Research Paper

The Journal of Transport History

1–24
The naturalisation of © The Author(s) 2021
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nineteenth-century German sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00225266211031177
Railways as depicted in journals.sagepub.com/home/jth

visual discourse

Zef Segal
The Open University of Israel, Israel

Abstract
Despite the dramatic effect of the railway age on the natural surroundings, it was not
seen necessarily as destructive to nature. Railways were both the epitome of progress
as well as integral features in pastoral landscapes. This seemingly paradoxical percep-
tion of railways is partially explained by historicising the “naturalisation” of the
German train system. This article describes the rapid transformation of the
German train from a symbol of dynamic industrialisation to an integral part of the
landscape. Visual images, such as lithographs and postcards, were the catalysts in
this process. Railway companies, local elites and travel guide publishers promoted
the process of “naturalisation” for economic reasons, but the iconography was a
result of visual discourse in nineteenth-century German culture. This paper shows
that unlike American, British and French depictions of railways, German artists por-
trayed a railway system, which rather than conquering nature, was blending peacefully
into an existing natural landscape.

Keywords
Railway history, nineteenth century, landscape art, postcards, nature

Corresponding author:
Zef Segal, The Department of History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies, The Open University of Israel,
University Road 1, Raanana 4353701, Israel.
Email: zefsegal@gmail.com
2 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

Introduction
When imagining nineteenth-century railways, one thinks of motion, commotion, size,
smoke, crowds, technology and pollution, yet Figure 1 shows the opposite. The train
is still; it is relatively small, almost as big as its driver; the people next to it seem calm
and unagitated by the passing train; its colours are similar to those of the nearby trees;
even its smoke is concealed by the leaves of the trees. In contrast to the common percep-
tion of the train as a technological wonder, it is portrayed as part of nature.
The adoration of nature in German culture has been studied extensively by scholars of
German history, literature and cultural studies.1 However, nature, as perceived by
German contemporaries was not seen as untouched spaces. “The impact of human activ-
ity over the past two millennia in Central Europe is so conspicuous that Germans have not
been tempted by the ‘wilderness debate’”, claims Marc Cioc.2 Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl,
the nineteenth-century German ethnographer, described the German landscape as a cul-
tural landscape, Kulturlandschaft; a concept that emphasises regional diversity and an
intricate link between people and their natural environments.3 This appreciation of land-
scape was entirely different to the American attitude to the wilderness, which perceived
nature as detached from the presence and the influence of people. The German approach
could, in principle, synchronise mechanised technology, such as the railway, with nature.
Yet, the image shown in Figure 1 reveals more than just mutual harmony of technology
and nature, it expresses the naturalisation of the railway and the elimination of industrial
power as a visual icon.4
During the nineteenth century, railways were common features in German visual mer-
chandise, such as lithographs and postcards. Tracks, trains and stations were depicted in
many urban and rural landscapes due to their physical dominance over other features in
the countryside. However, their visual depictions associated them less with modernity
and power and more with a harmonious blending into their surroundings. Nonetheless,
the naturalisation of the railway in the German rural and urban landscapes was not
“natural” or neutral. Behind it lies a history of perceptual and cultural changes instigated
by people and expressed in contemporary visual discourse. The present article explores
the representations of railways in German lithographs and postcards and in particular
the ways in which visual discourse contributed to a widespread perception of the
railway as an accepted and “naturalised” feature.
The age of the German Railway started ten years after the opening of the first
public railway in Britain, with the construction of the Nuremberg-Fürth railway in
1
Forum, “The Nature of German Environmental History”, German History 27:1 (2009), 113–30; David
Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (London:
Vintage Digital, 2007); Gabriele Dürbeck et al. (eds), Ecological Thought in German Literature and Culture
(Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2017); Thomas Laken, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape
Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Thomas
Laken and Thomas Zeller (eds), Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (New
Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005).
2
Marc Cioc, “The Impact of The Coal Age on The German Environment: A Review of The Historical
Literature”, Environment and History 4:1 (1998), 105–124, here 106; see also Blackbourn, The Conquest.
3
Lekan and Zeller, Germany’s Nature, 3.
4
Naturalisation is defined as bringing into conformity with nature.
Segal 3

Figure 1. The train station in the city of Brühl in 1841. Source: Nikolaus Christian Hohe,
“Der Bahnhof in Brühl” (1841).

1835.5 The short 6 km track was only the beginning of a social and economic revolution
brought about by the train. Although the initial steps were slow, the expansion in rail con-
struction and transport soon became exponential. By the year 1840, there were 500 km of
railways, 5 years later it grew to 2,300 km, and by 1865, the soon to be Germany had one
of the largest systems in Europe with 14,700 km of railway tracks.6 The number of annual
passengers grew accordingly from thousands to millions.7 Some even claim that the seeds
of German unification and an integrated economy were a result of the railway system.8
The railway system changed something much more fundamental than an improved
connectivity and an integrated economy; it changed the perceptions of time and space.
Wolfgang Schivelbusch shows in his seminal book The Railway Journey that the experi-
ence of travelling in a train obliterated the “traditional space-time continuum” because it

5
When the first 6 km of Germany’s railroad opened in 1835, the United States already had 1,767 km in
operation.
6
Hermann Glaser and Norbert Neudecker, Die Deutsche Eisenbahn: Bilder Aus Ihrer Geschichte (Munich:
Beck, 1998), 11.
7
Hubert Kiesewetter, “Economic Preconditions for Germany’s Nation-Building in The Nineteenth Century”,
in Hagen Schulze (ed.), Nation-Building in Central Europe (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1998), 81–105, here 101.
8
Robert Krause, Friedrich List und die Erste Grosse Eisenbahn Deutschlands. Ein Beitrag zur
Eisenbahngeschichte (Leipzig: Strauch, 1887); Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten
Jahrhudert (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1879–94); Allan Mitchell, The Great Train Race: Railways and the
Franco-German Rivalry, 1815–1914 (New York NY: Berghahn, 2000); Abigail Green, Fatherlands:
State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
4 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

was unlike traditional means of transport which enabled a traveller to continually experi-
ence the space between departure and destination.9
However, the effects of the railway on spatial perceptions were not just ideological or
epistemological since the trains, tracks and stations had a material presence that affected
their surroundings. The physical presence of railway lines, stations and fast steam trains
was a palpable part of everyday life in the second half of the nineteenth century. The new
railways carved through the terrain and destroyed habitats of flora and fauna; the moving
train was noisy; the train and its stations were large and visible. It was impossible to
ignore the impact of an infrastructure that “defies all opposition from river and mountain,
maintains his line straight and level, fights nature at every point, cares neither for height
nor depth, rock nor torrent”, as described in an 1858 American journal.10

The railway and the natural landscape: Friends or foes?

