South German Railway Company

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Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft AG
Basic information
Company headquarters Darmstadt / Essen
owner City of Essen 66% (1933)
Share over 1000 marks in the Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in Darmstadt on February 11, 1895
The meter-gauge passenger car C4 No. 171 of the SEG, built in 1891 and modernized in 1950, here in 2010 on the Blonay – Chamby museum railway . The form of the lettering is unhistorical
In 1926, the SEG procured a series of 23 3rd class passenger cars from the Gastell wagon factory , of which EFB Ci 38 was retained on the museum steam train Rebenbummler on the Kaiserstuhlbahn
Seal of the Süddeutsche Eisenbahngesellschaft
Receipt (1909)

The Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft AG ( SEG ) was founded on February 11, 1895 in Darmstadt . It was created through the merger of various trams and branch lines , all of which were subordinate to the central administration for Secundairbahnen Herrmann Bachstein of the railway company Herrmann Bachstein (1834–1908). Initially, SEG took over routes in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia , Thuringia , Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse , and on December 8, 1897, it was expanded to Baden . Except for the Essen tram , which developed into the economically strongest SEG operation, all tram companies were gradually sold off. After nationalization of the Thuringian companies in 1949 and after all remaining routes in Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Baden from 1952 to 1954, the remaining company changed its name to Essener Verkehrs-AG (EVAG) on September 29, 1954 , which in turn took place on September 1, 2017 renamed Ruhrbahn .

From the Bachstein-Bahnen to the SEG

The railway entrepreneur Herrmann Bachstein was involved as operator, owner or partner in railway consortia in a number of individual tram and branch line operations, the concessions of which were already intended to be incorporated into joint stock companies . The Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft AG was founded on February 11, 1895 in Darmstadt by taking over these railways with effect from April 1, 1895. The founders were the bank for trade and industry in Darmstadt, Herrmann Bachstein, the banker Karl Friedrich Hedderich, Johannes Kaempf and building director Karl Parcus. The bank for trade and industry took over the majority of the shares. The operations of the introduced railways took place retrospectively to April 1, 1894 for the account of SEG.

The consortium Bank for Trade and Industry - Herrmann Bachstein brought in:

Trams and suburban railways (gauge 1000 mm)

Standard gauge branch lines (gauge 1435 mm)

Herrmann Bachstein brought in:

On December 8, 1897, the SEG was expanded to include five routes in the Grand Duchy of Baden , which came from the Baden Railway Consortium Bank for Trade and Industry , WH Ladenburg and Sons , Rheinische Kreditbank and Herrmann Bachstein. With effect from April 1, 1897:

For this purpose, the SEG acquired eight tram routes in the city and district of Essen and in the district of Recklinghausen.

After Mainzer Straßenbahn AG was sold to the city in 1904, the electric tram networks in Essen and Wiesbaden remained with SEG. In the same year, the rail network grew to include the standard-gauge branch lines built by SEG itself:

The Essen tram dominates

After the death of Herrmann Bachstein in 1908, the industrialist Hugo Stinnes took over the SEG with the aim of taking over the electric trams of the Ruhr area and other large cities as well as the entire West German power supply through the RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerk AG) controlled by him to get. In 1909 the Rheinisch-Westfälische Bahn-GmbH (RWB) was founded, which brought together numerous tram companies in the Ruhr area and to which the city of Essen with 48%, the district of Essen with 27% and the Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerk (RWE) with 25% were involved. As a holding company, RWB took over the majority of the shares in SEG and Hugo Stinnes was chairman of the supervisory board until his death in 1924. By concentrating on electric trams, some railways were spun off from the SEG and transferred to newly founded companies in the following years:

In 1915 the central administration gave up its participation in the SEG and Herrmann Bachstein jun. resigned from the supervisory board. On April 1, 1916, the SEG group comprised branch lines with a length of 216 km, of which 37 km were narrow gauge. He also owned two major tram companies in Essen (71 km) and Wiesbaden (48 km) with a total of 119 km of meter-gauge routes.

In 1929, due to differences with the city of Wiesbaden, the SEG began to gradually shut down its Wiesbaden tram lines , which were finally transferred to the city of Wiesbaden in 1943. The Essen tram became the core of the SEG, in which the city of Essen now held 66% of the shares in 1933.

