FOUR

EYDTKUHNEN AND VERZHBOLOVO

International Travel and a Continental Divide

Eydtkuhnen (Welter’s Hotel, R[ooms] from 2 ¼ M[arks]; Hôtel de Russie), a village with 5500 inhab., on the frontier-stream Lepone, is the last Prussian station. The train halts here for ¼ hr. (in the reverse direction 1 hr.).

1 V[erst] (from Eydtkuhnen) Wirballen (Вержболово; Railway Restaurant, with bedrooms, fair) is the first Russian station. Passports and baggage are examined here . . . causing a halt of 1 hr.—When the customs revision is finished, the traveller should engage a porter . . . to take care of the small articles and bring them afterwards to the train; he should give him his seat-number.

Travel advice in Baedeker’s 1914 guidebook Russia, page 34

Even the educated Russian gives comparatively little response to the actual demands of life; he is more or less the victim of fancy and temperament, which sometimes lead him to a despondent slackness, sometimes to emotional outbursts. Here we have the explanation of the want of organization, the disorder, and the waste of time which strike the western visitor to Russia. This pessimistic outlook finds expression in the word that is forever on Russian lips—ничего (nichevo), “it doesn’t matter;” the Russian reflects this dreamy and melancholy outlook on life, which is seen also in the national songs and music.

Baedeker’s 1914 guidebook Russia, page xliii

EYDTKUHNEN (TODAY CHERNYSHEVSKOE) IS LOCATED on the western bank of the river Lepone in what is today the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.¹ In Polish, its name was Ejtkuny, in Lithuanian, Eitkūnai, and in transliterated Russian, Eidtkunen. The village of Kybartai (Lithuanian name) is located on the eastern riverbank in what is today Lithuania. Russians called it Kibartai, Germans Kibarten, Poles Kibarty, and Jews Kibart. Before the First World War, literature and archival sources rarely used this name. They rather referred to Verzhbolovo, which was the name tsarist bureaucrats assigned to the border railroad station located next to Kybartai. The town of Verzhbolovo (Virbalis in Lithuanian, Wirballen in German, Wierzbołów in Polish, and Virbaln in Yiddish), situated five kilometers east of the border, used to be more significant than Kybartai. Today, these are largely forgotten places. Among twenty-nine other entries, Verzhbolovo figures prominently in the Atlas of Vanishing Europe.² However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these localities on the border between East Prussia and the Russian Empire were widely present in travel guidebooks, travelers’ and migrants’ memoirs, railroad timetables, and fictional literature.

The linguistic confusion concerning the border places’ names reflects an essential characteristic of the region: its erstwhile multiculturalism in terms of language and religion. From the 1860s onward, ethnic Germans and Russians lived and worked together with ethnic Poles, Lithuanians, and Jews, hailing from Prussia, the Russian Empire, and other places. They worked for railroads, postal services, and international shipping companies and served as customs and border police. In the eighty years between the 1860s and the outbreak of the Second World War, these thriving communities formed the core of a genuinely European entangled borderscape or a separate “civilization,” as Marius Ivaškevičius has adequately put it.³

This chapter will first look at the development of these border places and their transformation into an entangled borderscape. The focus is on the creation of a political and customs border and a railroad border where different track gauges intersected. As we will see, the borderscape’s inhabitants successfully navigated the material border and developed strategies to facilitate the growing cross-border trade, both official and informal. The second part analyzes the increasing leisure and business travel and the emergence of a “cosmopolitan tourist class,” as described by Dostoyevsky in the quotation in this book’s introduction. However, while the “making of a cosmopolitan culture,” as defined by Orlando Figes in The Europeans, is undoubtedly a significant development, it was also accompanied by more exclusive nationalist narratives.⁴ Thus, in the third part, this chapter elaborates on travel guidebooks and literature of fiction, facilitating the emergence of an almost binary image of western versus eastern Europe, which materialized in a mental border, if not a continental divide. Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo are tangible places where ideas of the clearly defined “Self” versus the “Other” developed, on the basis of “the complex windings of cultural prejudice,” as Larry Wolff has described it.⁵

AN ENTANGLED BORDERSCAPE IN THE MAKING

As we have seen, the primary purpose of the Ostbahn had been the connection between the western parts of Prussia and its East. However, from early on, the idea to extend the line to the border with the Russian Empire was an essential argument for its construction. As a result, the line between Königsberg and Eydtkuhnen created a vital transcontinental link, which was the direct connection between Berlin and St. Petersburg. As we will see in the chapters on Königsberg and emigration, it was of enormous importance for the empire’s trade with its western neighbors, but it also served as a gateway for hundreds of thousands of emigrants leaving the Russian Empire.

In 1861, the cross-border connection between the Ostbahn and a branch line of the Warsaw–St. Petersburg Railroad was accomplished. Previously, Eydtkuhnen had been a small village of 133 inhabitants, and Kybartai was equally insignificant.⁶ After the advent of this connection, these border places developed rapidly. Shipping companies began to flourish; Prussian and Russian subjects of Jewish faith owned most of them. In 1871, the village of Eydtkuhnen had 2,365 inhabitants and a synagogue but no church.⁷ Eydtkuhnen’s Christian inhabitants erected an impressive Protestant church only in 1889, vis-à-vis the temple. Donations toward the construction came not only from German Kaiser Wilhelm II but also from the local Jewish community, reflecting the positive relationship between the two religious groups.⁸ In 1900, Eydtkuhnen’s number of inhabitants had risen to 3,707, and it grew twofold to a population of 6,832 in 1914.⁹ In 1897, Eydtkuhnen’s counterpart on the other side of the river, Kybartai, had 1,182 inhabitants—mostly Lithuanian, Polish, Yiddish, Russian, and German speakers. Of these, 45 percent were Jewish.¹⁰ Since there was no synagogue in Kybartai, many attended services in Eydtkuhnen.

In 1913, the gross income of the forty-six Eydtkuhnen shipping companies was an estimated 90 million marks, primarily thanks to imports and exports delivered by twenty-two freight trains per day, equaling some eight hundred freight cars.¹¹ Contemporaries compared the town to a “pulsating heart, being a revolving door along the roadway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Berlin to St. Petersburg, and from Paris to Vladivostok.”¹² Not surprisingly, employment at the railroad, postal service, customs offices, and trade provided income for over one-third of Eydtkuhnen’s households.¹³

The urban layout itself reflected the predominance of professions related to the border. The road connecting Eydtkuhnen to Königsberg in the west and the Russian Empire in the east constituted the town’s central axis. While in other East Prussian places of a similar size, one-story buildings dominated, the better-off inhabitants of Eydtkuhnen erected several taller buildings with elaborate facades. The second important axis, located parallel to the main artery, consisted of the railroad tracks, storage and reloading facilities, and the palace-like station building that dominated the urban landscape.

The German and Russian border stations became showcases for the two empires. While some people hailed the railroad as a democratizing means of transportation, others highlighted the class-dividing character, clearly perceptible at the Eydtkuhnen station, which had separate railroad restaurants and waiting rooms for the first-, second-, and third-class passengers.¹⁴ In addition, as in Berlin and Aleksandrów, a separate, lavishly furnished royal waiting room served members of the royal family and higher nobility.¹⁵ The Eydtkuhnen station reminded a contemporary visitor from a nearby East Prussian village of a “gigantic gate to the Russian Empire, open for those with proper documents and tickets,” where a large number of international travelers reminded him of a miniature version of the “big, wide world.”¹⁶ No wonder that contemporary inhabitants of Eydtkuhnen dubbed their home city “Little Paris.”¹⁷

Figure 4.1. Eydtkuhnen station building, 1863. Architectonisches Skizzenbuch, Heft IV (1863), Heft LXIII, Bl. 6. Courtesy of Berlin University of the Arts, University Library, Sign. RP 0230.

