Dresden to Kiel: Part 2 Great Continental Railway Journeys

I'm embarking on a new railway adventure that will take me

across the heart of Europe.

I'll be using this, my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide,

dated 1913, which opened up an exotic world of foreign travel

for the British tourist.

It told travellers where to go, what to see,

and how to navigate the thousands of miles of tracks

crisscrossing the continent.

Now, a century later, I'm using my copy to reveal

an era of great optimism and energy

where technology, industry, science and the arts were flourishing.

I want to rediscover that lost Europe that in 1913 could not know

its way of life would shortly be swept aside by the advent of war.

On the second part of my journey through Germany, I'll discover how

Kaiser Wilhelm II's fascination with all things military was threatening

the fragile balance of power in Europe.

The Navy built two battleships a year.

So, that was really a tremendous fleet.

I'll let Bradshaw's steer me towards Germany's music and culture...

HE SPEAKS GERMAN MENACINGLY

..see model railway making on the grandest of scales...

This is an absolute paradise for model lovers,

for anybody who loves trains.

..and sample Germany's favourite tipple...

-What does your expert palate tell you?

-It is perfect, isn't it?

It's pretty good, isn't it?

My journey started in Dresden,

close to the border with the Czech Republic,

then headed north on Germany's oldest long distance railway line,

through the eastern states, to the musical city of Leipzig.

Continuing north into Lower Saxony,

I'll head to Braunschweig in the heart of Germany

before arriving at the prosperous port of Hamburg.

My journey will end at the home of Prussia's Imperial Navy.

Today, I'm in Leipzig.

My guidebook directs me to the Thomaskirche, or St Thomas's church,

with its lofty roof - very distinctive -

and its monument to Johann Sebastian Bach.

Now Bach was the so-called Thomaskantor here at the church

and more to the point, he wrote several cantatas

while he was in charge of the boys' choir here.

And he effectively established Leipzig as the musical capital

of Saxony, arguably of Europe.

I'm heading to a remarkable music school,

where the creativity of Bach

could be sustained and nurtured,

and one generation of genius could inspire the next.

I'm meeting conservatory librarian Barbara Wierman

at the Hochschule.

My Bradshaw's tells me

about the famous music conservatorium of Leipzig -

why was it so famous?

Oh, actually it was the first music conservatory in Germany.

Especially our founder, he's really famous -

that's Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy,

and it was his idea to have a conservatory,

a music school in Leipzig.

He was a really good music politician.

He made politics here in Leipzig so that it became in his time,

the music town, Leipzig. Music city Leipzig.

The students of this elite music school were privileged indeed.

Not only did they study under a great composer, they were

also taught by the musicians of his Gewandhaus Orchestra.

I've brought you to the library to tell you about some

of our famous alumni and to show you some of the archival materials.

You must have had so many, I imagine.

Who are the most famous?

I think one of the most famous is Edward Grieg and Leos Janacek

and of course of interest to you is Arthur Sullivan.

# Three little maids from school are we

# Pert as a schoolgirl well can be

# Filled to the brim with girlish glee

# Three little maids from school... #

Arthur Sullivan, the composer half of Gilbert and Sullivan,

won the Royal Academy of Music's

first Mendelssohn Scholarship to study here.

Barbara wants to show me how the young Arthur fitted in.

If we have a look at our reports, there are two reports left.

He came here in 1858 and he left in 1861.

The reports say he was really good at composing.

He was a first violinist of the Gewandhaus Orchestra

and you must know the first violinist is also responsible for conducting.

He was very talented at conducting.

Good heavens. What's this here?

These are the programme notes of his final exam.

He played and conducted his own composition.

The Tempest, by Shakespeare.

Do you know how that was received? Was that well received?

It was very well received.

Here in Germany and when he returned to Britain.

I should think it was hard for the people in the conservatory

to imagine that Arthur Sullivan,

such a gifted conductor and composer,

would one day become famous for satirical operettas.

OK!

It was surprising, let's say!

In a city of so many students,

the 1913 traveller might not have been surprised

to find a jolly good pub.

In this most famous subterranean Leipzig haunt -

Auerbach's Keller - they could enjoy a hell of a good evening.

-Thank you very much.

-This is a typical Saxony food.

Beef roulade with dumpling potatoes and red cabbage.

That does sound typically Saxon.