The previous paragraph might lead to a conclusion that nature and railways, or technology
in general, are incompatible. Technology, in this sense, is seen as antithetical to nature, or
as the means for “emancipation and freedom from the tyranny of nature”.11 Nikolaus
Lenau, the Austrian poet, described the railway in such a manner in his 1838 poem An
der Frühling. “In the middle of the green grove, impetuous haste, the railway feeds, to
you [the spring] a terrible guest. Trees fall to the left and to the right, where it breaks
forward, your blossoming species, does not spare the rough ones”.12 The fear of the intrud-
ing technology was not just felt by the Viennese poet; Wilhelm Riehl described the clash
between the traditional lives of southwest German farmers and the incoming railways. In
the mid-nineteenth century, he reported that peasants from the Duchy of Baden created
demon myths in which a passenger went missing every time a train stopped in a great
station.13 They also believed that “Railways would at a certain time disappear suddenly
as they had appeared”. Other German authors described the train as a Schwarzen Teufel
(black Satan) or a Feuerdrachen (Fire dragon).14 This perception of an unavoidable
clash between nature and railways was also held by many of the proponents of techno-
logical progress that described their final goal as the conquest over nature. In 1838, the
poet Karl Beck published his poem Die Eisenbahn, in which the fire and smoke spitting
train is a symbol of freedom from tyranny.
9
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth
Century (Los Angeles CA: University of California Press, 1986), 36.
10
“Railway Engineering in The United States”, Atlantic Monthly 2:13 (1858), 641–56, here 644.
11
Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw, “Fetishizing the Modern City: The Phantasmagoria of Urban
Technological Networks”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24:1 (2000), 120–38, here
125.
12
“‘Mitten durch den grünen Hain, Ungestümer Hast, Frisst die Eisenbahn herein, Dir ein schlimmer Gast.
Bäume fallen links und rechts, Wo sie vorwärts bricht, Deines blühenden Geschlechts Schont die rauhe nicht’”.
Nikolaus Lenau, “An der Frühling”, in Oskar Wolff (ed.), Die Deutschen Dichter dr Gegenwart (Leipzig: Otto
Wigand, 1847), 46.
13
David J.S. King, “Public Opinion and The Introduction of Railways into Germany, 1759–1860”, PhD
dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1992, 404.
14
Paul A. Youngman, Black Devil and Iron Angel: The Railway in Nineteenth-Century German Realism
(Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005).
Segal 5

However, technology is not inherently contradictory to nature, or a symbol of natural

destruction. It is seen many times as a means of natural progress, or even as becoming
part of the landscape. In 1843, following the opening of railway lines from Paris to
Orleans, the German poet, Heinrich Heine, living in Paris, described his futuristic
vision of the railways, “I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advan-
cing on Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees; the North Sea’s breakers
are rolling against my door”.15 In Heine’s vision of the railway smells, voices and views
arrive with the trains; the railway is a symbol of sensuality and not industrialisation.
Furthermore, it connects isolated locations without harming or disrupting the nature
between them. This is not a depiction of a heroic industrial conquest over nature, but
rather an amplification of the known landscape. Theodor Fontane in his 1885 novel
Cecile provides a mixture of both approaches, as the train is both part of nature and a
monstrous creature. “The moonlight shone through the white cloud of steam, while in
front, two eyes of fire flashed and sparks from the machine flew far into the field”.16
In this depiction, the railway is both part of nature, as the white smoke bears resemblance
to the moonlight, and a symbol of destruction, with images of fire.
Unlike authors and poets, landscape artists did not view the railway as merely an ideo-
logical metaphor, but as an inseparable part of their subject matter. Consequently, visual
depictions of the landscape, which included the railway, forced the artists to deal with
questions such as dominance, harmony and interrelations between industrialisation and
natural environments.

Interested political and economic actors

Although the portrayal of railways was always connected to the train’s physical presence
and to the daily experience of passengers, it must not be understood as a simple reflection
of reality because it was produced and distributed by many interested political and eco-
nomic actors, of whom I will mention a few.
Railway companies and their investors had high stakes in creating a positive public
image of the new railway system. They organised big public ceremonies to celebrate
grand openings of stations and new sections of their lines.17 Pamphlets with railway
stories as well as souvenirs were sold on the train and in the train stations. The souvenirs
and stories referred to the company, the railway line, or particular stations along the way.
Furthermore, maps of the railway lines, as well as drawings of their landscapes, were
attached to these types of merchandise.
The commercialisation of railway representation was also supported by localities
along the tracks. Railway planning in nineteenth-century German states was seldom
part of a grand scheme, especially in its early stages, and was usually initiated by local
financiers to promote local markets.18 As a result, local municipalities produced their
15
Quoted in Schivelbusch, The Railway, 37.
16
Quoted in Youngman, Black Devil, 96.
17
King, “Public Opinion”, 404.
18
Volker Then, Eisenbahnen Und Eisenbahnunternehmer in Der Industriellen Revolution: Ein Preußisch/
deutsch-Englischer Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1997), 58, 165–66, and 256.
6 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

own merchandise, designed for visitors, tourists and investors. From the late 1850s,
German governments became increasingly aware of the importance of rail as an instru-
ment for social and economic policies. Unlike the local interests in railways, which
were rooted in specific lines and stations, the state viewed the railway network as a
whole and encouraged general usage of the system by declaring discounts on special
occasions and funding the beautification of central stations.19
Guidebook publishers were among the most important proponents of railways to the
general public.20 The travel guide market depended on long-distance tourism and as a
result, benefited from the arrival of train passengers to distant towns and cities. The guide-
books described travel routes on the basis of railway lines and initiated many of the hikes
at the train stations.
The four different groups: railway companies, localities, state officials and guidebook
publishers, did not just implement an economic policy to support railway consumption,
but also produced sophisticated visual merchandise as a marketing strategy. Mapmakers,
artists and designers were hired to reflect positive images of the train, the stations and the
tracks.
However, this article is not about the forces behind the production of a “naturalised”
railway, but rather about the image itself; how it was designed, and in what way it was
different from similar images in other countries.