Facilitating Cross-Border Trade

Most exports from the Russian Empire were agricultural products. In 1914, thirty geese traders were operating in Eydtkuhnen alone, sending livestock from the Russian Empire to the western parts of Germany.¹⁸ Verzhbolovo and Eydtkuhnen saw the construction of huge facilities providing shelter, fodder, and watering places for these animals, preparing them for transportation across Germany. In the late summers of the early 1900s, up to five thousand geese per day crossed the border, many of them literally waddling across the bridge.¹⁹ In 1912 and 1913, the railroad transported over three million “small livestock” (Kleinvieh) into Germany.²⁰ Picture postcards depicted this impressive image, and personal accounts frequently recalled it. On the Berlin market, geese from the Russian Empire competed with those from the numerous farms along the Ostbahn in Brandenburg, such as in Gusow.²¹

Contemporary Russian and German encyclopedias explain the importance of the Russian export of horses, grain, skins, flax, and eggs (almost twenty-four million pieces). With the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Siberian butter in huge beech tubs found its way to Germany. Goods imported to the Russian Empire included pickled herring, foodstuffs, iron and steel products, and (in 1889) “83 thousand watches and clockworks.”²²

That same year, the Verzhbolovo shipping companies declared the export of goods worth 55.7 million rubles and the export of precious metals worth 17.3 million rubles.²³ Goods imported from the Russian Empire had a noticeable impact on the prices in Berlin. In May 1895, the Teltower Kreiszeitung from the Berlin suburbs reported that crawfish had become “dirt-cheap” with the delivery of more than six hundred baskets a day via Eydtkuhnen.²⁴ The shipping companies also served as relays for businesses and individuals across Europe. Trading companies had their trusted partners in the two border towns, advertising their services in the national newspapers. In 1905, one thousand packages bound for the Russian Empire arrived in Eydtkuhnen daily.²⁵

This ever-growing flow of goods explains the dimensions of the storehouses, post office buildings, and customs inspection offices. We have already seen the enormous dimensions of railroad facilities in Aleksandrów and the imprint they left on the emerging town. The facilities in Eydtkuhnen and Kybartai/Verzhbolovo were equally impressive. However, unlike in Aleksandrów, they dominated both sides of the border. The different track gauges caused all passengers to change trains and all goods to be reloaded. Trains in the direction of the Russian Empire usually ended in the first Russian station, Verzhbolovo. Eydtkuhnen was the stop for travelers and freight moving westward. As a result, unlike in Aleksandrów, customs control was enforced on both sides and had to adapt to the new European needs of freight traffic.

European Customs Adapting to Increased Cross-Border Trade

Close collaboration between Russian and Prussian customs officials was inevitable from the onset. In 1860 and 1861, the Ostbahn administration, Russian and Prussian tax collectors, and representatives of the finance ministries discussed questions related to the efficient transition of goods at the border. The main concern was collecting all imposed duties on imported goods and preventing smuggling and fraud. New procedures replaced the traditional system at road crossings, where horse-drawn carriages stopped at customs buildings, horses were changed, and postilions could rest while customs officials checked on the goods.²⁶ Prussian and Russian officials could draw from earlier experiences at the Prussian border with Belgium and France, where sealed freight trains had been crossing unhindered since 1848.²⁷

Different systems of customs collection further complicated the situation. While in France and the Russian Empire the customs border had corresponded to the state borders since the late eighteenth century, the situation in Prussia was different.²⁸ Traditionally, duties had to be paid not only at the state’s external border but also at various intervals inside the country.²⁹ With the German Customs Union (Deutscher Zollverein) of 1834, the participating countries gradually abolished internal duties. Still, as we have seen in the chapter on Berlin, some cities continued to impose special taxes at customs gates until the mid-1860s.

While these developments boosted trade within the Customs Union’s borders, it did not foresee the soaring trade with neighboring states facilitated by the railroad. With this new means of transportation, two aspects changed decisively. First, rapid clearance became much more important since the main advantage of the rail was speed. Second, the sheer number of goods increased to such an extent that it was almost impossible to inspect everything at the border thoroughly. As a result, once the rail link at Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo was opened to traffic, shipping companies regularly complained about the customs officials’ time-consuming procedures and inadequate working hours.³⁰

To resolve this problem and to speed up transportation, governments developed the existing inland customs clearance system further to speed up the bureaucratic procedures at the border: With traffic on the 1846 rail link between Prussia, Belgium, and France on the rise, the 1849 Tripartite Convention introduced rail waybills (Frachtbrief, feuille de route), accompanying sealed freight cars from their points of departure across the borders to their final destinations. Customs officers conducted sample checks at the borders to see if the waybills matched the load. The total customs clearance itself occurred at the appropriate first-class inland customs authority, primarily in bigger cities.³¹ The French-Prussian commercial treaty of 1862 stipulated that sealed freight cars would not have to stop at the border at all.³² This system shifted customs revenues and bureaucracies from the port and border cities to consumption centers. With comparable procedures in existence in the Russian Empire, most customs revenues were henceforth generated in the two biggest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg.³³

An all-European Convention on the International Traffic of Goods undertook the issues of handling goods traffic and related customs duties. An agreement was reached in 1890 (Convention internationale relative aux transports internationaux ferroviaires, CIM or Berne Convention).³⁴ The CIM system is still in existence today. Though, with an expanded European Union, the customs borders encompass a far more extensive territory and far more people than any European state of the nineteenth century.

Navigating the Track Gauges

As a result of different track gauges in Prussia/western Europe and the Russian Empire, goods had to be reloaded at the imperial Russian border. A system with cars going through from Russian inland stations to western European stations was thus not feasible. However, the 1857 bilateral treaty on the cross-border link at Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo stipulated the construction of “necessary facilities to guarantee the reloading of goods without the slightest loss of time.”³⁵ To effectively inspect the transiting goods at Eydtkuhnen Station, the Ostbahn initially erected a lockable building for customs examination, facilitating the reloading of up to twenty cars per day.³⁶ After that, the railroad administration gradually expanded customs and reloading facilities at the border station to meet the rising flow of goods. In 1866, Eydtkuhnen turned into a first-class customs office—evidence of the town’s importance in facilitating international trade.

In that same year, French, Prussian, and Russian railroad companies agreed on direct services between significant stations in the Russian Empire, Prussia, and France. As a result, a uniform tariff existed for direct transportation between stations across borders, reducing bureaucracies and the cost of sending goods from one country to another.³⁷ In 1867, the tariff stipulated that express goods would be delivered from Paris to St. Petersburg and vice versa in no less than eight days. Goods sent out at average speed took a maximum of twenty-two days.³⁸

This evolution in international logistics did not develop without difficulties. From the very beginning, it demanded closer international cooperation in administration and finance. Beginning in 1866, the railroad companies held regular conferences to discuss foreign currency exchange, lost goods, customs, and efficiency. Evidence of the importance of the Russian-Belgian-French railroad trade was that not only did Prussian and Russian railroads participate in these meetings but so did representatives of the French Northern Railroad (Compagnie du chemin de fer du Nord) and the Belgian State Railroad. The companies created a special fund to reimburse merchants who lost goods or luggage.³⁹ For example, on April 16, 1867, the French Northern Railroad complained about the delay and higher transportation costs for 4,137 bolts of flax (almost four hundred tons) bound for Lille, caused by an accidental redirection of rail cars. The company demanded “a radical remedy for these irregularities” (un remède radical à toutes ces irregularités).⁴⁰ Further complaints concerned the incorrect exchange rate between French francs and Russian rubles, which allegedly led to the French Northern Railroad paying higher rates for Russian flax.⁴¹ The flax issue was of high importance since this raw material contributed significantly to the rise of Lille’s textile industry.

