenburg Gate on March 23, 1950 (the Strousberg Palace is in the street behind the hotel)

The Görlitz Train Station was also hit by several bombs during the war. Its fate, however, was sealed not by them, but by the fact that the demarcation line of the zones of occupation made it a kind of a blind street of the Western sector. To the north, east and south, along the channels it was bordered by the Soviet sector, the later East Berlin, and therefore the train has not even left the station, and already reached the border. The state railways, which for a couple of years stood under Eastern control even in the West, sought to limit the railway traffic from West Berlin, and so in 1951 they closed down all the terminuses there. After June 1, 1952 West Berlin citizens were even forbidden to enter the territory of East Berlin. Freight traffic went on for a while – the remains of the GDR customs office and military checkpoints were visible even a few years ago along the rails passing over the channel –, but the building of the station was gradually dismantled by the Berlin Senate between 1961 and 1967, in spite of the protests of the residents of Kreuzberg. The rails were also taken up, and first the building of a new residential area, then that of the southern bypass highway was planned on their place. None of them was realized, but the uncertainty, the enclosure of the quarter, and the lease terminations due to the planned highway led to the fact that this inclusion of Kreuzberg (the infamous Berlin SO 36, as it was called after its postal code) gradually became the neighborhood of squatters, political dissidents and foreign workers, the center of Berlin’s alternative scene. It has preserved this character even after the unification of Berlin, when the quarter rebuilt its relations with the neighboring districts, and the capital with great efforts modernized the neighborhood. The former immigrants are now reminded of by the gigantic Wahhabi Mosque – the Omar ibn al-Khattāb Moschee, named after the great conqueror, or Maschari Center, for German use – facing the U-Bahn stop, on the place of the former Deutsches Haus railway hotel, as well as by the unemployed youth passing their time in the Görlitzer Park established on the place of the taken up rails of the Görlitz Train Station. And in the park itself only the two railway warehouses now functioning as Das Edelweiss Café, and the short rail section visible some hundred meters away, around Treptow, recall the former railway station.

“Berlin SO 36”, that is, the former Eastern inclusion of Kreuzberg (marked in red). The three borders along the channels were also the borders between West and East Berlin

The former Deutsches Haus railway hotel facing the U-Bahn stop, already closed…

…and the Arabic mosque built in its place today…

…as well as the “traditional” Turkish mosque two buildings away along the Wiener Straße.

Looking towards West Berlin from the U-Bahn, on a postcard around 1950

The last two warehouses in the Görlitzer Park

But the rails were taken up not only here, but also from the East Berlin border up as far as to Görlitz. In fact, one of the two rails laid by the Railway King were taken away by the Soviets in 1945 as a war reparation. A section of it was rebuilt after the unification, but most of the Berlin-Görlitz traffic goes on one rail to this day.

The last rails, May 1987

The former German Silesia (with yellow border) and the modern Polish Silesia (in darker red). The territories laying to the north, unmarked here (Lusatia, Eastern Brandenburg, Pomerania) were also allotted in 1945 to Poland.

And indeed, why would two rails be necessary to an unexisting province? After all, Görlitz is not any more what it used to be. Lower Lusatia, of which it was the capital, together with Silesia and all the eastern part of Germany were allotted to Poland by the Yalta winners, thus relieving the remorse of the British government for having dragged Poland into the war with empty warranties in 1939, and then being unable to prevent Lwów’s and the Kresy’s falling into Soviet hands. Georg Thum in his Uprooted: How Breslau became Wrocław during the century of expulsions, published in the last year both in Germany and Poland – about which we will soon write – describes in detail and soberly how the more than four and half million inhabitants of the once almost purely German-populated provinces were expulsed, just like the Polish population of Lwów and the Kresy, during which more than half million people lost their lives. Görlitz was lucky – if it can be called a luck –, as the Odera-Neisse-border left half of it German, only the half over the Neisse bridge became Zgorzelec. Silesia’s other cities, however, after the deportations and settlements, the conscious effacing of the German past and the conscious building up of a Polish past, are today integral parts of the Polish Republic. Breslau is now Wrocław, Sorau Żary, Oppeln Opole, Lausitz Łużyce, Liegnitz Legnica, Glogau Głogów, Ratibor Racibórz. The memory of these German cities is today only preserved by the names of the streets around the repeatedly effaced Görlitz Train Station in Kreuzberg, in the core of Berlin’s bohemian world.