Representations of the railway system in lithographs

During the nineteenth century, a new awareness of nature became widespread as a result
of intensified urbanism and the Romantic Movement.21 This awareness popularised land-
scape art across Europe and in the German states. Landscape prints were added to atlases
and books, some became part of art book collections and others sold individually.
However, German artists faced what Leo Marx coined “the machine in the garden” –
technology that interrupted the pastoral scenery.22 Railways were unavoidably visible
and thus became a necessary element in lithographs portraying urban and rural
environments.23
During the first decade of the German railway, a major theme in German lithographs
was the opening of new railway lines. Artists portrayed the ceremonious launching of the
19
Green, Fatherlands, 256–58.
20
Philip Pacey, “The picturesque Railway”, Visual Resources 18:4 (2002), 285–309, here 289; Burkhart
Lauterbach, “Baedeker und Andere Reiseführer: Eine Problemskizze”, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 85 (1989),
206–34.
21
Further reasons in Michelle Facos, An Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art (New York NY: Routledge,
2012), 110–39.
22
Leo Marx, The Machine in The Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 365.
23
On American railway paintings, see: Larry Lambert, “Naturalizing Technology in Late-Nineteenth-Century
America: An Aesthetic of Excess Meaning in The Paintings of J. Alden Weir”, American Communication
Journal 10:s (2008), article 2. On British railway landscape art see: Matt Thompson, “Modernity, Anxiety, and
The Development of a Popular Railway Landscape Aesthetic, 1809–1879”, in Steven D. Spalding and Benjamin
Fraser (eds), Trains, Literature, and Culture: Reading/Writing the Rails (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2012),
119–56.
Segal 7

Figure 2. The celebrations of the first railway between Nuremberg and Fürth. Source: Unknown
artist (1835?). Courtesy of Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte.

first tracks and the arrival of the pioneering trains in Nuremberg, Munich, Dresden and
Leipzig.24 These were not ingenuous images, since many of these artists were hired by
the railway companies as part of their promotion. These images shared many common
characteristics (Figure 2): the ceremony takes place in open fields with very few urban
or pastoral features, the fields are filled with cheering viewers, and a few domestic
animals seem hysterical, while a large train with thick smoke crosses the field. These
images purposely reflected the awe people supposedly felt towards the intimidating,
yet intriguing technology.
The historian David Nye uses the phrase “technological sublime” to describe a similar
reaction of the American public to twentieth-century technological achievements.25 He
further claims that this was an example of American exceptionalism, since Europeans
never developed a willingness to celebrate the human dominance of nature. David
Blackbourn claims in response that, in the same time period, the German public

24
Some examples: Conrad Wießner, “Die Ludwigs-Eisenbahn” (1835); Erich Schilling, “Eröffnung der ersten
deutschen Eisenbahn, Strecke Nürnberg – Fürth” (1835); “Die Eisenbahn zwischen Berlin und Potsdam”
(1835); “Erste Dampfwagenfahrt auf der Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn den 24. April 1837” (1837); Gustav
Kraus, “Glaswagen im Eröffnungszug der München Augsburger Eisenbahn” (1839); “Die erste lokomotiv in
Austria” and “Deutsch Wagram”, in Herman Strach (ed.), Geschichte der Eisenbahnen Österreich-Ungarn, Vol.
1 (Vienna: Prochaska, 1898), 149 and 151.
25
David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007).
8 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

enthusiastically followed technological developments. Much like the public admiration

reflected in the lithographs of early railways, crowds followed the tunnelling of the
Berlin underground, the journeys of the Zeppelin and the maiden voyage of the great
ocean liners in the early twentieth century.26 However, images showing large trains
and cheering crowds were a short-lived genre of the late 1830s. By the 1840s German
artists began concealing the technology behind the railway, and in that reinforcing
Nye’s argument.

Picturesque railways lines and railway stations

By the 1840s, trains were no longer the foreground of the images; the focus now being on
two other components of the railway system, tracks and stations; neither of which are
expressions of technological achievement. Instead of portraying empty fields, trees con-
stituted important elements in mid-nineteenth-century drawings. To naturalise and
de-technologise the landscape, German artists adapted the railway to fit into a “pictur-
esque” image of pastoral landscape. The picturesque landscape, introduced by William
Gilpin in 1786, is meant “to evoke a dream … nature neither wild nor hostile, nor severely
restrained and intensively cultivated, but pastoral, nurturing, hospitable to, and inhabited
by, humankind”.27 Picturesque paintings were widely circulated in Europe during the
eighteenth and nineteenth century, through the sale and display of paintings, prints and
a variety of decorative arts.28 While the classic picturesque painting reflected perfect
harmony between nature and the pastoral man, the picturesque railway reflected
perfect harmony between nature and the industrial or technological man.
The scenery, as seen in these prints, includes a large tree in the foreground.29 The
tracks, as well as a small moving train, connect two distinct locations. Ludwig
Rohbock’s 1840 lithograph of Lobau (Figure 3), for example, has a white Saxon city
in the background, a large tree on the left and a cluster of smaller trees on the right.30
A small train with white smoke crosses a bridge from right to left connecting the
grove and the large tree. This depiction shows the railway line as a mediator between dif-
ferent natural landscapes and resembles Heine’s vision. Similarly, an 1840 drawing of
Dessau by Giacomo Pozzi shows a train passing over a railway bridge built across the
River Elbe.31 The large tree is located on the right-hand side of the drawing while the
city of Dessau is located on the left. The small train moves from right to left and
brings nature (the tree) to the city. However, this deliberate placement, positions the
train on the right of the drawing, closer to the tree, as if to assure the viewer that it is
26
Blackbourn, The Conquest, 195–96.
27
Pacey, “The Picturesque”, 287.
28
Philip Pacey, “The Poor Man’s Claude Lorraines: Unravelling the Story of The Dissemination of an Image”,
Visual Resources 5:1 (1988), 17–31.
29
For example: Heinrich Eberhard, Album der Leipzig-Dresdener Eisenbahn (Leipzig: Zirges, 1840);
Friedrich Lill, “Harburg Gesamtansicht mit Eisenbahn” (Darmstadt, 1845); B. Metzeroth, “Eisenbahnviadukt
bei Gotha” (Hildburghausen, 1847); Hans A. Williard, “Ansicht von Bad Schandau” (Dresden, 1860); Ludwig
Rohbock, “Ansicht von Bautzen” (Darmstadt, 1862).
30
Ludwig Rohbock, “Lobau” (Darmstadt, 1850).
31
Giacomo Pozzi, “Die Elbbrücke bei Desau” (1840).
Segal 9