The dumpling potatoes...

are very solid.

They're chewy, but they really absorb the gravy.

The beef is stuffed with olives and other vegetables.

A very good meal.

MAN SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Shakespeare of Germany,

set a key scene of his tragedy Faust here.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN MENACINGLY

Faust sells his soul to the devil,

in return for knowledge and worldly pleasures.

Together, they visit the Keller,

where Goethe used to drink as a student.

MAN SPEAKS IN GERMAN

Well, I assume that those were lines from Goethe's Faust,

but I must say, this devil wouldn't tempt me to very much.

After devil and dumplings, I'm ready for heavenly sleep.

I'm up early, heading north from Leipzig station into Lower Saxony.

You can get a nice cooked breakfast on the German railways

but on this train, it's strictly self-service.

My destination today is Braunschweig or Brunswick,

and I'm changing at Magdeburg.

I'm supposed to have six minutes to make the change.

But this train is arriving late, so it's going to be a real chase.

Koln, bitte.

Links, danke.

The train for Koln, or Cologne,

stops at Brunswick, but it's three platforms away.

Ah!

Made it.

Relief. Now that I'm on the Brunswick train,

my journey should just take me just 45 minutes.

Helmstedt is an interesting station because in the old days,

this was the border between East Germany and West Germany.

Now of course there is no border and the trains go through smoothly.

And to the uninitiated like me, you can't tell the difference

between East and West Germany - it is now an entirely seamless country.

Brunswick is home to one of Germany's oldest breweries.

The Hofbrauhaus Wolters dates back to 1627 and by the 1880s,

they were brewers by appointment to the Duke of Brunswick.

Meike Bluhm is the brewmaster.

-Meike, hello.

-Hi, Michael, nice meeting you here.

I notice straightaway that there are railway tracks here.

Historically, were the railways important for the brewery?

Absolutely. They were important for us to bring the raw materials

on to site, but also to transport the finished goods

to all over northern Germany.

Curiously, the railway also contributed

to the taste of the beer.

The steam locomotives running on this line

needed soft water in their boilers.

But Brunswick is a city of hard water,

so it had to be piped in from the Harz mountains, 40km away.

And the brewery was quick to use it,

giving its beer a purer, softer taste.

This is called the mash tun, where the malt grist

and water are mixed,

stirred and heated up to about 75 degrees.

-Which explains why it's so hot in here.

-Absolutely.

And what happens when you mix the grain with the water like this?

What happens is that the enzymes in the grains

break down the starch into sugars.

And that sugar is later fermented into alcohol by the yeast.

Forgive me asking you, but is it quite unusual these days still

for a woman to be a master brewer?

It is still quite unusual, although times are changing

and there are a few to be found now in some breweries,

but I'm...a rarity.

A master brewer has to have a very good palate.

Is that true?

Are you born with it or are you trained to it?

That is true. You can be born with it. Some people are not.

There is a lot of training you have to undergo to develop

a palate for beer.

Tasting is still our most important quality check,

so we sample every batch, every day.

Were you born with a fine palate?

I do have a bit of a palate, yes.

And how did you discover that?

Don't want to answer that question!

I carry a guide book from 1913 and I'm wondering what would beer

have tasted like at the beginning of the 20th century, do you think?

It would have tasted more bitter than it tastes now,

and also a bit sweeter, that means more body.

I can give you a sample of beer that comes pretty close to what

beer would have tasted like 100 years ago.

It doesn't taste very bitter to me, it does taste a bit sweet.

Actually, it's pretty good.

What does your expert palate tell you?

-It's perfect, isn't it?

-It's pretty good, isn't it?

Wolters produces around 270 million bottles and cans of beer a year,

all now transported by road.

But with nearly 200 kilometres between me and my hotel,

I'm definitely letting the train take the strain.

Hanover - I have to change trains here.

My next stop will be Hamburg.

According to my Bradshaw's, it's situated on the River Elbe

60 miles from the mouth of the river,

the second city of the German Empire.

It ranks in commercial importance

before any other town in continental Europe.

By 1913, the Great British ports of Liverpool

and London had to regard Hamburg as a serious rival.

Its huge port, that gives Hamburg this access to the world,

is situated in the heart of the city.

And as Germany's second largest city,

it's also one of Europe's most affluent.

Hamburg's main station is really awe-inspiring.