While goods and people moved at an ever-increasing rate across borders, customs and border officials continued to slow down this flow. In 1868–1869, shipping companies repeatedly complained about lengthy procedures at the Prussian-Russian border.⁴² A special commission was formed with representatives from the ministries of finance and railroad companies to address how to improve the flow of goods. At a meeting on December 2, 1868, they discussed the issue of Russian officials not working on the frequent public holidays, which hindered the timely expedition of goods. Another problem discussed was the transit of express goods, such as fresh produce and game.⁴³ In a report to the Ministry of Trade in May 1870, the Ostbahn administration confirmed that the resulting agreements fulfilled their expectations. There were to be no more disruptions on Russian holidays; express goods were delivered more speedily; moreover, customs formalities at the border became less time-consuming because the responsibility of customs clearance shifted to the recipients.⁴⁴

With goods traffic rising, the existing reloading facilities quickly reached their limits. In April 1878, Russian and Prussian railroad officials discussed the difficulties of customs control during peak-traffic times. For example, during the Russo-Ottoman War, the Ottoman Empire blocked the Russian Black Sea ports. As a result, merchants redirected the goods to Baltic harbors, such as Königsberg. Consequently, the facilities at Eydtkuhnen reached their limits. While they could process 500 freight cars a day, they now anticipated almost twice this number. To meet this challenge, Russian authorities agreed on constructing an extraterritorial transit station six kilometers east of Eydtkuhnen. Prussian personnel were allowed to work on the Russian side, where an additional 450 cars a day could be cleared through customs and then reloaded on the Prussian, respectively Russian track—twenty-four hours a day. Freight trains could move unhindered across the border into Germany from the new reloading facility. As a result, customs could now handle up to 950 cars on twenty-six trains per day, each taking about two hours to be cleared.⁴⁵ After the Russo-Ottoman War, trade routes shifted back to the Black Sea ports. Still, traffic volume frequently fluctuated because of variable harvests and political conflicts.⁴⁶

Illicit Trade in the Borderscape

The sheer size and number of buildings, companies, and declared goods are evidence of official trade’s importance; the impact of “shopping tourism” and illicit trade of those not involved in official business is less known. Customs duties partially balanced a sizable price difference between Prussia/Germany and the Russian Empire. As a result, a widespread unofficial trade developed, dedicated to avoiding these duties. As in the case of Aleksandrów, the inhabitants of the border districts were allowed to travel across the border with special permits. Thus, residents of Eydtkuhnen used to buy meat products and bread in Kybartai; consequently, the number of butchers and bakers in Eydtkuhnen was relatively small.⁴⁷

Illicitly traded goods found their way across state lines since border guards of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries either could not effectively control the border or participated in the vibrant trade. In 1879, the local newspapers reported extensively on two dealers accused of illegally importing diseased cattle from the Russian Empire, thus allegedly setting loose a cattle plague in Prussia.⁴⁸ Returning from a border inspection in 1898, Prussian police director Eckardt reported that the “oversight of the border is completely inadequate,” with poor cooperation between the regular police and border police. At the time, there was no German passport control at the land border in Eydtkuhnen since the Prussian administration considered the thorough imperial Russian control more than sufficient.⁴⁹

While authorities usually seemed to ignore small-scale smuggling, Prussian and Russian border police were very vigilant in the case of weapons and political literature. For example, in 1907, the Russian border police barred Eydtkuhnen resident Alfred Schuller from entering the Russian Empire. He was accused of smuggling weapons and emigrants across the border and had already served time in a Russian prison.⁵⁰ Tellingly, the Prussian border police were ambivalent about the smuggling of Lithuanian books since the Lithuanian printing press in Tilsit (Sovetsk) provided many East Prussians with a reliable income.⁵¹

While the history of the movement of goods is crucial to understanding the entangled European history in the borderlands, other developments are equally important. Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo were prominent not only in the reports of shipping companies and of customs and police officers but also in the accounts of travelers crossing the border.

COSMOPOLITAN TRAVELERS AND THE MAKING OF AN “INTERNATIONAL TOURIST CLASS”

While freight traffic was of crucial significance for European economic exchange, passenger traffic was vital for exchanging ideas. We have already seen how traveling engineers facilitated technological advancement. Also, the idea of a unified Polish nation gained traction because of new mobility opportunities across partition borders. An additional group of people moving in growing numbers across borders comprised travelers for business and tourism. For those traveling from and to the Russian Empire, the border crossing at Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo was crucial. Here, even those traveling first and second class came to a coerced stop and had to change trains because of the different track gauges. They also went through customs and border control and took in their first impressions of the country they were about to visit.

Figure 4.2. Ostbahn railroad schedule Berlin-Königsberg-Eydtkuhnen-St. Petersburg, effective October 1, 1867. Courtesy of Jürgen Krebs and Bavarian State Library Munich, Zeitung des Vereins Deutscher Eisenbahnverwaltungen 7, no. 38 (September 21, 1867): 530. Sign. 2 A.hydr. 288–7, http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10934036-5.

New Opportunities: The Booming Industry of European Travel⁵²

Traveling between eastern and western Europe was not unusual, even before the age of steam. To the north of Eydtkuhnen, an old postal land route led across the border, and Königsberg was a vital port for travelers from the Russian Empire to western Europe and vice versa. In summer, travelers often bypassed Königsberg when going by boat. However, in winter, with Baltic Sea ports frozen and the reliable, speedy, and readily available Russian kibitka (sleigh) ride in use, Königsberg was the standard halfway stop between Berlin and St. Petersburg—and also the largest city along the route.⁵³

As we have seen, land travel times of over a month between the eastern and western parts of Europe were the rule in the first decades of the nineteenth century; in the late 1840s, the time shrank to six or seven days.⁵⁴ In 1865, the Murray travel guide stated that “the fact is not sufficiently known or appreciated that the journey from London to St. Petersburg may well be performed throughout the entire distance by rail in three and a half to four days.”⁵⁵ In 1914, travelers covered the distance of 2,735 kilometers in exactly 47.5 hours.⁵⁶ In the example of the Viardot family, Orlando Figes has demonstrated how travel opportunities changed for impresarios and singers touring the western and the eastern part of the continent.⁵⁷

When Prussian and Russian railroads connected at Eydtkuhnen in 1861–1862, three weekly passenger trains operated between the two countries. In April 1862, each train carried approximately sixty to seventy international travelers. In case of frequent train delays, passengers had to stay overnight at the Prussian border town of Eydtkuhnen. The “comfortably furnished Hotel d’Europe of Mr. Kaiser” did not offer enough space to accommodate all stranded travelers—the boomtown of Eydtkuhnen would quickly build more hotels and other facilities to meet the rising needs of people traveling through this critical passageway.⁵⁸

Regarding Russian travelers to the German lands, Prussian government officials correctly predicted that there would be a growing “wanderlust” among the empire’s population, especially during the summer months. Betting on the assumption that many citizens from the Russian Empire would have no other choice than to use the railroads in Germany to reach destinations in western Europe, the Prussian government initially proposed higher fares than the more competitive tariffs finally set by the Ostbahn administration.⁵⁹

Newspaper advertisements are evidence of the increase in recreational travel activities. They promoted railroad connections, hotels, spas, and department stores in Germany, Russia, and France. Shortly after Königsberg gained a rail link with Berlin, the Polish-Prussian newspaper Nadwiślanin stated that “surely never before were so many people traveling than today”; while just a couple of years earlier, the affluent had had a monopoly on travel abroad to spas and to Italy, France, and England, nowadays “everyone who can scrape together some dozen thalers can travel with the millions.”⁶⁰ This suggests a revolution in travel opportunities.