Figure 3. An example of a picturesque railway landscape. Source: Ludwig Rohbock, “Lobau”

(Darmstadt, 1840).

part of nature, rather than the city. The colouring of the train and the tracks is usually
closer to the tone of the trees and the forests than that of the town and its houses. An
1864 lithograph of Schwäbisch Gmünd, for example, shows the town in red and
white, encircled by blueish hills in the background and dark trees in the foreground.32
The town’s train station is adjacent to the trees and coloured in the same bluish tone
as the hill, while the train is coloured in the same dark tones as the trees.
Artists did not just naturalise the railway by colour and proximity to other natural fea-
tures, but also by shape. To understand the implication of shape, we must turn to contem-
porary German reflection upon the geometry of rivers, which was seen as naturally
serpentine. For example, nineteenth-century German nature preservationists stressed
the importance of maintaining this curvature. One of the first Germans to criticise the
technological conquest of nature was Riehl, the German ethnographer. In the 1850s,
he criticised the “geometrical” waterways that destroyed the wilderness of nature.33
Similarly, in 1880, Ernst Rudorff, a Prussian music professor and a founder of the
nature protection movement, published an article, in which he criticised the vulgarity
of modern tourism and the technocratic economy accompanying it. Part of his argument
was the urge of modern planners to straighten every water stream. Curvature was seen as
a natural phenomenon, and this idea was transferred to the depiction of “natural” railway

32
Johann Wolfie, “Gmünd” (Urach, 1850).
33
Blackbourn, The Conquest, 184–85.
10 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

lines, in which the curvature of the tracks was emphasised and exaggerated.34 An 1840
drawing of Kiel shows a semi-circular railway track providing a course for a small train
moving clockwise from the bottom right of the drawing where two small village huts are
located to the city of Kiel in the top left corner.35 The two urban parts of the image are
separated by shrubs and a large tree in the bottom left corner. The train is closer in colour
and location to the large tree. The train is not only not intimidating but in fact portrayed as
a means of connecting nature and man. In contrast, British images of railway lines empha-
sised their Euclidian nature; “the triumph of hard, engineered culture over soft undulating
nature”.36 In the British public eye, the straightness of the tracks was seen as orderly and
matching with other man-made phenomena such as farmlands, hedges and canals.37
In artistic portrayals, railway tracks were incorporated into rural landscapes as if they
were an integral component while the stations were depicted as aesthetic edifices. Central
stations replaced the city gates as the entry and exit points and were designed accordingly
with architectural decorations symbolising modernity and power.38 They became
“modern cathedrals” reflecting the magnitude of the train company and the city.39 An
1845 lithograph of the Dresden train station (Figure 4) depicts the station as a castle-like
building in the middle of the image.40 A large tree is situated on the left of the frame, but
this is used to emphasise the huge vacant plaza in front of the station. The station itself is
lit to emphasise its presence in contrast to the two neighbouring buildings. An even more
telling image is an 1860 lithograph of the interior of the Stuttgart station, which shows a
long corridor framed by Greek columns on both sides and a single corridor crossing it.41
The huge open space of the station strengthens the image of it as a cathedral. Only a few
of the lithographs show the industrial side, the train or the tracks, and none of them reflect
the human hustle and bustle of the central train stations.42
In comparison with images from France and England, the calm atmosphere of the
German images is even more striking. In England, landscape prints juxtaposed “the clas-
sically inspired monumentalism of the railway … with the pastoralism of the surrounding
countryside”.43 Large trains, bridges and tunnels were contrasted with the wide-open,

34
For Example: Adolph Menzel, “Die Berlin-Potsdamer Eisenbahn” (1845); Friedrich E. Müller, “Aussicht
vom Felsenkeller im Plauenschen Grunde” (1840).
35
Georg Wigand, “Kiel: Gesamtansicht mit Eisenbahn”, in Das Malerische und Romantische Deutschland
(Leipzig: Wigand, 1836), 41.
36
Ian Carter, Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2004), 58.
37
Michael Robbins, The Railway Age (Manchester: Mandolin, 1998), 57.
38
Ian J. Kerr, “Representation and Representations of The Railways of Colonial and Post-Colonial South
Asia”, Modern Asian Studies 37:2 (2003), 287–326, here 291–292; Schivelbusch, The Railway, 174–75.
39
Phrase taken from: Kaika and Swyngedouw, “Fetishizing”.
40
Other examples: “Mannheim Bahnhof” (1840), in Reiß-Museum Mannheim; Carl W. Arldt, “Magdeburger
und Dresdner Bahnhof zu Leipzig” (Leipzig, 1844); Th. Beck, “Der Taunusbahnhof in der Taunusanlage”
(Frankfurt/Main, 1850).
41
E. Camerer, “Stuttgart” (1860).
42
Some German artists did include the train in their depictions of the central stations but these were the
exceptions. See: C. Schulin, “Der Bahnhof der Berlin-Potsdamer Eisenbahn zu Berlin” (1840); J. Schütz,
“Heidelberg Bahnhof” (1842); Friedrich J. Tempeltey, “Dortmund Bahnhof”, in Erinnerung an Dortmund
(Berlin: Hölzer, 1850).
43
Thompson, “Modernity”, 132–40.
Segal 11

