Reichsbahn-Filmstelle

Short film by Herbert vom Hau

Klaassen receives a phone call, and he is happy with his transfer to head the railway line's controlling team. He accepts well his change of job, but when he meets his co-workers, uncultured and rough people, he starts having second thoughts. However, he takes it easy, recognizes that they're highly trained works, and teaches them a number of (flashback) stories of pioneers of the present steam train: the early invention by Denis Papin (1679); the three legendary land-surveyors of Caton Hill; the 1769 experiment by Nicolas-Joseph De Cugnot; the 1813 machine test of William Hedley; the 1829 developments by Robert Stephenson; and finally the grand opening of the first German steam railway line of Nürnberg-Fürth - stories in which man's will to conquer the machine was sometimes met with disaster.

This film shows the halls of the Borsig locomotive factory in Berlin with the noise of the machines and riveting hammers. Iron and steel plates, bundles of pipes of all diameters are formed. Huge locomotive boilers, lifted by cranes, move through the hall. They connect with the huge steel wheels, glittering steel parts are inserted into the engine of the locomotive being built. Finally, the giant is on the rails, the class 05 express locomotive of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

Propaganda short film about the construction of the German Autobahn

Documentary film about the 1933 Christmas party of the Reichsbahndirektion Berlin in the Sportpalast.