Along with those long-distance travelers, a whole new travel industry evolved. Thomas Cook is the indisputable pioneer of organized travel for British tourists. He started with organized domestic excursions in the early 1840s and began offering tours abroad in 1855.⁶¹ In 1863, Silesian postmaster Carl Stangen and his brother Louis began organizing travel within Germany and abroad. The booming Carl Stangen Agency was a regular advertiser in the Königsberg newspapers and offered its first organized tour around the world in 1878, just six years after Thomas Cook. Léopold Lipson founded the first Russian travel agency, offering tours abroad in 1885.⁶² Popular early destinations of these agencies were western Europe, Asia, North America, and the reoccurring world’s fairs. In the quotation from the beginning of this book’s introduction, Fyodor Dostoyevsky described his first-class companions in the compartment. Better-off travelers from all over Europe occupied his comfortable train car, among them an elderly couple, Russian landowners “hurrying off to an exhibition in London for just a few days”—evidence of the new opportunities in European travel, at least for the affluent.⁶³

The Numbers: Passengers Crossing Borders

An intriguing question is how many people traveled between western and eastern Europe at the time. It is not easy to access the numbers since neither border control nor railroad companies compiled accurate statistics. We have some evidence based on the numbers of sold tickets, trains running between European cities, and people staying at hotels in Königsberg.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, several editions of English-language tour guides for the Russian Empire, both the British Murray and the German Baedeker indicate a marked increase in tourism to the Russian Empire from the United Kingdom and the United States. In the preface to Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, 1893 edition, the author stated that improved railroad connections and infrastructure are “a strong stimulus to the tourist traffic” of British and Americans. This increase in travel lead to strong sales of the 1887 travel handbook, which required a new edition.⁶⁴ During the 1860s and 1880s, railroad statistics indicate the number of tickets issued for travelers passing the border stations. In 1867, 11,031 passengers traveled through Verzhbolovo/Eydtkuhnen to the Russian Empire on international cross-border tickets, while 7,618 traveled from the Russian Empire westward. In both cases, approximately 30 percent of those traveling held tickets to or from destinations in France or Belgium. If we add the passengers who traveled on domestic first- and second-class tickets to and from the border, these figures almost double.⁶⁵ At Aleksandrów, the second most frequented border crossing, statistics reveal one-third of the numbers of Eydtkuhnen.⁶⁶ The total number of international business or leisure travelers between western Europe and the Russian Empire in 1867 might thus have been somewhere between 25,000 and 30,000.⁶⁷ Similar statistics for 1881 show a 39 percent rise in international travelers at the border crossing at Aleksandrów and a 20 percent increase in Eydtkuhnen.⁶⁸

This data includes citizens from many countries. As far as the share of Russian subjects traveling abroad is concerned, the numbers remained relatively low in comparison to the traveling population of western Europe. Hasso Spode defines the European “tourist class” of the late nineteenth century as the “upper ten percent of the population”; however, he rather relates to the inhabitants of northwestern Europe and Germany.⁶⁹ The urban middle class in the Russian Empire emerged late in the nineteenth century, significantly later than in northwestern Europe. As a result, the aristocracy, state servants, businesspeople, and the emerging professional middle class were the primary travelers. The first modern Russian-language guidebook to western Europe appeared in 1874, forty years later than its western European counterparts.⁷⁰

From the preface of this Russian guidebook, it is possible to extrapolate the intended target audience: “Most Russians rarely travel for the sake of traveling; most Russians leave the country at the beginning of spring for foreign spas and then, after the end of their health course, undertake small trips to the most exciting places and those not too far from Russia, limiting their travels to northern and southern Germany. After all, the Bohemian and Tyrolean spas, especially Carlsbad, are crowded with Russians in recent times. Upon leaving Russia, travelers usually go to Berlin or Vienna [first], where they stay for more or less time.”⁷¹ The author recommended a travel time of four weeks at the cost of 300 rubles (in second-class carriages, with 120 rubles being the return fare from Paris to St. Petersburg) to “get familiar with Germany, the Rhine River included, and to spend two weeks in Paris.”⁷²

While comparable data for Germany, the Russian Empire, and France is not readily available, statistics on household income can provide some insight. Sticking to the example of a travel cost of 300 rubles for a one-month journey from St. Petersburg to Germany and Paris, we may assume that only households earning more than 5,000 rubles per year might have been capable of affording international travel. This accounts for a maximum of 20,000 households for the European part of the Russian Empire (excluding Poland and Finland), equaling some 120,000 people, or 0.2 percent of the population. If we add those households earning between 2,000 and 5,000 rubles annually, this figure goes up to 60,000 households (approximately 360,000 people), or 0.6 percent of the population.⁷³

However, since this was the economically and politically most influential part of Russian society, the experiences and images transmitted from abroad directly influenced the depiction of the rest of Europe in newspapers and magazines, politics, and society more broadly. Given the economic dynamic of France, Germany, and especially Great Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, the share of the population from these countries in the position to travel abroad for leisure was far greater. However, given the grander scale of the Russian population compared to their western European counterparts, the net number of Russian, British, French, and German tourists traveling abroad might have been comparable.

An upturn in the number of Russian travelers began in 1894. That year, the Russian Railroads introduced a zone tariff, leading to lower prices on long-distance travel. As a result, the fare for a first-class ticket from St. Petersburg to Eydtkuhnen decreased from 31.39 rubles to 18.50 rubles and a second-class ticket from 23.54 to 11.10 rubles.⁷⁴ Consequently, the cost mentioned above for a one-month trip to western Europe decreased by almost 10 percent, making it accessible to a slightly larger number of people. However, as we will see in chapter 6, this was still a low number compared to that of other cross-border travelers, such as emigrants.

The Importance of Comfort

Transcontinental travel was also becoming increasingly comfortable. This was due to two innovations: dining and sleeping cars. Dining cars made their way to the German railways in 1880. Previously, only station restaurants supplied travelers with food. However, since the main advantage of the railroad was speed, railroad companies were reluctant to arrange for meal stops other than at transfer stations.⁷⁵ Main stations provided two restaurants: one for first and second class and one for third and fourth class. These buffets were crucial for the well-being of travelers and often made their way into travel guidebooks and accounts.

In 1867, a traveler from the Russian Empire compared the Verzhbolovo and Eydtkuhnen station restaurants: “Someone traveling from the Verzhbolovo main train station indeed must be plagued by hunger, a result of having to avoid being overcome by disgust brought on by the filth and unsanitary conditions of the local eating establishments there; in Eydtkuhnen, however, there is comfort, cleanliness, and an element of splendor which pleases oneself as he strengthens his constitution on the well prepared and elegantly presented dishes, whose prices are a refreshing contrast to those that were regularly given to us [in the Russian Empire].”⁷⁶

The unfavorable condition of the restaurant in Verzhbolovo was of significant concern for the Great Russian Railroad Company. At stake was not only the appearance of the buffet in Verzhbolovo. Since this was the first station in the Russian Empire, it took on a showcase function for the whole empire. Between 1863 and 1867, the leaseholders changed repeatedly. In 1863, an inspector complained about the “deplorable condition . . . despite frequent reprimands.”⁷⁷ A new agreement in December 1866 with the French leaseholder Tibo Gusse introduced numerous improvements, such as the publication of menus in Russian, French, German, and Polish; tea of better quality, preheated plates in winter, and a guaranteed room temperature of no less than 14 degrees Réaumur (17.5 degrees Celsius).⁷⁸ It seems as if the matter was finally settled since the Murray guidebook of 1868 mentions the “good buffet kept by a Frenchman” in Verzhbolovo.⁷⁹

Sleeping cars in night trains were the other essential accommodation for speedy and comfortable travel. Before their implementation, passengers stayed overnight at stations—hence the institution of railroad hotels at major stops. However, the overnight stays slowed down long-distance travel, and mail delivery was significantly delayed. In the United States, night trains had already been used since the late 1830s. In the late 1840s, Prussia followed suit. Two factors influenced this decision. First, the London travel agency Lloyd planned to route its Asian excursions through Hamburg, Berlin, and Silesia to Mediterranean ports. They asked for overnight connections on the Lower Silesian Railroads. The company was fiercely opposed, but in the spring of 1848, the Prussian government forced it to include one daily night train in each direction.⁸⁰ Second, in the late 1840s and early 1850s, for speedy mail delivery, Prussia’s minister of trade, commerce, and public works, August von der Heydt, ordered several other Prussian companies to run night trains, which they did after initial opposition over the anticipated losses.⁸¹ However, the real breakthrough for overnight travel occurred only with the development of more comfortable sleepers by the American Georges M. Pullman in 1864. In 1873, the Prussian and Belgian railroad companies agreed to establish the first sleeping car line between Berlin, Cologne, and Oostende, creating a speedy connection between Berlin and western Europe.⁸²

Figure 4.3. Network of the International Sleeping Car Company in 1914. Compagnie international des wagon-lits, Guide officiel (juin 1914), inlet.

