Göhrde station is a railway halt on the Dannenberg–Lüneburg railway in the northeastern part of the German state of Lower Saxony. The former through station in Breese am Seißelberge in the municipality of Nahrendorf was the destination station for imperial hunts in the nearby state forest of Göhrde (pronounced "girder"). It was built in 1874 by the Berlin-Hamburg Railway Company on the old Wittenberge-Buchholz line at kilometre stone 196.3 and is a protected monument.
The station was originally called Breese, but its name was changed in 1875 to Staatsbahnhof Göhrde (Göhrde state railway station) because of its importance to the imperial hunts which took place from 1871 to 1913 in the Göhrde. The station was also popularly known as the Kaiserbahnhof Göhrde or ("Emperor Station, Göhrde"). Since 1979 the station building has been home to the Göhrde Station Child and Youth Training Centre (Bildungsstätte Kinder- and Jugendzentrum Bahnhof Göhrde). In 1989 the station facilities were downgraded to a single track used by passenger trains only. Since then Göhrde has no longer been a station (Bahnhof) according to German railway regulations, but a halt (Haltepunkt).§ 4 Begriffserklärungen, Eisenbahn-Bau- and Betriebsordnung. The halt is on timetable route (as of 2008) and, since 2004, has been the eastern limit of the Hamburg Transport Network (Hamburger Verkehrsverbund), or HVV, on regional route 31. It is classified as a category 6 station (local halt), its facilities equating to those of a bus stop.
History A railway halt at Breese am Seißelberge was first mentioned in August 1869 in an explanatory report about preparations for the construction of the Wittenberge-Buchholz branch. At the time only a halt was planned – and it would have been the only one on the line; all the other stopping points were stations. When the construction of the line was already well under way and the opening of the section to Hitzacker was imminent in October 1873, the first designs for a station at Breese were unfolded by the Berlin-Hamburg Railway. It was intended from the outset as the reception station for the emperor's hunting parties and was built in the following year, 1874. The station was ceremonially opened on 26 November 1874 on the occasion of the first visit by the German Emperor.
The construction of the railway and the station at the northern end of the former Rundling village of Breese am Seißelberge, along with its associated road that ran parallel to the railway, changed the appearance of the village and gave it a rectangular shape.
With the end of the monarchy in Germany in 1918, the heyday of the station was over and no more hunting parties or high-ranking personalities arrived. From then on the station, and particularly the station building, were fully used for railway operations and were modified several times thereafter. During the time of the Third Reich the Nazi leadership and the Reichsbahn management certainly had further plans to use the station for high-ranking occasions and thus to double the size of the station buildings, but they did not come to fruition. Allegedly Hermann Göring did not consent to hunting in the Göhrde.
During the Reichsbahn era the station was an operating point that reported to the railway office at Wittenberge and belonged to the Hamburg Reichsbahn division. It was grouped into the fourth and lowest category (by comparison Lüneburg was a first class station, Dahlenburg third class and Dannenberg Ost second class).
After the Second World War, through traffic over the river Elbe was severed and the importance of the line shrank to a regional railway, just serving Lüchow-Dannenberg district. At the same time the use of private transport gained increasing momentum. In the post-war years the Deutsche Bundesbahn concentrated on the functional preservation of the station and on simplifying railway operations. The preservation of the historic buildings faded into the background.
In 1979 the Deutsche Bundesbahn sold the station building in a run-down state to the Göhrde Station Child and Youth Training Centre. The station was placed under conservation protection in 1981 and work began on its restoration in 1983. The interior of the station building was converted into a training centre and restored to its original historic appearance externally.
In 1989 the last downgrading of the station facilities was carried out. Its goods facilities were closed and Göhrde became no more than a passenger halt. In 2004 the district of Lüneburg joined the Hamburg Transport Network (Hamburger Verkehrsverbund or HVV). Since 12 December 2004 the halt has been the easternmost railway station in the HVV's fare zone.
Imperial station
From 1871 the German emperor, Wilhelm I, went hunting every year with a large entourage in the Göhrde. In the early years he and his hunting party travelled from Berlin via Lehrte to Bevensen, a station that lay on the Hanover–Hamburg railway about 24 kilometres from the Göhrde Hunting Lodge. The last part of the journey had to be made by coach.
The Wittenberge–Buchholz branch was opened as far as Hitzacker on 15 December 1873. From 1874 the imperial hunting party no longer travelled to the Göhrde via Bevensen, but via Wittenberge and Breese, as the station for the Göhrde was originally called. Breese station is about 4.5 kilometres from the hunting lodge. This final part of the route was initially traversed by coach and, later, by motor vehicle.
