Shifting Lines, Entangled Borderlands

Tracing multiple mobilities, entangled borders, microhistory and space, human and nonhuman actors, and the Royal Prussian Eastern Railroad, Jan Musekamp demonstrates how the Ostbahn transformed an inner-Prussian railroad line into a transnational force, overcoming borders and connecting Europeans in a time of rising nationalism.  

Shifting Lines, Entangled Borderlands investigates the dichotomy between a globalizing world and tighter border control in nineteenth century east-central Europe, focusing on the Royal Prussian Eastern Railroad (Königlich-Preußische Ostbahn) between the 1830s and 1930s. It was originally planned as a major internal modernizing project to connect its capital of Berlin to East Prussia's provincial capital of Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad) and from there to a growing Imperial Russian railroad network. The First World War temporarily disrupted and subsequently reconfigured existing networks, adapting them to new political regimes and borders. However, World War II and its aftermath altered mobility patterns more permanently, dividing not only the Ostbahn tracks but the whole continent for decades to come.  

From border towns and major cities to unique structures, such as stations or bridges, this volume analyzes the obvious and not-so-obvious nodes of the east-central Europe rail network—and the spaces in between.