A revolution in comfortable overnight travel occurred with the establishment of Georges Nagelmackers’s International Sleeping Car Company in 1872 (Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits, CIWL). Some travelers complained about the exuberant mandatory tips for the conductors, unreasonably high prices for food and drink, high tariffs, and packed space aboard these trains. However, most people praised the luxury, “prompt punctuality,” and “absolute reliability” that reduced “travel times to a minimum; maximum distances become illusionary; Berlin–Paris, Vienna–Berlin, Berlin–St. Petersburg becoming simple day trips.”⁸³ The most prominent of these services was the Orient Express, the setting for numerous detective novels, films, and works of art.⁸⁴ To compare the European network of the International Sleeping Car Company at its heyday, just before the outbreak of the First World War, to today’s network of airlines, it is no exaggeration to state that the density of these two nets is similar, even though they are one hundred years apart.⁸⁵

Figure 4.4. Poster and schedule of the Nord-Express Paris–St. Petersburg, ca. 1896. Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits, lithograph by G. Bataille, Paris. Courtesy of Jürgen Klein.

In 1896, Nagelmackers established the Nord-Express, linking the French and Russian capitals. The company advertised the train in their office on Nevski Prospekt in St. Petersburg. In the model presented, “One could make out the blue upholstery inside, the embossed leather lining of the compartment walls, their polished panels, inset mirrors, tulip-shaped reading lamps, and other maddening details. Spacious windows alternated with narrower ones, single or geminate and some of these were of frosted glass. In a few compartments, the beds had been made.”⁸⁶

However, Nagelmackers had to forfeit his plans to establish a genuinely transcontinental direct line between St. Petersburg and Lisbon, a line that was supposed to link both cities in ninety-two hours.⁸⁷ Despite this setback, direct connections to Moscow and London via Oostende followed. In Paris, passengers had connecting trains to the French Riviera or Spain and Portugal via the Sud-Express, with steamboat connections to South America. In the Russian Empire, travelers could easily change to the Trans-Siberian Railroad, facilitating a journey to the Pacific and China. The Sleeping Car Company included the names of Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo prominently in their schedules—alongside Berlin, Cologne, Paris, London, and Nice. At the border, travelers of the Nord-Express enjoyed a privileged change of trains. They stepped out of their car on the platform, entered the station building, underwent customs and border control, and boarded an identical train on the other side.

Many high-level private, economic, and political contacts between Germany, France, and the Russian Empire were linked to the Nord-Express. The German nobility used it to visit relatives in the Russian Empire or Great Britain. At the same time, Paris-based companies opened branches in Berlin, Königsberg, St. Petersburg, and Moscow to boost their sales in these countries. The Russian and Polish nobility used the line to reach the spas on the Mediterranean coast, as did Vladimir Nabokov, who mentioned recurrent travels in his autobiography.⁸⁸ As a result, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the exchange of ideas between Germany, France, the Russian Empire, and other European countries began to grow, especially in the arts, politics, and society. We can already speak of the “outlines of a modern communication society” or even an “international travel community.”⁸⁹

The International Sleeping Car Company was aware of the Nord-Express’s international significance. In 1904, the Berlin branch office addressed the Prussian Ministry for Public Works to increase the speed of the luxury train. Since the company did not own the tracks, it depended on the local railroad officials’ goodwill to include the train in their schedules. The company argued that “due to its huge international significance,” the Nord-Express merited an upgrade that would make it “the nicest and quickest train in Europe, if not the whole world,” and thus contribute to the rise of Berlin’s status as a “hub of world transportation.”⁹⁰ Starting in 1906, the Sleeping Car Company planned to reduce the travel time between Paris and Berlin from seventeen to twelve and a half hours. Even if the German State Railroads rejected this request, the discussions underlined the significance of this “hotel on wheels.” With relaxed border regimes, traveling was much easier than it would be for a long time after—provided that the travelers possessed the financial resources and proper documentation.⁹¹

Obstacles at the Border: Passports and Visas

A passport was the essential requisite for travelers to and from the Russian Empire. The modern passport system developed after the French Revolution when the passport became a state-issued document that travelers had to always carry with them. Fearing the spread of revolutionary ideas during the time of the Restoration, for travel abroad, passports “had to be visaed by a diplomatic representative of every country a traveller wished to enter”; in some countries, travelers had to present the document to the police at regular intervals.⁹² One must keep in mind that in the case of the German or Italian scattered states of the early nineteenth century, traveling abroad did not necessarily mean traveling very far. The Joanne French travel guide of 1862 informed that “French people traveling to Germany need to obtain a foreign passport (cost: 10 fr.), visaed by the French foreign ministry and by the different states whose territories they have the intention to visit.” These visas came at three francs (Prussia) or five francs (other German states, Belgium, Habsburg Empire, and Switzerland).⁹³ Border controls developed into a significant obstacle to the ever-growing number of travelers and goods. As was the case for the French-Prussian border, waiting times of half an hour to an hour led long-distance travelers to complain about the delays, which were frequently exacerbated by missed train connections.⁹⁴

To remedy this situation, customs and border control started to clear travelers even at night, and western European countries gradually abolished visa requirements and eased passport regulations.⁹⁵ Prussia introduced a new passport law in 1862, making the entry in Joanne obsolete. Both chambers of the Prussian parliament, the media, and the diplomatic posts of neighboring countries passionately discussed the planned introduction of this novel freedom of movement. In 1862, advocates for the new law pointed to the impracticality of controlling everyone in times of mass transportation, arguing that the abolishment was necessary for “cultural progress.”⁹⁶ Some members of the Prussian Upper House tried to water down the law to maintain control over their subjects, but their efforts were in vain.⁹⁷ As a result, the 1870 Baedeker guidebook to Paris informed that “a passport or similar documents are as of now no longer mandatory when crossing the border or whilst traveling within the country.”⁹⁸

From the 1860s onward, travelers could thus enter most western and central European countries without a passport, in a manner comparable to today’s situation. The only major European countries still requiring a visaed passport to enter were the Russian and Ottoman Empires. The 1868 Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, Poland, and Finland provided the following information on passport regulations and border control at the Russian Empire’s borders: “The principal formality which the traveller has therefore to observe is, to have his passport viséd by a Russian diplomatic or consular official. . . . The passport regulations are now more strictly applied than ever, particularly at St. Petersburg, notwithstanding that in every other country on the Continent the passport system, so obnoxious to the modern traveller, is almost entirely abolished. Tourists should keep this in mind, for any neglect of the Russian regulations is visited with severe discomfort, if with nothing more.”⁹⁹

Despite such warnings in travel guidebooks, even experienced travelers were stranded in Eydtkuhnen or Verzhbolovo from time to time, after failing to provide the necessary documents. These cases appeared prominently in the Prussian and Russian border police reports and in the consular agents’ dispatches of the relevant nations.¹⁰⁰ Americans who wanted to travel into the Russian Empire through Eydtkuhnen but failed to observe the strict entry regulations regularly addressed the US consulate in Königsberg to obtain “emergency passports.” For example, in 1904, Russian border police turned away Maude Altberger from the US since she did not hold a passport. Her husband sent a telegram to the US consulate in Königsberg requesting a passport for his wife. He then had it visaed at the Russian consulate in Königsberg to expedite their travels.¹⁰¹

In addition, the Russian antisemitic laws of the 1880s discriminated against Jewish travelers from abroad. “Alien Jews” had to obtain the approval of the Russian Ministry of the Interior—unlike high-ranking members of society and business, who needed the recommendation of a Catholic priest to obtain the necessary visa.¹⁰²