Figure 4. The Leipzig-Dresden railway station in Dresden. Source: Carl W. Arldt, “Bahnhof der
leipzig-dresdner Eisenbahn in Dresden” (1845). Courtesy of Sächsische Landesbibliothek- Staats-
und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden.

peaceful British countryside. In France, Honore Daumier, as a primary French example,

produced more than 100 prints that deal directly and indirectly with the railway.44 The
vast majority of his images of the railway from the 1830s to early 1860s show the every-
day struggles of people interacting with the train and the train stations.45 Daumier’s prints
reflect the urban intensity of the mid-nineteenth century, and the social confusion brought
about by the industrial revolution, none of which appear in German lithographs.

The 1850s – harmonious coexistence of technology and nature

Prior to the 1850s, railway lines in lithographs were shown in the distance. However,
from then onwards they are in the foreground reflecting harmonious coexistence with
nature. Leo Marx described The Lackwanna Valley, an 1854 American painting drawn
by the American George Innes, as a pictorial statement of the idea that “machine technol-
ogy is a proper part of the landscape”.46 One of the most important features of this
44
Tyler Edward Ostergaard, “The Beast Within: The Contested Image of The Railroad in French Visual
Culture, 1837–1877”, PhD dissertation, University of Iowa, 2014, 19.
45
Similarly, depictions of railways in 1870s and 1880s paintings of French Impressionists, including Claude
Monet, Edouard Manet and Camile Pissarro, emphasise the industrial machinery and the steam rather than
“naturalisation”. See Ostergaard, “The Beast Within”.
46
Marx, The Machine, 220; George Inness, “The Lackawanna Valley” (1856).
12 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

Figure 5. An 1860 drawing of the Cologne-Minden railway line near Benrath. Source: Unkown
artist (1860?). Used as cover page of Jürgen Reulecke and Burkhard Dietz, Mit Kutsche, Dampfross,
Schwebebahn: Reisen Im Bergischen Land (1750–1910) (Neustadt/Aisch: Schmidt, 1984).

painting was the fact that the animals continue to graze while the train appears. The same
can be said regarding many of the German landscape prints of the 1850s. For example, an
1860 drawing of the Cologne-Minden railway line near Benrath by an unknown artist
(Figure 5) emphasises the meadow near the line. A train passes from left to right but
that does not disturb the meadow. The smoke and the noise do not bother any of the
people or the animals. The calm atmosphere is further highlighted by two scenes in
the foreground. On the left, a person is resting peacefully on a blanket in the meadow,
and on the right two small dogs are staring at each other. Animals are no longer maddened
by the train, as the 1830s images depicted, the tracks no longer function as connectors
between landscapes as the 1840s images suggested, the railway is simply there as part
of the background.
Similar lithographs were published and sold throughout the German states.47 All of the
pictures contained the railway tracks, a medium-sized train with smoke that resembled the
clouds in the sky both in shape and colour, large trees, people in the fields and peaceful

47
For example: Unknown artist, “Zug der Main-Weser-Bahn auf der neuen Schwalmbrücke vor den Burgen
Altenburg und Felsberg (1850)”, in Eckhart G. Franz (ed.), Die Chronik Hessens (Dortmund: Chronik, 1991),
239; Friedrich J. Umbach, “Die Herzoglich Braunschweigische Eisenbahn bei Vienenburg” (1850); Josef
kuwasseg, “Grasnitz” (1850); “Title Page”, in dem technischen Bureau Grosh. Oberdirection des Wasser &
Strassenbaus (eds.), Die Badische Eisenbahn Sammlung von Constructionen (Karlsruhe: Creuzbauer, 1853);
E. Müller, “Ansicht des Liliensteins in der Sächsischen Schweiz” (Dresden, 1860); Ludwig Rohbock,
“Altenburg Bahnhof” (Darmstadt, 1862).
Segal 13

animals. In 1850, a number of painters and engravers, such as Friedrich Hohe, Ludwig
Rohbock, R. Höfle, Johann G.F. Poppel and Georg M. Kurz, drew a series of paintings
of the village of Frankenstein in the region of the Pfalz.48 Each painting shows a train,
Frankenstein Castle on top of a hill and a domestic animal of some sort viewing the pano-
rama or peacefully continuing with its life.
A comparison between these images and Innes’s The Lackwanna Valley demonstrates
a major difference between the railway in America and Germany. Innes portrays a wide
horizon, in which distant factories with smoking chimneys contrast sharply with pastoral
fields. In the German images, the only industrial element in the country landscape is the
train itself. Even the steam coming out of the trains is never painted in a colour that might
contrast with the sky or the meadows.
Other prominent examples of American “picturesque railways”, such as the Currier
and Ives lithographs, demonstrate the difference between German and American
imagery. Currier and Ives Company published hundreds of coloured lithographs
between 1857 and 1907 and distributed them successfully across the USA to schools, col-
lectors and occasional buyers.49 Trains in these prints have prominent bright colours that
distinguish them from their environment to deliberately show that they do not harmoni-
ously fit in.50 They are usually depicted as projecting a flashing light and exuding thick
dark steam, which is very different from the cloud-like smoke in trains in German land-
scape images. To further accentuate their dominance over nature, the American trains are
drawn as large, cutting the pictures diagonally. The trains in these landscape images, such
as Andrew Melrose’s 1867 Westward the Star of the Empire Takes Its Way, are not inte-
grated with nature, but rather subjugate the land.51
The naturalisation of the German “picturesque railway” was brought about by associ-
ating trains with rivers in shape, depicting them as curved and winding, and in proximity,
drawing them next to rivers.52 The visual analogy between rivers and railways was not
coincidental, but rather a continuation of views expressed by prominent contemporary
geographers and economists. Alexander von Humboldt, the influential Prussian geog-
rapher, stated that “one-day traffic will follow railways as once it followed the river
valleys”.53 Similarly, Friedrich List, a prominent economist and one of the pioneers of
a united German railway in the 1830s stated that “If God were to offer to build a new
Rhine for the highest bidder, shouldn’t we be there at the auction?” Railway lines
were also visually associated with rivers by contemporary German mapmakers, who

