In the month of October, it will be 125 year since Kaiser Wilhelm II rode the Schwebebahn for the first time. This was just a few short months before the hanging rail officially opened in March 1901. It was a feat of engineering back then and it is still today. It looks like something Jules Verne would have imagined, even though sleek modern carriages have long replaced the originals. The carriages glide smoothly under the overhead track. The first carriage from 1901, called Kaiserwagen, is available for hire.
I felt a childlike joy as I sat at the back of the carriage and floated anywhere between 8 and 9 metres (26ft-39ft) above the city. Vohwinkel, at the westernmost end of the railway, is the first station where carriages are suspended above the street between iron arches. The rest of this railway, which is just over eight miles long, follows the course of the river Wupper. As the hanging train curves above the serpentine water, it transforms this commuter service to something like a fairground for its 80,000 passengers daily. My train geek, who was previously unknown, had been unleashed. I was utterly thrilled.
The Schwebebahn came about almost by accident. The Wupper Valley, located about 15 miles east from Dusseldorf, had been a major textile manufacturing base during the Industrial Revolution. Workers flooded into the growing cities of Barmen, Elberfeld and Wuppertal – which were merged in 1929. In 1930 they were renamed Wuppertal. The authorities realized that a public transportation system was required as workers flooded in. Wuppertal, with its rocky soil, narrow valley and steep slope, was unable to have a U-Bahn. Eugen Langen had no choice but to design the Schwebebahn.
In Schwebodrom, a railway museum that will open in late 2023 at Werther Brucke Station, near the line’s east end, the rich and fascinating history of the Schwebebahn can be found in three galleries. In one gallery, Tuffi is told as a young circus animal loaded into the Schwebebahn in 1950 for a publicity stunt. Tuffi was so scared by the jostling journalists, she jumped through a window to tumble into the river. Fortunately, she only suffered a few bruises and lived another 49 years. Her landing spot in Wupper is now marked by a statue of an elephant between Alter Markt Station and Adler Brucke Station. Tuffi is everywhere in Wuppertal, even on milk cartons.
The highlight of the museum’s films, displays and exhibits was the reproduction carriage. I sat in my VR headset and felt like I was in 1920s Wuppertal. I rode the rails in person and was able to travel back in time in order to see how things had changed. After the Second World War, Wuppertal was heavily bombed by the Allies. The railway has been completely rebuilt, including the art nouveau stations. However, the original steampunk design of the iron girders is still present.
There is a Wuppertal outside the Schwebebahn. This city of 350,000 people is as full of pleasant surprise as its railway. Heike Fragemann, my local guide, took me to the tree lined streets around Laurentiusplatz. The square is dominated by a 19th century basilica dedicated to Wuppertal’s patron saint, St Lawrence. The cosmopolitan streets of Wuppertal are popular with the 23,000 students of the University of Wuppertal, as well as with people of all ages. They are filled with cafes and delis as well as boutiques, bars, restaurants and bars run by many of the nationalities who have settled in the city over the years, including Italian, Turkish Greek, Indian Vietnamese and Spanish. The city had a wide range of restaurants, including Lebanese food, Chinese food, Croatian cuisine, and traditional German cuisine. Heike pointed out a distinctive Wuppertal style of architecture, with slate cladding and green shutters, as we walked steadily uphill. Heike told us that Wuppertal was not only Germany’s Manchester due to its industry but also San Francisco because of its steepness. She said, “We are the City of Steps,” as we approached another one. “We have more than 12,000 steps in the city, 500 staircases.” This is the most famous one.” She pointed to a sign with the captivating name of Tippen-Tappen-Tonchen, in honour of those 19th-century workmen clopping in their wooden clogs towards the riverside factories – hence the tipping-tapping sound. Add this to my list.
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The wealthy industrialists of the 19th century shaped Wuppertal, not only with their hillside villas but also the city’s cultural institutions. The Von der Heydt Museum is named after a banking family that collected art. It houses an impressive collection of art from the 19th and early 20th centuries in what was once the neoclassical city hall. The entrance is flanked with two large sculptures created by Tony Cragg. Cragg was born in Liverpool and moved to Wuppertal in 1977. Richard Strauss was one of the first conductors at the Historische Stadthalle, which is celebrating its 125th birthday this year. Sir Simon Rattle also rated the acoustics as among the best in world. The city is filled with public gardens, including the hilly Botanical Garden.
While I sat at the warm, bookish Cafe Engel in Laurentiusplatz I was reminded about Friedrich Engels, son of a wealthy Wuppertal fabric manufacturer, who turned away from his bourgeois background and co-authored The Communist Manifesto alongside Karl Marx after witnessing the appalling conditions of work in Manchester in mid-19th century. Engels died six years before Schwebebahn was opened in London, and the industrialists of the city had already implemented social reforms that were far ahead of their time. The Schwebebahn looks futuristic, but it is a product of Wuppertal’s past. You can live the high life in Germany’s industrial heartland for just EUR3.60 per ticket. This trip was provided to you by the Le Shuttle (19459133) and the German tourist board (19659019) offer return fares between Folkestone and Calais starting at PS by car. Wuppertal.de (19459133) Has more information. Doubles at Holiday Inn Express Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof (some with views of Schwebebahn) start at PS[&B]. Suspension railway24-hour ticket EUR8.80and EUR4.40 are available for additional passengers. Schwebodromadult tickets EUR16.50