Border procedures for those traveling to the Russian Empire did not change significantly during subsequent decades, as illustrated by the 1893 Murray and the 1914 English-language Baedeker Russia editions. For their part, Russian subjects traveling abroad to Germany, Great Britain, or France did not need a visa to enter. Instead, they experienced monetary and bureaucratic difficulties on the Russian side when making travel plans.¹⁰³ To legally leave the country, travelers had to possess a foreign passport (zagranpasport). This document was affordable only for those with sufficient financial means to pay the fee, which fluctuated between 10.5 rubles in the 1840s, a prohibitive 250 rubles after the 1848 unrest, 5 rubles during the reform era, and 17.25 rubles in 1910.¹⁰⁴

Even if one had the money, enormous bureaucratic obstacles still had to be navigated, such as obtaining proof of fulfilled military service.¹⁰⁵ It is not surprising that complaints by travelers were frequent, although they never motivated a general policy shift.¹⁰⁶ While the Russian government eased some of the travel requirements in 1857 because of economic pressure, it also retightened them during times of political turmoil. For example, after the Polish January Uprising of 1863, some population groups, such as highly mobile students, couldn’t obtain travel documents at all.¹⁰⁷ In 1893, student Sergei Diaghilev had this problem before starting his international career as director of the Ballets Russes. In the end, Diaghilev managed to obtain a doctor’s statement proving the need to receive treatment abroad.¹⁰⁸

A Cosmopolitan Travel Community: Leisure and Business

The reports of Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, and others are evidence of an affluent international travel community gathering on the French coast, at Swiss Alpine resorts, and at numerous European spas. However, these people stayed within “a uniform social space . . . without interruption from—or confrontation with—other classes.”¹⁰⁹ In the nineteenth century, this space was confined to Hôtels d’Angleterre, the luxury cars of the International Sleeping Car Company, and the first-class waiting rooms of major European railroad stations.

Sergei Diaghilev is an excellent example of the existing transnational leisure and business community.¹¹⁰ In 1909, he founded the Ballets Russes, a ballet company that would perform in all parts of Europe and the Americas in the subsequent twenty years. This Paris-based company consisted of artists, dancers, and choreographers from all over the European continent and toured some of the most famous theaters. Following the travel itinerary of the Ballets Russes’ impresario in the seven months before the outbreak of the First World War gives us an insight into how businesspeople and performers crisscrossed the European continent—something unheard of sixty years earlier. Diaghilev was “the original frequent traveler, logging trips that are astounding even by the standards of the early twenty-first century.”¹¹¹ He spent December 1913 in Moscow and St. Petersburg and was in Paris on January 6 to prepare for the new ballet season. Soon afterward, he went to St. Petersburg to contract new singers and then left for Cologne around February 8 to join his company in rehearsal for a tour in Germany. The “German” tour led the company to Berlin, Prague, and other central European cities in February and March. On March 16, Diaghilev went to St. Petersburg to hire a new choreographer but was back in Berlin by March 21. At the beginning of April, the company went for rehearsals in Monte Carlo; on April 29, Diaghilev went to Paris to open the new season. In June and July 1914, the Ballets Russes performed in London, and just before the outbreak of the war, Diaghilev went on a leisure trip to Italy.¹¹² As Karl Schlögel has pointed out, following Diaghilev’s route and travel itineraries between major cultural centers can help reconstruct “Europe as a cultural space.”¹¹³ At one end, this space was defined by transnationality and cosmopolitanism of a small affluent, well-educated, and highly mobile elite; at the other, it was determined by national antagonisms and xenophobia—and often informed by travel as well.

Travel Guidebooks: The “Self” and the “Other”

While travel did shape a cosmopolitan Europe, it was also part of the processes of othering that would set up mental boundaries congruent with political borders. Technically and bureaucratically, the border at Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo did not constitute a significant barrier for affluent travelers. At first glance, travelers’ experiences in the two border towns were confined to passport and customs control, the waiting rooms, the railroad restaurants, and one of the upper-class hotels at the stations. However, the border stations were more than just the gate between two countries. Many travelers experienced a clear mental border—much stronger than the political borders in western Europe.

In Europe, the nineteenth century was not only a time of unprecedented economic, social, and cultural development but also a time when national movements and nation building gained momentum. As we have seen, Germany developed into an ethnically exclusive nation-state, alienating its Polish-speaking citizens. The same applied to the Russian Empire vis-à-vis its Polish and Jewish subjects. The new type of emerging business and leisure traveler embodied two developments: first, a world increasingly connected in economic and cultural terms, overcoming existing political borders, and second, a world where mutually exclusive national movements developed, thus establishing new boundaries and creating new concepts of national belonging.

Travel guidebooks reflect these developments. In the eighteenth century, when embarking on their fashionable grand tour, affluent European nobles relied on western European guides.¹¹⁴ These travelers perceived their journey as a method of broadening their horizons and gaining knowledge through travel experience. In the nineteenth century, leisure travel gained momentum among the educated and liberal-minded middle strata (Bildungsbürgertum) as they gradually materialized as a social class. In the 1830s, modern guidebooks, such as John Murray’s Hand-Book for Travelers on the Continent (London, 1836) and Karl Baedeker’s travel guide to the Rhine River (Koblenz/Prussia, 1835), emerged.¹¹⁵ The French Guides Hachette and Guides Joanne followed in 1853 and 1860, respectively. This new generation of guidebooks addressed a different kind of traveler from those on their grand tour. In the preface to his 1856 ninth edition of the Rhine River guide, Karl Baedeker indicates that his goal was to “secure the independence of the traveler as far as possible. . . . He [the author] wanted to free him from the costly and cumbersome accompaniment of wage servants whose professional guidance hinders any independent movement, especially the intellectual one; he wanted to provide him with an instruction based on personal experiences on how to gain a quick and affordable overview over the [monuments] deserving special attention.”¹¹⁶ In the Russian Empire, comparable guidebooks were published from the 1870s. Just as Baedeker, they targeted not only those affluent travelers who could afford to stay a month at fashionable spas but also the so-called “nonaffluent” (nebogatykh) travelers who were leaving the Russian sphere (peredely) for the first time.”¹¹⁷

Travel guidebooks facilitated travelers’ “spatial and cultural orientation,” providing up-to-date information on railroad and steamship schedules, hotels, and boarding houses.¹¹⁸ This enabled individual travelers to plan their voyages and calculate the cost. However, guidebooks also standardized and schematized the sights that “ought to be seen” by a ranking system of stars that gave a predetermined weight of importance to the monuments, thus restricting the worldview of the traveler.¹¹⁹ People traveling to St. Petersburg in 1914, equipped with the Baedeker guide, knew exactly how to get to the Russian Empire, what to expect at the border, and how much money they would spend on hotels. Also, they could find information about how to obtain Russian rubles: “English banknotes and sovereigns may be changed without loss . . . the Travellers’ Cheques issued by the American Express Companies and by the American Bankers Association may also be recommended.”¹²⁰ Travelers would not have to worry about provisions since “the Railway Restaurants (buf’et) at the chief stations may be safely recommended. The food is good and inexpensive.”¹²¹

The focus of the guidebooks to Russia was on high culture as perceived in western Europe, thus identifying “civilized” western European spaces within the Russian Empire. As a result, we find detailed descriptions of western and southern European artworks in St. Petersburg museums and reviews of “western-style” hotels and restaurants. On the one hand, tourists left their everyday life behind; on the other, their “search for authenticity” and their appropriation of the world abroad was limited to a sphere familiar to the traveler: they submitted to the absolute authority of the guidebook.¹²²

In their depictions, travel guidebooks reveal an emerging cultural and mental divide between the Russian Empire and the rest of Europe. Guidebooks served as “culture brokers,” mediating between the traveler and the host country; however, Murray, Joanne, Iakubovich, and other guidebook companies also imposed their version of the history and culture of a region.¹²³ As the “antithesis of Romanticism,” they ruled out “subjectivity with regard to places described in the guidebook, assuming that all travelers will perceive a place in much the same [objective] way.”¹²⁴ As Ulrike Pretzel and Rudy Koshar have argued for the German case, traveling abroad was part of the nation-building process that led to mental borders between the “Self” and the “Other.”¹²⁵ Furthermore, not only were those actively traveling part of this process but so were those staying behind and reading travel reports in journals and books.