48
See http://www.frankenstein-historie.de/bilder-litho.php (accessed 22 November 2020). Another example
from Bratislava: Ludwig Rohbock, “Pressburg” (1855).
49
Pacey, “The Picturesque”, 196.
50
See: “Snow Bound” (NY: Currier and Ives, 1871); “The Route to California” (New York NY: Currier and
Ives, 1873); “American Express Train” (New York NY: Currier and Ives, 1864); “Prairie Fires of the Great
West” (New York NY: Currier and Ives, 1872).
51
Andrew Melrose, “Westward the Star of Empire Takes Its Way” (1867).
52
For railways along river routes see: Williard, “Ansicht” (Dresden, 1860); E. Müller, “Ansicht des
Eisenbahnviaduktes in Königstein” (Dresden, 1860). For railways around cities see: W. Heuer, “Flensburg”
(Hamburg, 1850); “Göppingen” (1865), in Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart.
53
The note was written to Ludwig von Massow, a Prussian Court-Marshal (1838). Quoted in King, “Public
Opinion”, 235.
14 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

tended to draw the lines as serpentine.54 Although railway lines in maps were usually
black, when colour was used, most tracks were painted blue; this choice of blue for rail-
ways is as if to give them the appearance of a river, thus “naturalising” the steel lines.55
As part of the naturalisation of the railscape, German artists usually tried to separate
the railway lines from their urban landscapes. When in proximity to a large town, the
railway lines were drawn on the edge of the town rather than within the urban environ-
ment. With regard to the railway station, the urban component of the system, a distinction
was made between large central stations and smaller rural ones. While the former contin-
ued to be depicted as non-industrial monuments, the latter were depicted as hubs of local
activity. Architecturally, these stations were not built to stand out, but rather to blend into
their local habitat.56 Consequently, many of the depictions of contemporary artists
focused on the centrality of stations in the rural community. Accordingly, the local
station was drawn on the far side of the tracks, showing the building, railway lines, a
small static train and, most importantly, a small number of people standing on the plat-
forms.57 The peaceful activity on the platforms in rural stations replaced the monumen-
tality of the central stations.

The railway system in picture postcards

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a new visual medium of landscape art
appeared, picture postcards, which started a consumption phenomenon coined by con-
temporaries “the postcard craze”.58 Between 1895 and 1920 ∼200–300 billion cards
were sold worldwide, with the leading manufacturers in the world being Germany and
Austria.59 During this time period, contests were held for collecting, sending, writing
54
Some examples are C. Schach, “Übersichtskarte Der Ludwig-Südnordbahn” (Nuremberg, 1848); K.D.
Schumacher, “Eisenbahnkarte des Königreiches Sachsen” (Dresden, 1913).
55
Some examples are Albrecht Platt et al., “Topographische Karte vom Herzogthum Braunschweig und
Fuerstenthum Oels” (Braunschweig, 1845); Karl F. Weiland, “Das Königreich Sachsen” (Weimar, 1847);
Friedrich von Bär and Johann C. Stülpnagel, Eisenbahn-Atlas von Deutschland, Belgien, Elsass und dem
nördlichsten Theile von Italien (Gotha: Perthes, 1849); Hugo von Bose, Eisenbahn-Reise-Handbuch für Europa
und Hand-Atlas der Eisenbahn-, Postund Dampfschiff-Verbindungen in Europa (Leipzig: Schäfer, 1854).
Exceptions that coloured railways in red include Johann B. Seitz, “Postkarte v. Bayern, Württemberg, Baden,
Gr. H. Hessen u. Nassau” (Munich, 1850); Gustav Wenng, “Neueste Eisenbahn-Karte von Bayern und den
angrenzenden Ländern” (Munich, 1865); Joseph Heyberger, “Neueste Reise-Karte für das Bayerische Hochland
nebst einem Gebirgs-Profil” (Munich, 1869).
56
Kerr, “Representation and Representations”, 293; Pacey, “The Picturesque”, 291; Peter H. Christensen,
Germany and the Ottoman Railways: Art, Empire, and Infrastructure (New Haven NJ: Yale University Press,
2017), 104.
57
Heinrich W. Eberhard, “Würzen“ (Leipzig, 1840); Ludwig Rohbock, “Köthen Bahnhof“ (Munich, 1850);
Album zur Erinnerung an die feierliche Eröffnung der Kaiserin Elisabeth-Westbahn von Wien bis Salzburg im
Jahre 1860 (Vienna: Zamarski & C. Dittmarsch, 1860); H. Greiner, “Fürtha Bahnhof”, Die Gartenlaube 26
(1858), 373; Julius Rasch, “Über Trennungsbahnhöfe, Insbesondere über den Bahnhof zu Nordstemmen”,
Zeitschrift des Architekten- und Ingenieurvereins 7 (1861), 436–42, sheet 214.
58
An overview on “the postcard craze” and its historiography in Sandra Ferguson, “‘A Murmur of Small
Voices’: On the Picture Postcard in Academic Research”, Archivaria 60 (2006), 167–84.
59
Numbers are a rough estimation. The topic is discussed in: Bjarne Rogan, “An Entangled Object: The
Picture Postcard as Souvenir and Collectible, Exchange and Ritual Communication”, Cultural Analysis 4:1
(2005), 1–27, fo. 2.
Segal 15

on and drawing picture postcards.60 Parties were arranged in which the main event was a
postcard shower. There is also wide documentation of travellers purchasing picture post-
cards and sending them to themselves to get the local postal stamp.
The postcard industry was directly tied to emerging mass tourism and as such was
encouraged by the various railway companies and local officials.61 Railway companies
published postcards showcasing views seen through train windows, as well as human
interactions on trains and in the train stations. Furthermore, peddlers with postcards,
showing multiple views of the railway journey, were seen at every station.62 Accounts
of travellers in German trains around 1900 show that postcards were nearly as important
as the sights themselves,

