Bayern Express & P. ​​Kühn Berlin

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Bayern Express & P. ​​Kühn Berlin
logo
Basic information
Web presence www.bex.de
owner DB long-distance transport
Seat Berlin
Lines
bus until 2016 long-distance bus routes

The Bayern Express and P. Kühn Berlin GmbH ( BEX ) is a German travel and transport company based in Berlin . It operates city ​​tours in Berlin and Potsdam and offers bus charter. Until 2016, BEX also operated inter-German long-distance bus routes , mainly from the central bus station in Berlin . The sole shareholder is DB Fernverkehr AG, but the company is assigned to the DB Regional Business Unit , Bus Division, Eastern Region.

history

Company P. Kühn Berlin

The P. Kühn Berlin company was founded in 1937 by Paul Kühn in Berlin as a haulage company and became known as a bus company for interzonal traffic after the Second World War . The in Reinickendorf b. Berlin-born Kühn (born September 29, 1908; † July 30, 1980) initially worked in his father's nursery in Reinickendorf, became a delivery truck driver at the age of 18 and from the late 1920s ran a car dealership with used trucks and buses , which he refurbished and resold.

The new construction of Tempelhof Airport gave Paul Kühn the idea of ​​transporting the thousands of construction workers to the airport construction site in buses, which until then had only been connected to two tram lines . The success of these transports led him shortly afterwards in 1937 to founding his own haulage company with buses and trucks, which he set up on the property next to his father's nursery in Reinickendorfer Provinzstrasse . During the Second World War, Paul Kühn carried out the first long-distance bus trips for workers' trips from Berlin to Göhren on Rügen . After the war, the construction of Tegel Airport in 1948 brought the company rapid prosperity through the transport of materials and workers, which after the end of the Berlin blockade also organized excursions for sports clubs, bowling clubs or wedding parties outside of the city.

At the instigation of the Berlin Senate , which was annoyed that the income from the interzonal trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn went exclusively to the administration of the Soviet occupation zone and later the GDR and therefore wanted to establish its own interzone bus service to West Germany , Paul Kühn set up a weekly and from 1949 soon thereafter a daily bus connection from the central bus station at Stuttgarter Platz to Frankfurt am Main . For the break halfway through , Kühn bought his own building in Lutter am Barenberge to set up a restaurant and a repair shop. In 1951 he also bought the mountain hotel Stöberhai in the Harz Mountains , renovated it thoroughly and successfully sold package tours from Berlin to the Stöberhai through his own travel agency, which he had newly founded, until the hotel was resold in 1965 .

In 1953 Paul Kühn owned 22 modern and luxurious coaches with partly glazed roofs, which were equipped by the in-house carpentry, blacksmith and saddlery and achieved an annual turnover of 1.3 million  marks (purchasing power adjusted in today's currency: around 3.38 million euros) .

Bayern Express

Bayern-Express (travel agency and bus service) was founded by H. L. Wessel in the late 1940s. The head office was in Berlin, branches were in Nuremberg and Munich . The business model was to transport people from Berlin to Bavaria and vice versa (inter-zone traffic). Initially, people were transported on trucks. Business flourished and buses could be bought. The Berliners preferred the Bayern Express buses because they were more comfortable than the interzone trains. Toilets were built into buses as early as the 1950s. From mid-1950 the price for a single trip on scheduled services was around 55 marks and for a return trip around 90 marks. The Berliners liked to use the Bayern-Express for package tours to Bavaria, Austria , Italy and Yugoslavia . They were first brought to Munich by bus, after breakfast in a café, the travelers were distributed to around eight buses that served the area from Berchtesgaden to Lake Constance . Travelers to Carinthia , Italy and Yugoslavia took the train from Munich to their destination. In Italy the preferred area was Riccione and in Yugoslavia the island of Krk . For larger groups, they were accompanied by an employee from the Munich branch. The sole owner H. L. Wessel died around 1960 and his partner was the sole heir. Because Wessel was living in a " wild marriage " with his partner, the Catholic Church refused the funeral. The old Catholic Church then took over the funeral, he was buried in Munich. The sole heir sold the company to Deutsche Bahn . The name 'Bayern-Express' was retained. Today's company BEX got its name from “B” for “Bavaria” and “EX” from “Express”. After the Wall was built in August 1961, many travel agencies and official bodies refused to sell tickets for the Leipzig Trade Fair . At the request or request of the GDR authorities, the Bayern Express then took over this sale.

Operating areas

Public transport Berlin

From mid-December 2008 to November 24, 2011, BEX operated an airport line (SXF1) between Südkreuz station and Schönefeld Airport together with the Berlin bus company BVB . The line was integrated into the VBB tariff (surcharge required) and ran every 20 minutes, daily from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. During the operational restrictions on the S-Bahn Berlin (here the S 45 line was discontinued), the SXF1 bus ran free of charge.

Long-distance bus transport

BEX double-decker long-distance bus on the Dresden – Berlin line

By 2016, BEX operated around 30 national and 25 international long-distance bus routes from / to Berlin and Munich. The company was a partner in Berlin Linien Bus GmbH , in whose network all lines were integrated. In 2016, the parent company DB decided to largely discontinue its long-distance bus service with the exception of some lines operated as IC buses . The ZOB Berlin travel agency is operated by the BEX subsidiary Zentral-Omnibusbahnhof Berlin GmbH .

BEX Sightseeing (formerly: Severin + Kühn Berlin City Tour)

Grave of Gustav Severin in the Dahlem forest cemetery

The company, which was founded in 1953 by Gustav Severin (1903–2000) and Paul Kühn, has developed over the course of its long history to become the leading provider of city ​​tours in Berlin and excursions into the Berlin area. In addition to daily city tours (City Circle Tour), excursions to Potsdam ( Sanssouci ) and the Spreewald with a boat trip are also offered. The name was changed to BEX Sightseeing on January 1, 2012.

BEX Charter

The BEX Charter division can hire a large number of state-of-the-art coaches for transfers, shuttle services, city tours and events. The range of vehicles extends from the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter with 15 seats to the double-decker bus with 80 seats. It is also possible to rent convertible double-decker buses. In addition to coaches, the Charter division also rents a vintage bus built by Saurer from 1940 with the label Severin + Kühn.

literature

  • The trip into the blue . In: Curt Riess: You did it again. Fates in post-war Germany . Fischer, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1955, pp. 170–187 (covers Paul Kühn and his company)

Web links

Commons : Bayern Express & P. ​​Kühn Berlin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. P. Kühn Omnibusreisen , Berlin-Brandenburgisches Wirtschaftsarchiv BBWA K 1/1/1195, Vol. 2
  2. dailynet.de ( Memento of the original from December 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dailynet.de
  3. S-Bahn S45 is running again . ( Memento from October 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. Klaus Kurpjuweit: Traditional company on the brink of collapse . The last trip from Berlin Linien Bus . In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 31, 2016, accessed on January 3, 2017