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomine nuda tenemus.
The ancient rose remains by its name, naked names are all we have.

Szabadka Unlimited, 3. So ugly that already disgusting

“The railway station in Szabadka is the building which all the foreign rulers unanimously declare to be ugly.” This sentence contains the essence of the journalism of Szabadka/Subotica. The railway station in Szabadka is ugly, how could it be otherwise, since Szabadka is a province, from which we desire to break free to the large world, and which until then we belittle from the altitude of the coffee house. But Szabadka is also the center of the world, whose railway station is known to all the foreign rulers, they exchange opinions on it wherever they meet, and their opinion is unanimous and steady. Szabadka and its railway station are a fixed point in the uncertain universe, which therefore we can never leave. Only foreign rulers use it for transit; for the king of the coffee house it only plays the role of the daily stumbling block.


Bácsmegyei Napló, 22 October 1911

The Bulgarian king is traveling
Ferdinand, the democrat

From our correspondent. Szabadka, 21 October

A king, even if only the ruler of a small Balkan state, is a great lord, so it might be of some interest how he travels, and how he behaves when he travels not on his private court train, but on the regular one, together with peddlers, free-pass journalists, civilian women and Serbian merchants.

The correspondent of the Bácsmegyei Napló traveled together with Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria on Thursday evening, from Szabadka to Belgrade, and recounts his impressions in this report.

It has been reported in the newspapers that on Thursday evening Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria and his wife traveled through the railway station of Szabadka.

The report was partially wrong. The Queen of Bulgaria was not on the fast train. She had previously gone to Sofia on the express train. The king traveled with his two sons and his suite. They had been visiting to Alcsút for a few days, and now they were on their way back to the Balkans.

Ferdinand, the king is a gentleman in his 40s. He has a long goatee and a really bold-sized nose.


He and his suite of six people traveled in two Bulgarian special compartments. The two compartments were attached directly in front of the dining car, so from the latter one could quite well see what was happening in one of the two special compartments.

I thought that the Bulgarian king could be interviewed on the way. After all, the Hungarian public is so badly informed about Tripolis, Turkey, and the Balkans in ferment, that any authentic information from the Bulgarian king could be useful.

This plan, however, had to be given up. The Hungarian railway employees traveling with the king, just like the members of his suite declared that I can even make no attempt to speak with the king. He does not accept any journalists. He is a military man who does not like to talk much.

– It is impossible. Impossible! What do you think? – said a long-bearded Bulgarian in a frightened face, who could speak German, and you could clearly see the holy horror on his face that a journalist wants to speak with his ruler.

I really did not want to challenge the impossible, although all the possible reporter’s tricks run across my mind in a moment. I thought to dress as a conductor or to change clothes with the waiter, but such things can be done only in the anecdotes. Nevertheless, I did not want to leave unexploited the advantageous situation that I was traveling together with the Bulgarian king and that I could observe what he was doing.

So here I give a description of the king’s travel from Szabadka to Belgrade.

In Szabadka the king looked out of the window of his special compartment. He looked at the railway station, and then with a poorly disguised oh my, how ugly on his face he turned away from the old, decrepit and disgusting station of Szabadka.

After the train pulled out of the station of Szabadka, it did not even get to Nagyfény, when the king and his suite came to the dining car. A small part of the dining car was closed off, and it was occupied by King Ferdinand and his suite.

In the company of the king there was also Offner, the shop manager from the right bank of the Danube, to whom the king seems to have a very good relationship. The king and the manager sat opposite each other at the small two-person table of the dining car, and they chatted extremely happily over dinner. It seems that Offner told some piquant anecdotes to the king, because before the latter laughed, he glanced sideway at his sons, whether they understand what it is about.


The chef of the dining car prepared a special dinner for the king and his suite. The dinner must have been very good, because the king took much from every dish. They drank red wine to the dinner. The king does not show any sign to his having been a Hungarian hussar, because he never clinks with his glass. The dinner lasted as far as Ópázua. Then the king stood up and went back to his special compartment. First, however, he opened the door of the dining car, and accompanied Offner to the other part of the train. There he took leave of him. He shook hands in a patriarchal way, and told him:

– Good bye, dear Uncle Offner. Please, at Zimony come over to me for a small chat.

The waiters say that King Ferdinand always calls the manager Uncle Offner.

By the way, the waiters and the train staff are not at all satisfied with King Ferdinand. He does not give a tip. He did not give anything for the dinner service either. It was only the chief marshal who honored the head waiter with twenty francs.