[y]ou enter the railway station, and everybody on the platform has a pencil in one hand and a
postcard in the other. In the train it is the same thing. Your fellow travelers never speak. They
have little piles of picture postcards on the seat beside them, and they write monotonously.63

The postcards deal with many topics, but the most popular of all was the “topographical”
one that depicts resorts, villages, towns and cities. These were referred to as “Gruss Aus”
postcards since most of them showed multiple images of a specific location with a single
title “Gruss aus…” (Greetings from…). These postcards made it possible and cheap for
anyone to experience global tourism and world travel without leaving their homes.
Many of these postcards were published in German localities as self-promoting
images. Alon Confino in his seminal study The Nation as a Local Metaphor states that
the “Gruss aus” postcards tend to include images that “froze time by avoiding the descrip-
tion of the inhabitants and of social action”.64 Although the postcards represented towns
and cities of varying sizes and urban development, the iconography remained rather
similar, as it was part of a more general cultural movement, coined the Heimat. The
image is that of an idealised modern community, which is neither a densely populated
industrial city nor an agricultural village. The postcards highlight the achievements of
bourgeois culture, such as museums and recreation, alongside panoramic views of the
natural landscape. Much like landscape art, described previously, these images depict
an urban experience, which merged nature and urban life. The railway is a central ingre-
dient in this modernistic view of the local town. However, the train is never depicted as a
powerful technological and physical object, but rather as “a toylike display of the loco-
motive, wagons, and smoke”.65
The railway lines are usually depicted at the outskirts of the locality. Some cards
depict small segments as straight lines cutting through the peripheral village houses,
60
George and Dorothy Miller, Picture Postcards in the United States, 1893–1918 (New York NY: Crown,
1976), 20-21.
61
C.W. Hill, Discovering Picture Postcards (Aylesbury: Shire, 1978), 50.
62
Frank Staff, Picture Postcards and Travel: A Collector’s Guide (London: Lutterworth, 1979), 45.
63
Rogan, “An Entangled Object”, 9.
64
Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory,
1871–1918 (Chapel Hill NC, University of North Carolina, 1997), 182.
65
Ibid, 183.
16 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

Figure 6. A topographical postcard from the town of Werden. Source: “Gruss von der
Platte-Werden a. Ruhr” (Essen: Weyers, 1897). Courtesy of the University of Osnabrück.

but still resembling small streams.66 Others use a different approach and draw a
winding railway alongside a river.67 For example, the upper left image of an 1897
postcard (Figure 6) depicts a train travelling on a curved line along the Ruhr River.
The upper right image is an overview of the town of Werden. The proximity
between the two images creates an illusion that the railway line is a continuation
of the road on the edge of the town. In these postcards, the railway line is not seen
as part of the urban landscape, but rather as part of nature. It circumvents the
town. In general, the railway lines are not seen as either superior or inferior to
other landscape features, but they are part of the natural environment of the town
as much as the river.
Train stations were also extremely significant symbols of the various localities. In the
larger cities, they were drawn as monuments celebrating the town’s achievement.68 As a
result, they were not drawn with railway tracks or trains, and a distinction was kept
between the urban feature (the station) and the natural feature (the track). A “Gruss
aus Frankfurt” postcard from 1900 contains a single large image of the city’s central
station. Much like the previously discussed images of these “modern cathedrals”, a

66
For example: “Gruss aus Vilsiburg” (Vilsiburg, 1899); “Gruss aus Rüti” (Zurich, 1903); “Gruss aus
Schraplau” (1904).
67
For example: “Gruss aus Alf” (Alf, 1899); “Gruss aus Kahla” (1900); “Gruss aus Undalen” (1900).
68
For example: “Gruss aus Frankfurt A/M” (1900), “Gruss vom Rhein” (1906), and “Gruss aus Dresden”
(1899), in Staff, Picture Postcards, images 187, 188, and 191.
Segal 17

Figure 7. The image on the right shows the small railway station of Hattingen. A number of
people standing on the platform and a small train is arriving. Source: “Gruss aus Hattingen a.d.
Ruhr” (Hattingen: Bürette, 1897). Courtesy of The University of Osnabrück.

magnificent architectural construct is depicted with a large and almost vacant plaza in the
front. An additional small image is placed in the bottom left corner of the postcard, which
shows a well-dressed couple supposedly walking towards their train. In smaller localities,
a small train is situated outside the train station (Figure 7).69 However, trains and the train
stations are downplayed to maintain a tranquil atmosphere which shows no evidence of
industrialisation or technology.
By contrast, postcards of London railway stations emphasise the crowds and hustle
and bustle, rather than the stations’ architecture.70 A 1906 postcard shows many
people moving around on the platform next to a smoking train; everyone in this
image seems to be in a hurry. A 1909 postcard shows the entry of a London
station with a large sign of the South Eastern & Chatham Railway Company.
Unlike the empty plazas in front of the pictures of German railway stations, this
picture shows dozens of horses and carriages parked outside the station. The differ-
ences between the German portrayal and the British depiction is a result of cultural
differences between consumers and not different interests between German and
British postcard manufacturers, since the interest of all sides was to encourage
railway travel and postcard consumption.