The SEG law and the decline of branch line operations

Interior view of the meter-gauge third-class passenger car No. 171 of the SEG with coal heating ( cannon furnace )

In order to streamline operations, the SEG introduced railcar traffic on several less frequented routes as early as 1925, making it one of the pioneers in the use of railcars with internal combustion engines in Germany. Also were early buses in replacement bus used as a supplement and the branch lines. Since the branch line operations achieved only sparse income or losses compared with the trams, the SEG endeavored not to extend the concessions for the individual routes, which were always limited to 50 years. It offered the German Reich to take over the Worms-Offsteiner Bahn, as its concession was the first to expire in December 1936. This offer was answered with the law on the extension of time-limited permits for public transport railways of June 26, 1936, according to which continued operation could be ordered by decree by the Reich Minister of Transport over the end of the concession period. This arbitrary law, which is specifically directed against the SEG, is also unofficially known as the "SEG law" or "Lex SEG". On the basis of this law, the concessions of the individual branch lines were gradually extended by decree for an indefinite period, so that the SEG was forced to continue operating all routes and, if necessary, to finance their losses itself, which are offset by subsidies from the Essen tram's income had to.

After the end of the Second World War , the then Lord Mayor of Essen and later Federal President Gustav Heinemann was chairman of the supervisory board of SEG from 1945 to 1949 and remained a member of the supervisory board until 1952. As a result of the currency reform , the branch line operations began to make high losses due to significantly increased expenditure. Was another blow to the SEG expropriation and nationalization of its three Thuringian routes (Arnstadt-layer Ershausener railway Hohenebra-Ebelebener railway and Ilmenau large Breitenbacher railway) in the Soviet occupation zone in 1949 that without compensation to the German Reichsbahn in the GDR went over .

In the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany , the General Railway Act of March 29, 1951, pursuant to Section 9, repealed the SEG Act of 1936 and stipulated that the license extensions based on this law expire on December 31, 1952.

In Hesse, when the Hessian Constitution came into force in 1946, the railways or overhead lines traffic system was transferred to common ownership (nationalized), which also affected the two Hessian SEG routes Reinheim-Reichelsheim and Hetzbach-Beerfelden. However, since the Essen headquarters of the SEG was not in the state of Hesse, the nationalization was initially omitted due to the unclear legal situation. On June 6, 1952, the Hessian State Court ruled that both railways were retrospectively awarded to the State of Hesse as of December 1, 1946. Finally, the Reinheim-Reichelsheim route was sold to the State of Hesse in 1953. The operational management of the two Hessian routes remained with the SEG until 1954 on behalf of and for the account of the State of Hesse.

The SEG waived the renewal of its licenses and was able to part with all other branch line operations in Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden at the end of 1952. Only the concessions for the two lines Hetzbach-Beerfelden and the Selztalbahn did not expire normally until 1954 and were continued to be operated by SEG on behalf of the receiving federal states until the concession expired. The only former SEG branch line that still exists today with a completely preserved line and that has remained in full operation with freight and passenger traffic is the Kaiserstuhlbahn .

Since now only the trams, whose network at times covered more than 100 kilometers, omnibuses and since 1949 also trolleybuses in Essen belonged to the SEG, the SEG traded as Essener Verkehrs-AG (EVAG) since September 29, 1954 . September 2017 as Ruhrbahn . This operation exists as the legal successor of the SEG with normal and meter gauge city and tram routes of 74 km length to this day.

What remained of the SEG railways after 1945

Thuringia

Rhineland-Palatinate

Hesse

to bathe

North Rhine-Westphalia

literature

  • Walter Borchmeyer: 40 years of the Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , Essen 1935 (reprint Darmstadt 1995).
  • Dirk Endisch: The Bachstein transport company. From the "Central Administration for Secundairbahnen" to a modern transport company . Dirk Endisch, Leonberg 2004, ISBN 3-936893-10-1 .
  • Dieter Höltge: Trams and light rail vehicles in Germany, Volume 4 Ruhrgebiet EK-Verlag, Freiburg i.Br. 1994, ISBN 3-8825-5334-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Süddeutsche Eisenbahn Gesellschaft AG: 51. – 53. Annual report for the ordinary general meeting of shareholders for the financial years 1944, 1945 and 1946, p. 3.
  2. ^ Süddeutsche Eisenbahn Gesellschaft AG: 58th Annual Report for the 56th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders for the 1951 Financial Year, p. 11

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