It was built in 1906,

apparently replacing four different terminal stations.

So for the traveller with the Bradshaw's Guide in 1913,

it would have been new.

It is, they say, the busiest station in Germany,

the second busiest in all of Europe after Paris' Gare du Nord,

and this evening it really feels like it.

Time, I think, to find the quiet sanctuary of my hotel.

When I think of Hamburg, I picture a busy industrial port.

Its beauty is an unexpected bonus.

The Bradshaw's Guide loves to list major engineering feats.

"Under the Elbe is a double tunnel for pedestrians and vehicles,

"490 yards long, made at a cost of over £500,000."

With that tone of enthusiasm, this has to be worth seeing.

By the early 1900s, Hamburg's traffic problems were chronic.

The roads were hectic, and the river even worse.

The solution was to dig the Sankt Pauli Elbtunnel,

and this grand entrance hall is the way in.

Well, this is built on an extraordinary scale.

But it's not just the size of it, it is the architectural grandeur.

It's been built like the Pantheon in Rome and it's beautifully tiled

and here I see reliefs - I imagine these are the engineers

and the architects immortalised in statues, and quite rightly so.

Four huge lifts on either side of the river carry pedestrians,

cyclists and motor vehicles to the bottom...

..where they enter two narrow tunnels

taking traffic backwards and forwards.

Hello, Hartmut.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome to the Old Elbe Tunnel.

-Thank you very much.

-I'm finding it impressive and beautiful.

-Yes, it is.

'Hartmut Graf is the head engineer

'responsible for keeping the tunnel running.'

When was it actually built?

It was built up to 1911 and it was planned up to 1905.

And the planning was heavily influenced by the Glasgow tunnel.

The decision to build a tunnel, rather than a bridge?

The port was too active for a bridge and the ships were too big.

It's a pretty active tunnel, isn't it?

But at just over 100 years old, the tunnel is showing signs of age.

Ready.

'And major restoration work is being carried out on the second bore.'

This is amazing, because you have obviously taken the tunnel

back to its original skin.

What is the job you are doing now?

The main job we are doing here at the moment is to renew the lead.

How long will this job take you?

It's taken already nearly two years

and it will take us up to 2016.

So why is Hamburg spending the money on these tunnels, do you think?

Because this is a thing which is very important to all Hamburg people

and they don't want to miss it.

Well, thanks to you, they're not going to miss it.

This might seem like a DIY job,

but this is to protect future generations from lead poisoning.

I'm delighted that this engineering heritage

is being celebrated and restored.

My next stop isn't old at all,

but if Bradshaw's was to be republished today,

this place would secure an enthusiastic mention.

Hamburg is home to the greatest model railway in the world.

Miniatur Wunderland has 13,000 metres of track,

covering an area of 1,300 square metres,

divided up into eight huge sections representing different countries.

I'm meeting one of the model's founders, Sebastian Drechsler.

Sebastian, this is an absolute paradise for model lovers,

for children, for adults, for anybody who loves trains.

It's fantastic.

And you have now established the largest model railway in the world?

Already, since we opened up Switzerland,

we are the largest model railway.

Now, where is the United Kingdom? I thought I might go there.

It's only in our heads.

No United Kingdom?

Not now, because we need the perfect space for the motherland

of railways and we need to have such a huge space.

We want to build a spectacular United Kingdom.

This is our control room,

the core of everything in Miniatur Wunderland.

It's so impressive.

It looks like the control room of a real railway, just astonishing.

We have 265 cameras on the whole layout

because there are train accidents all over the layout.

Because someone is running and searching for the train,

where exactly it is,

we first localise the train with the cameras

and then go to fix the problem.

So the guys working here, I imagine if one day they were asked

to go and work for the German railways,

-they could do the transition.

-They could.

The wonder of this miniature world is its attention to tiny detail.

Every one of the 250,000 inhabitants has a story.

And model maker Sonia Schroder

is going to show me how they come to life.

-Well, I hope you have your spectacles?

-I do.

So, first you should dip your brush into the water. Just slightly.

And you definitely should start with the pink shirt.

'If you haven't worked it out yet, Sonia is coaching me

'to paint a mini me.'

Try to paint around your hand and booklet.

You're doing well.

Just do little, little paint strips.

'Now I begin to understand the high standards they set themselves.'

My Bradshaw is about 2% of the size of me.