69
For example: “Gruss aus Leichlingen” (1893); “Gruss aus Rodewisch” (Roderwisch, 1897); “Gruss aus
Kohlfurt” (1899); “Gruss aus Langendreer” (1899); “Gruss aus Regensdorf” (Zurich, 1902); “Gruss aus
Eschede” (1904); “Gruss aus Planig Rheinhessen” (Kreuznach, 1904).
70
See: Staff, Picture Postcards, images 199 (1906), 200 (1907) and 189 (1909).
18 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

Railways as symbols of industrialisation

Although this article demonstrates the gradual “naturalisation” of railways, the scarring of
nature was undeniably a part of the railway system. Early images of this phenomenon are
seen in technical depictions of railway construction. An 1846 article in the Leipziger
Illustrirte Zeitung discusses railway construction in the Thuringian town of Apolda
and includes an illustration of workers carving through the mountains.71 Similarly, the
title page of an 1860 construction plan for a railway in the Rhineland shows a railway
line passing through a tunnel carved into a mountain.72 These images are not intended
to “naturalise” the railway but rather to show the force of modern industry and its
ability to overcome natural obstacles. However, these were the exceptions.
German industrialisation during the late 1880s changed the depiction of railways,
since factories now became part of their scenery. Accordingly, turn of the century
“Gruss aus” postcards depicting the memorable sites of industrial towns such as Kiel,
Wiesdorf and Siegersdorf focus on the industrial dimension of the railway system.73
An 1898 postcard of Kiel has four images: a large steamship with its dense dark
smoke, a chocolate factory with a number of chimneys, a railway bridge and a small
view of the city. A 1906 Siegersdorf postcard has four images as well: three small
images of town sites and a larger image of an industrial zone with many smoking chim-
neys and a train riding in the foreground. This connection between industry and railways,
which might seem obvious due to the nineteenth-century industrial revolution, exempli-
fies the lack of focus on industry in the previous representations. However, these post-
cards do not reflect any criticism of the industrialisation of the cities but simply an
acceptance of that change. The train is no longer part of a natural landscape, and its
steam no longer resembles the clouds in the sky, but rather the black smoke of the steam-
ships and the factory chimneys.
Criticism of German environmentalists during the nineteenth century focused on river
contamination by the steamships, rather than the railway system.74 Criticism against
railway construction related to the emerging mass tourism and the occupation of
private lands, rather than industrialisation, contamination, or the destruction of nature.
However, the industrialisation towards the end of the century did bring about a certain
change in the attitude towards the railway lines.75 Yet, by the end of the nineteenth
century, the effects of industrialisation had not yet changed the visual iconography of
German railways. Unlike French, British and American railway representations,
German Railways were still mostly depicted as part of a pastoral landscape. During
the early twentieth century, images of railway lines, trains and railway stations started

71
“Eisenbahndamm auf der thüringischen Eisenbahn bei Apolda”, Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung 6:132 (10
January 1846), 25. See also: “Bahnhof aus der Range der Vogelperspektive”, Die Illustrierte Welt 10 (1862),
193.
72
Bauanlagen der Rhein-Nahe-Eisenbahn (1860). See also: “Ankunft des Festzuges in Bodenbach bei
Eröffnung der sächs. böhm. Eisenbahn am 6. April 1851” (Dresden, 1860).
73
For example: “Gruss aus Kiel” (Hannover, 1898); “Gruss aus Wiesdorf” (Köln, 1898); “Gruss aus
Siegersdorf” (1906).
74
Blackbourn, The Conquest, 180.
75
Youngman, Black Devil, 67–83.
Segal 19

to change as factories, smoke and urban crowdedness were introduced into the railway
imagery.76

Conclusion
Up until the twentieth century, the German representation of railways was nothing like
American representations, which emphasised conquest over nature and the cultivation
of wildlands. The American railway was described as a pioneer in human progress,
through the use of icons of fire, metal, smoke, noise, movement and speed.77 This percep-
tion brought about harsh criticism due to the disharmony between wild untamed nature
and the modern constructs of the industrial train.78 It was also different to the English per-
ception of railways which associated the train with the artificial aesthetics of straight
fields and hedges.79 German artists perceived the railway as a “modern river”, drawing
it in both the colour and shape of rivers.
Although the first images depicted the excitement and turmoil of modern transporta-
tion, they were soon replaced by non-industrial representations, which eliminated any
feeling or thought of technological dominance. The industrial components of the
system, the locomotive and the wagons, were replaced by tracks and stations that were
integrally connected to natural and urban landscapes, respectively. Accordingly, trees,
meadows and wildlife were introduced into the pictures. The resultant image of the
railway system was not industrial or forceful but rather an image that amplified and con-
nected natural landscapes, thus reflecting Heine’s vision of the railway.
Late-nineteenth-century picture postcards were the final artistic embodiment of the
“naturalisation” of railways. In them, the railway blends harmoniously with the village
and surrounding nature and there is a congruous synthesis between the station and
other public buildings like the village school.
The early German Railways were not part of widespread industrialisation, and as a
result, were not depicted in an industrial environment of factories and smoke. This
enabled railway companies, localities and travel guide publishers to “naturalise” the
railway. By utilising traditional natural connotations, such as the river metaphor, and a
popular visual pattern, such as the picturesque landscape, these “naturalised” visual
vocabularies were popularised. The late-nineteenth-century Heimat culture further devel-
oped the idea of a placid and naturalised urban existence, which served to extend the
“pastoral” railway a few decades into the industrial stage of Germany. Paul Schulze
Naumburg, one of the leading voices in the landscape preservation movement, described
the railway in 1916 as an “old friend … which has captured a place in our emotional life”,
76
For example: “Schwäbische Eisenbahn Postkarte Serie” (1925); “Ein frohes Neujahr” (1914); “Gruss aus
der Kanonenstadt Essen” (1914?).
77
Leo Marx, “The Impact of The Railroad in The American Imagination, as a Possible Comparison for The
Space Impact”, in Bruce Mazlish (ed.), The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical
Analogy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1965), 202–16, here 209; David E. Nye, “Foundational Space,
Technological Narrative”, in Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt (eds), Space in America: Theory, History,
Culture (New York NY: Rodopi, 2005), 119–38, here 121.
78
See: Marx, The Machine; Lambert, “Naturalizing Technology”.
79
Robbins, The Railway, 57.
20 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

unlike the disturbing existence of dams, powers lines and transformers of the hydroelec-
tric industry.80
Railway companies, local elites and travel guide publishers promoted the process of
“naturalisation” for economic reasons, much like similar economic agents in other coun-
tries. However, the specific iconography used in the various artefacts and paintings was a
result of visual discourse in nineteenth-century German culture that treasured the river as
a paradigm of a natural feature and the “picturesque” as an idea for representing natural
and urban landscapes.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Zef Segal https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8068-3064

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Segal 23

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24 The Journal of Transport History 0(0)

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