The first imperial hunting party travelled on 26 November 1874, before the official opening of the whole line on 31 December 1874. For that reason the section from Hitzacker to Breese am Seißelberge was taken over by the police on 20 or 24 November 1874. The royal train, comprising three passenger coaches and a luggage van left Berlin at 14.30 and crossed the bridge over the Elbe at Dömitz at 17.25. At Dannenberg and Hitzacker the train halted briefly for official receptions.
Special regulations governed the transportation of royalty and VIPs. The railway staff were sworn to secrecy and all documents had to be destroyed after the journey. Reserve locomotives had to be made available at certain stations and these engines had to be facing the direction of travel of the train and ready to move as long as the royal train was in their district. The engine driver and fireman were not permitted to leave the locomotive during this time. During the journey, the train was not allowed to be subject to any impacts or heavy swaying movements. The place at which the train was to stop in the station was indicated by an official with an unfurled red flag or, during the hours of darkness, by a red light. The station was decorated ceremonially for the visit and a red carpet was laid out from the platform through the west wing of the station to the exit on the station forecourt. There was always a large crowd of the local population because everyone wanted to see the emperor. The governor's office (Landdrostei) in Lüneburg was responsible for the safety of the imperial household. During the first visit of the emperor, two sergeants (Oberwachtmeister), seven mounted gendarmes and four gendarmes on foot were employed as guards.
The last imperial hunt in the Göhrde region took place before the outbreak of the First World War on 30 and 31 October 1913. Emperor Wilhelm II had invited his sons - the princes Eitel Friedrich of Prussia, Oskar of Prussia and Joachim of Prussia - the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the Reich Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, General Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke and the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, Ladislaus de Szögyény-Marich. A very large number of staff were required for the two-day event. There was a total of 90 staff, of which half were part of the emperor's permanent house staff and half were drawn from the local villages. The imperial household had travelled for 2 or 3 days prior to the hunt. In addition the invited guests brought with them one, or at most, two, servants.
Railway facilities
The station has an imposing station building on the southern side of the tracks which is accessed via a cobbled approach road from Göhrde's station road (Kreisstraße 6). The goods facilities are mostly to be found north of the tracks and there are two signal boxes: one at the western and one at the eastern approach to the station. The entire station and its approach has been placed under protection.
Station building The three-storey station building comprises a centre section with a gable frontage, and two wings, one and a half storeys high, with gables at the ends. It was built in brick with timber framing. Its wooden carvings were intended to give it the appearance of a hunting lodge. The offices are in the centre of the building. The west wing was reserved for VIPs, and there were two waiting rooms in the east wing. One waiting room was available to all travellers, while the other could be reserved in order to avoid having to mix with ordinary people. On the first floor of the centre section was a flat for the stationmaster and on the second floor were two flats for the signalmen. Other station staff lived in the neighbouring village of Pommoissel.
West of the station building stood a small shed for handling express goods. East of the station building were three outbuildings: a toilet, a wash house and a stable.
The station building was modified several times over the course of the years, the first being in 1909. The attic of the east wing was partially upgraded to take 3 bedrooms. After 1918 the whole building could be used for railway operations or by the railway staff. In 1925/26 a -room flat was built for a gang foreman (Rottenführer, a Rotte was a gang of track workers) in the west wing, which in imperial times had been reserved exclusively for VIPs, and cellars were built under half the area of the wing. The public waiting room was converted in 1935 into a station restaurant and the reservable waiting room into the restaurant kitchen. A small beer cellar was established underneath. The usable area of the offices in the central section was halved and used as living quarters (Wohnraum) and a club room (Klubzimmer). In the wings, the dormer windows facing the tracks were replaced by bay windows, the open balcony on the street side was closed in by windows and all the chimney tops were replaced.
The fourth modification took place in 1967 during the Deutsche Bundesbahn era and had the widest reaching consequences for the architectural style of the building. The preservation of the old structure took a back seat in favour of a simple functional design. This was most visible in the roof, where the slates were replaced by corrugated asbestos sheets and the dormers on the forecourt side removed. The doors to the balcony on the first floor were replaced by a single-casement window and the conservatories on the second floor were removed, all bar their support frames. Originally the balconies were to have been completely torn down, but for structural reasons that would have taken a great deal of work and so this did not happen on grounds of cost. The two-piece transom windows (Sprossenfenster) on the first floor were almost all replaced by simple single-casement windows.
At the end of 1983, the Göhrde Station Child and Youth Centre began restoration work on the station building and remaining outbuildings. The work was financially supported by the state of Lower Saxony and the Federal Government and, largely under their own initiative, carried out by workshop projects for unemployed people or by interested individuals.