So this is quite a small target.

Not bad. You know what, Michael?

I can tell you did neither party last night

or drink coffee this morning.

Is that right? Does my Bradshaw look big in this?

Eagle-eyed tourists in Wunderland can now spot

a brightly-coloured fellow clutching a red book.

He's marooned in perpetuity in the middle of Hamburg Station.

There are uglier places to spend eternity.

Although I could quite happily linger with my alter-ego,

the tracks are calling, and the scent of the Baltic Sea.

At the time of my Bradshaw's,

Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany sought colonial and naval power.

Locked in a naval race with Britain,

he'd already built a fleet of 39 warships based at Kiel.

As tensions grew, the Kaiser's navy needed a quick and safe route

from the Baltic to face the British in the North Sea.

To sail north round Denmark's Jutland Peninsula

was dangerous and a diversion of 250 nautical miles.

But the Kiel canal was too narrow for warships.

So the Kaiser undertook a massive widening,

all along the canal's 100km.

And today, that feat of German engineering is still in use,

with close to 35,000 ships a year passing through.

Now to test my sea legs.

-Ahoy, skipper. Happy to receive boarders?

-Yes, please.

What a wonderful vessel!

Yes, a racing yacht from the turn of the last century.

It's absolutely beautiful, thank you so much for having me on board.

With Andreas Neubau, President of the Kiel Sailing Association,

I can experience why the Kaiser was so captivated by yachting.

So, Andreas, we've left the British Kiel Yacht Club behind us.

-Where are we now?

-We are right in the middle of the Kiel Fjord.

And, of course, it's one of the

most important sailing areas in the whole world.

So this is very much the equivalent of Cowes.

You have a Kiel Week as we have a Cowes Week.

Yes, and the Kaiser had a special interest in Cowes Week

and so he really copied it.

This international racing attracted some impressive competition.

The Kaiser's biggest rival was his uncle, British King Edward VII.

But the yachtsmen couldn't have failed to notice

the significance of the growing presence of warships.

The navy built two battleships a year,

so in the end they had 39 battleships.

So this was really a tremendous fleet.

Now declassified documents show that by 1913,

British intelligence was already monitoring the growing threat,

using British yachtsmen to do the surveillance.

I feel a little bit like Carruthers in that novel,

you know that novel The Riddle Of The Sands,

about a couple of British guys who go spying on the German navy.

Oh, there were many spies.

For instance, the Sunbeam from Lord Brassey came here one year.

And the old lord let himself row into a submarine pen.

Of course, they didn't make much of it

but this was, of course, a little spy tour.

The intelligence conveyed the stark news that by 1913,

Britain faced an ambitious rival with a formidable navy.

And as the yachts gathered for Kiel Week a year later,

Europe was slipping towards war.

The spark was the assassination by a Serb in Sarajevo

of Archduke Franz Ferdinand,

the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

And the Kaiser heard the news aboard his yacht.

Over the fjord came the little boat of Admiral von Muller.

He said, "I have an urgent message here."

He put it into his cigarette box

and threw it on board.

And there, the Kaiser had it.

That was the last weekend in June

and by the beginning of August, Europe was at war.

Events in the Balkans set off a chain reaction.

Germany encouraged its Austro-Hungarian ally

to strike back against Serbia.

The alliance of Russia and France prepared for war,

as armies mobilised across Europe.

Germany marched through Belgium to strike at France

and Britain was obliged to act in her defence.

British Foreign Secretary, Lord Grey, lamented,

"The lamps are going out all over Europe.

"We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

Over the next four years,

Europe squandered the benefits of peace and progress

in a savage, mechanised war.

During the 19th century, the railways helped to bring together

the culture of Dresden, the musicality of Leipzig,

the trading power of Hamburg, and the economic might of Berlin.

The new Germany was an industrial, scientific and artistic giant,

elbowing Britain aside in the European league tables.

Sadly, statesmen did not appreciate

that the enviable prosperity and civilisation of Germany

depended on the absence of war.

'Next time, I lose my inhibitions in a Swedish sauna...

On the whole, I don't take my clothes off

with people I don't know.

'..ride one of the world's oldest fairground attractions...'

Ohhhh!

'..have a Highland fling, Scandinavian style,

'and brave a white knuckle ride

'based on a winter sport invented by Norwegians.'

One of the great experiences of my life!