The Heinrich Heine was an express train operated by Deutsche Bundesbahn, initially linking Frankfurt am Main and

Dortmund Dortmund (; Westphalian nds, Düörpm ; la, Tremonia) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the eighth-largest city of Germany, with a population of 588,250 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the la ...

. The train was named after the German poet and journalist

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...

History

Trans Europ Express

The ''Heinrich Heine'' was part of the IC79 scheme introduced on 28 May 1979. It was the "mirror" of the Goethe on the West Rhine Railway. Early in the morning ''Heinrich Heine'' left Frankfurt for a northbound trip and ''Goethe'' left Dortmund southbound. In the evening both trains ran in the opposite directions. This concept of a pair of trains running at the same time on the same route in opposite directions was later applied as principle of the

EuroCity EuroCity, abbreviated as EC, is a cross-border train category within the European inter-city rail network. In contrast to trains allocated to the lower-level "IC" (InterCity) category, EC trains are international services that meet 20 criteri ...

network's schedule. Part of the IC79 scheme was running on weekdays only. After one year of service the ''Heinrich Heine'' was suspended during the summer, so in 1980, 1981 and 1982 the train did not ride during June, July and August. From 26 September 1982 the service was reduced to once a week, northbound on Mondays and southbound on Fridays, because

Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding m ...

introduced their

Lufthansa Airport Express The Lufthansa Airport Express was an express train service in Germany, initially linking Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main Flughafen (Frankfurt Airport), and later Stuttgart too. The trains were operated by Deutsche Bundesbahn (German Federal ...

serving the same customers on the same route. Eventually the TEE adventure for the ''Heinrich Heine'' ended at 27 May 1983.

InterCity

The ''Heinrich Heine'' was revived as InterCity on 2 June 1985 between Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main.

EuroCity

In order to raise the frequency of EuroCitys between Paris and Frankfurt am Main the ''Heinrich Heine'' was commissioned to that route together with the EC Gustave Eiffel, doubling the number of EuroCitys on this route. The schedule of the ''EC Heinrich Heine'' was designed to leave Paris in the morning, attend a meeting in Frankfurt and return to Paris having dinner on board. After German reunification the ''Heinrich Heine'' was prolonged farther east to Dresden on 2 June 1991. On 28 June 1995 the eastern terminus shifted even to Prague but on 27 May 1997 it was shortened to the original EuroCity service Frankfurt -Paris. On 14 December 2003 the German EuroCitys were anonimized, so was the ''Heinrich Heine'' and on 10 June 2007 the EuroCity was replaced by a highspeed service using the LGV-est. La Légende des TEE p. 389.

References

Works cited