They give loud expression to their dissatisfaction. They tell that when the king recently traveled to Budapest in a special compartment on the morning express train, he only gave a tip of twenty francs. He handed it to the chief of the Eastern Railway Station to distribute it among the train staff. The restaurateur of the Eastern Railway Station gave 19 crowns for the 20 francs. From this, the brakeman got 4 crowns, and the two conductors and the train driver 5-5 crowns.

– I have a passenger, a merchant from Verbász – says one of the conductors –, he is a far greater gentleman than the Bulgarian king.

Nevertheless, the conductors and the waiters speak with great reverence about the king. They sit together and whisper about him.

Between Ópázua and Zimony the king asked a bottle of wine and a bottle of mineral water into his compartment. It was taken by the waiter. He says that the king is reading some files, and a map is spread out in front of him. His Majesty is obviously very interested in the affairs of Tripolis, and he is being continuously reported about them.

In Zimony [the pre-1920 Hungarian-Serbian border station] the passengers leave the train. The king, however, remains in the car. Manager Offner also goes to him. The Serbian customs officer, who, by way of a very insufficient control, only asks the passengers about their profession, does not enter the special compartment. He knows that its passenger is no anarchist, but a king.

In Belgrade the Bulgarian compartments are attached to a special train. It will take Ferdinand to Sofia. The king once more appears in the window, and shakes hands with manager Offner:

– Good night, Uncle Offner. Good night!



Bácsmegyei Napló, 22 November 1911

Kings’ encounter in Szabadka
Our correspondent. Szabadka, 21 November

The railway station of Szabadka had two distinguished guests today. At nine-thirty in the morning, with the regular express train arrived Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria, the old acquaintance of Szabadka. The royal guest came from Sofia and goes to Poprádfelka. He only came through the ugly station of Szabadka because this is the shortest way there.

Two hours later, at 12:44 a Serbian special train slid into the station. It was taking home another Balkan notable, His Majesty Petar, from France, where they eat the meat with fork and knife, and also use towel for washing. He was accompanied by Minister of Foreign Affairs Milovanovich, and eleven Serbian dignitaries. They spent ten minutes at the railway station, during which time they lowered the curtains of the club car.

The two Majesties’ trains met at Csengőd. Ferdinand leaned out of the car, and told to Petar:

– Still so ugly.

That is, the railway station of Szabadka.



Bácsmegyei Napló, 12 February 1912

The king on the railway station of Szabadka

Last night, a distinguished guest stayed for some minutes on the railway station of Szabadka. The king… True, only some recently coined king: the ruler of the Bulgarians. His arrival did not stir much sensation, as the Bulgarian king appears so often on the railway station of Szabadka as his colleague, the club king in the card-play called “twenty-one”. King Ferdinand came this time from Archduke Joseph, and was on his way back to Sofia. The train was about to leave, when Chief Adjutant Imre Pocketovich said to the ruler:

– Your Majesty, you graciously condescended to forget something.

– What did I condescend? – asked the king, and he apparently seemed to be shocked.

– We are in Szabadka – chanced the Adjutant, who is otherwise a Balkan champion of chance games.

– Oh yes – he said, and spat. – Phew, how ugly this station is. So ugly that already disgusting. – Said the king, and the train pulled out.



Bácsmegyei Napló, 18 November 1911

The decrepit railway station of Szabadka is still being patched

(Our correspondent) The railway station of Szabadka is the building which all the foreign rulers unanimously declare to be ugly. King Petar of Serbia, who just arrived to Paris, got sick because he looked out at the railway station of Szabadka.


And how sick would have become poor Petar Karadjordjevich, if he had to get out here, totter along in darkness and mud among the trains, jumping in front of the locomotives with menacing eyes ready to leave, if in the rain there had been no room for him either on the covered platform, or in the waiting room.

The rulers in transit, who make their obligate comments, are spared from all this, but we, poor inhabitants of Szabadka, have to suffer all the nuisances of this very small, very ugly and very dangerous railway station.

The people of Szabadka is confident each spring, summer, autumn and winter that the new railway station would be finally built.

However, on the railway station of Szabadka, in the current one, the decrepit one, the one ripe for the pickaxe – now they started new works. They are building a huge and thoroughly flammable depot for the repairs of the locomotives.

On the railway station of Szabadka today there is no space even to let the trains in, and nevertheless the Hungarian Railways are still patching this old building, until one day it all will crumble.