Iakubovich’s Russian guidebooks refrain from openly stereotypical depictions of populations in the respective travel regions, and so do Murray’s—appealing to the travelers’ “sense of national modesty.”¹²⁶ However, many guidebooks went beyond tourism and also contributed to drawing clear lines between “the Self” and “the Other.”

Introducing its readers to “the Germans,” Joanne made clear what kind of people the Germans were supposed to be in the eyes of the French traveler: “Without a doubt, when one critically observes them as a group, they lack grace, vivaciousness, and elegance. He [the German] smokes without modesty and mercy [miséricorde] everywhere he goes; maybe he follows too many courses on philology and philosophy, and he fails to take enough lessons in good manners and courtesy; he ignores the resources of the toilet; he cannot yet prepare a decent meal nor tidy his bed correctly, but he is also capable of solid and greater qualities; although he may be sometimes impolite, and may show indifference, his intentions are never nasty or rude.”¹²⁷

While this description is not without sympathy for “the German,” the depiction of “the Russian” in Baedeker’s guidebooks is less flattering. Baedeker’s lengthy descriptions give us a good impression of what idea the German and western European public had or was supposed to have about “the Russian.” Here, the guidebook fulfills the readers’ expectations and transmits apparent stereotypes. In the 1914 English edition, we find the following observations concerning “the Russians”: “Physically they are blond, blue-eyed, and vigorous, with broad shoulders and bull necks, often somewhat clumsy and with a strong tendency to obesity. Their character has been influenced not only by a long history of subjugation to feudal despotism, but also by the gloomy forests, the unresponsive soil, and the rigorous climate, and especially by the enforced inactivity of the long winters. In disposition they are easily disciplined, and so make excellent soldiers, but have little power of independent thinking or of initiation.”¹²⁸

As Karl Deutsch has pointed out, “persons who are unaware that they belong to the same people discover their common bonds when they go abroad.”¹²⁹ Along these lines, guidebooks were valuable mediators among cultures; however, they were also part of the formation of collective national identities. Transmitting stereotypes about “the Other,” they served as “a mirror of the society in and for which a travel guide is written.” They also defined clear borders of the “own” nation, protecting the “vulnerable self” and creating an “array of defences,” as Moris Farhi has put it.¹³⁰ As Larry Wolff has demonstrated, the idea of a clash between eastern and western Europe started to dominate people’s minds already during the Enlightenment.¹³¹

The “Passageway between Two Worlds”

Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo not only appeared in railroad schedules and in guidebooks but also found their way into the literature. They became topoi in Russian literature and on the mental maps of writers and their readers as “a passageway between two worlds.”¹³² The two towns represented the symbolic westernmost point of the Russian Empire and the symbolic easternmost point of Europe. Here, the civilized West seemed to clash with the uncivilized East.¹³³ Poet and philologist Iurii Leving reveals Verzhbolovo’s significance for Russian poetry, stating that the town’s name “has a special toponymical meaning . . . as a transit point on the geographical, demarcation, and cultural level at the same time.”¹³⁴

For people living permanently in the entangled borderscape, Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo represented a cross-border microcosm that belonged together. However, in the minds of travelers from other parts of the two countries, the border embodied a clear-cut line. In their view, the “Self” and the “Other”—the (western) “European” and the “Russian”—seemed to be separated by a neglected station buffet, different track gauges, an obnoxious visa regime, and customs and border control not experienced at other European crossings. The border was also an olfactory divide in travelers’ memories, with different smells from the steam engines’ exhaust fumes. Apparently, in the Russian Empire, the stokers often used birch wood to power the engine, whereas Prussian railroads used coal.¹³⁵ For travelers, the border is thus comparable to the colonial encounter Mary Pratt has described as a “contact zone.”¹³⁶

Memoirs of Russian travelers are evidence of this divide. One notable traveler who described his border crossing was the writer and pan-Slavist advocate Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky. As we have seen in the quotation at the beginning of this book’s introduction, he passed through Eydtkuhnen on a trip to Paris in 1862. In his travel sketches published in the winter of 1863, he describes his impressions upon approaching the Russian-Prussian border in a somewhat ironic and even sarcastic way: “According to what is noted in my little book, I should now be sitting in a train car getting ready for tomorrow’s arrival at Eydkuhnen [sic], that is, for my first foreign impression, my heart pounding all the while. For this is where I shall finally see Europe, I who have been vainly dreaming of it for nearly forty years.”¹³⁷ In this piece, Dostoevsky perceives the border as a “cultural boundary between ‘Europe’ and ‘Russia’ that has been internalized by the educated Russian elite”—a symbolic divide between Russia and Europe.¹³⁸ The author does not express only his personal experiences; he also has a political objective, deriving from his critique of western European consumer influence on the Russian Empire and his distinctive Slavophile stance.

In his 1910 sketch Border Odor (Pogranichnye zapakhy), Russian poet Vasili Rozanov sees the difference between the two worlds embodied in the shape and color of “Their” (the German) “short, white, square . . . well cleansed, odorless” border post versus “Our” (the Russian) post, showing “a black, meandering, wiggly line with seam.”¹³⁹

Vladimir V. Mayakovsky followed the critique of Western habits even more clearly when, in 1914, he noted that “it is time to understand that ‘to be Europe’ is no slavish imitation of the West, no running around in suspenders, which come through Verzhbolovo, but, rather, a straining of our own strengths, like what one does there.”¹⁴⁰ Here, the suspenders symbolize all kinds of (western) European novelties, taken on by Russian high and consumer culture uncritically, as fads often are.

CONCLUSION

Innovations in transportation and the subsequent emergence of a middle class led to the development of a cosmopolitan European tourist class. Tourists’ mobility depended on the railroad network, appropriate international connections, and proper accommodations. Consequently, Dean MacCannell sees international tourism as an integral part of the expansion of modern society.¹⁴¹

Travel guidebooks were essential “cultural brokers” that helped travelers logistically make their way through Europe and make sense of the interaction “with new people and environments.”¹⁴² However, European guidebooks, memoirs, and works of fiction also communicated images that defined the “Self” and the “Other.” Along these lines, some state borders were imagined as clear civilizational divides.

Railroad companies, state administrations, and the local population collaborated to smoothen the crossing at the archetypical European microcosm formed by Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo. Consequently, the intersecting railroad lines transformed the towns into an entangled borderscape for those permanently living there. However, these places also played an essential role in defining the “Self” and the “Other” in eastern and east central Europe, a field that has gone widely untouched by scholarship—with the notable exception of Larry Wolff. In his book Inventing Eastern Europe, Wolff demonstrates how western European travelers of the Enlightenment created a notion of eastern Europe juxtaposing the West.¹⁴³

Despite the emergence of a distinctive travel culture and frequent interactions between East and West in the nineteenth century, this gulf widened. As far as the western European feeling of superiority over the people in Europe’s East is concerned, one can even go so far as to compare it to Edward Said’s analyses of how French and British opinion perceived Asia.¹⁴⁴ As a result, the border stations in Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo formed a symbolic barrier, a rite de passage, or a “passageway between two worlds” (Schleuse zwischen den Welten), as Karl Schlögel has put it.¹⁴⁵ As we will see in chapter 6, this notion of mental barrier similarly applies to better-off travelers and less-affluent emigrants crossing the German-Russian border on their way to North America.

NOTES

1.Some of the findings presented here are drawn from a section in an earlier book: Musekamp, “Big History and Local Experiences.” I would like to thank Palgrave Macmillan for their permission.

