The Bavarian Group Administration or ''Gruppenverwaltung Bayern'' was a largely autonomous railway administration within the Deutsche Reichsbahn (German Imperial Railways) between the two world wars. It was formed on 1 April 1920 from the former

Bavarian State Railways The Royal Bavarian State Railways (''Königliche Bayerische Staats-Eisenbahnen'' or ''K.Bay.Sts.B.'') was the state railway company for the Kingdom of Bavaria. It was founded in 1844. The organisation grew into the second largest of the German ...

, and was unique, Bavaria being the only former German state to have such status after the merger of the seven state railway companies into the Reichsbahn. The rest of Germany was simply divided into various regional Reichsbahn railway divisions. The Bavarian Group Administration itself also had four railway divisions: Augsburg, Munich, Nuremberg and

Regensburg Regensburg or is a city in eastern Bavaria, at the confluence of the Danube, Naab and Regen rivers. It is capital of the Upper Palatinate subregion of the state in the south of Germany. With more than 150,000 inhabitants, Regensburg is the f ...

which reported to it and not, as in the rest of Germany, to the Reichsbahn directly. The former Palatinate Railway formed the

Ludwigshafen Ludwigshafen, officially Ludwigshafen am Rhein (; meaning " Ludwig's Port upon Rhine"), is a city in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, on the river Rhine, opposite Mannheim. With Mannheim, Heidelberg, and the surrounding region, it form ...

division. On 1 October 1933, as the only group administration within the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the ''Gruppenverwaltung Bayern'', was disbanded. Between 1920 and about 1924 when the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft was created as a company to run the railways, wagons of the Bavarian Group Administration continued to display the blue and white Bavarian state shield.

Sources

* Geschäftsordnung der Deutschen Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, ss. 14, 15, 20, 21 und 24 (Regulations of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, Section III, paragraphs 14, 15, 20, 21 and 24). Se

Sources

See also