2.Ivaškevičius, “Die Zivilisation Wershbolowo.”

3.Ivaškevičius. On Eydtkuhnen and Verzhbolovo as a microcosm of European history, refer to Musekamp, “Big History and Local Experiences.”

4.Figes, Europeans.

5.Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 3.

6.Gell, Die Geschichte des Hauptzollamts Eydtkau, 45.

7.Leiserowitz, Sabbatleuchter und Kriegerverein, 177, 179.

8.Hoffmann, “Evangelische Kirche in Eydtkau (Eydtkuhnen).”

9.Krüger, Eydtkuhnen, 12; “Eydtkuhnen,” in Meyers Großes Konversationslexikon.

10.Leiserowitz, Sabbatleuchter und Kriegerverein, 183.

11.Krüger, Eydtkuhnen, 20–22.

12.Vohland, “Leuchten und Verlöschen von Eydtkuhnen,” 50.

13.Kirrinnis, “Eydtkau (Eydtkuhnen),” 443, 445.

14.On the magnificent first-class waiting room inauguration, refer to “Provinzielles-Eydtkuhnen,” Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung (henceforth KHZ), 121 (May 25, 1862): 925.

15.For a description of the Eydtkuhnen station building including its footprint and exterior view, refer to Cuno, “Das Empfangsgebäude des Bahnhofes in Eydtkuhnen”; N. N., “Empfangsgebäude auf Bahnhof Eydtkuhnen.” For a color depiction of the royal waiting room, refer to Cuno, “Decoration aus dem Wartezimmer.”

16.Brock, “Die Eisenbahn machte es möglich.” Major European railroad stations quickly internationalized. Refer to the Paris-Nord example in Caron, Histoire des chemins de fer, 606.

17.Hinden, “Von Ostpreußen nach Israel. Dritter und letzter Teil,” 58.

18.Krüger, Eydtkuhnen, 24.

19.RGIA, fond 258, opis 3, delo 1526, 1–5, 12–13, 15; Kirrinnis, “Eydtkau (Eydtkuhnen),” 441.

20.Eisenbahndirektionsbezirk Königsberg, Verkehrs-Statistik . . . 1913, I. Abschnitt, 11.

21.Drewing, “Gänse aus Gusow.”

22.Brokgauz and Efron, “Verzhbolovo.”

23.Krüger, Eydtkuhnen; Kirrinnis, “Die Stadt der Grenzspediteure;” Brokgauz and Efron, “Verzhbolovo.”

24.N. N., “Nachrichten aus dem Kreise und der Provinz.”

25.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 325.

26.Today, the historical customs buildings along the old important trade roads are artifacts of Europe’s historical borders.

27.N. N., “Kunst- und Eisenbahnberichte,” 281; Clinquart, L’ administration des douanes en France, 199.

28.Hahn, Geschichte des Deutschen Zollvereins, 9; Adelsgruber, Cohen, and Kuzmany, Getrennt und doch verbunden, 105.

29.Hahn, Geschichte des Deutschen Zollvereins, 20; Ohnishi, “Vorläufer des deutschen Zollvereins”; “Gesetz über den Zoll und die Verbrauchssteuer.”

30.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 193–222, 253–254.

31.Clinquart, L’administration des douanes en France, 198.

32.Soleymani, Les échanges commerciaux entre la France et les États allemands, 61–62.

33.Kislovskii, Istoriia tamozhni gosudarstva rossiiskogo, 80.

34.Schot, Buiter, and Anastasiadou, “Dynamics of Transnational Railway Governance in Europe,” 278.

35.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8127, 29–33, § 9.

36.GStA PK, Nr. 8128, 57–67, 99.

37.RGIA, fond 258, opis 3, delo 73, 10.

38.RGIA, delo 369, 90–112.

39.RGIA, delo 369, 1–13.

40.RGIA, delo 369, 124–126; quotation on 125.

41.RGIA, delo 86, 27. As a result of a conference, the Ostbahn reimbursed the difference caused by the exchange rate.

42.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 193–222.

43.RGIA, fond 258, opis 3, delo 355, 17–21.

44.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 241–242.

45.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 151 III, Nr. 8128, 252–261.

46.Good harvests as in 1882 or 1888 put a strain on cross-border transportation, while bad harvests in 1865, 1867, 1886, and 1889 limited the flow.

47.Krüger, Eydtkuhnen, 24.

48.Wenau, “Schwurgerichtsprozeß.”

49.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1145, Nr. 122, 16.

50.AGAD, zespół 247, sygn. 663, 6–20. Refer also to the case of “an unknown Jew” from Eydtkuhnen selling weapons to Lev’ and Petr Kudriatsev in AGAD, sygn. 958, 39–46.

51.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 77, Tit. 1145, Nr. 122, 35.

52.For an overview of changing travel opportunities across Europe, refer to Musekamp, “Paris–St. Petersburg.”

53.O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 8, 124. Adams stayed in St. Petersburg because her husband previously held a post as American minister plenipotentiary to the Russian court. I would like to thank Kit Belgum for this information.

54.Handbook for Northern Europe, 438.

55.Michell, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, 1865 ed., iii. The exact travel time to go from Paris to St. Petersburg (2,762 km) was sixty-eight hours, and the ticket fare was 328 fr. 85 c. in first class and 256 fr. 45 c. in second class. Refer to Joanne, Itinéraire descriptif et historique de l’Allemagne, 836.

56.Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits, Guide officiel, 32–33.

57.Figes, Europeans, 39, 70, 206, 218–219.

58.KHZ 89 (April 15, 1862): 655.

59.Born, Die Entwicklung der Königlich Preußischen Ostbahn, 63–65.

60.“Zjazdy koronowanych,” Nadwiślanin 56 (July 21, 1857): 1.

61.On British travelers in Europe between 1820 and 1914, refer to Steward, “‘On the Continong.’”

62.Stangen, Eine Reise um die Erde; Dittmann, “Carl Stangen”; Razvozjaeva, “L’histoire du tourisme russe en France,” 165.

63.Dostoyevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 10.

64.Michell, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, 1893 ed., v.

65.Glavnoe obshchestvo rossiiskikh zheleznykh dorog, Otchet Soveta . . . 1867 g., table 1a.

66.Towarzystwo Drogi Żelaznej Warszawsko-Bydgoskiej, Dziesiąte zgromadzenie, iii. Wykaz ogólny ruchu osób. The number of international travelers coming in from countries other than Prussia in first or second class was 931, and 2,950 were coming in from Prussia. At Aleksandrów and Otłoczyn, we also have a high number of border crossers in the third and fourth classes, most of whom probably were either seasonal laborers or those traveling within the local cross-border traffic regime.

67.It is impossible to figure out the exact number of travelers since it would be necessary to add those crossing the southern border stations of the Russian Empire and those traveling by boat. In the case of Eydtkuhnen/Verzhbolovo, the local trains are not included in the statistics I examined but would probably add several hundreds of low-budget international travelers.

68.Varshavsko-Venskaia Zheleznaia Doroga, Protokol zasedaniia . . . 1882, II. Pomesiachnaia vedomost’ dvizheniia I sborov za 1881 god, p. 2 and table 1a, pp. 5, 9. At Aleksandrów, the number of international travelers arriving on express trains in first and second class from countries other than Prussia was at 714 (24 percent less than in Verzhbolovo); those arriving from Germany was at 4,678 (59 percent more). Overall, this is 39 percent more. The number of travelers entering the Russian Empire from Germany through Eydtkuhnen was 21 percent higher. To calculate the numbers, I projected the number of travelers without German tickets since statistics do not include these.

69.Spode, “Die paneuropäische Touristenklasse,” 78.

70.Iakubovich, Putevoditel’ po Evrope. One has to keep in mind, though, that affluent Russian travelers did not necessarily need a Russian-language travel guide since they spoke German and French and could thus rely on the widespread publications in these languages. Refer to Razvozjaeva, “L’histoire du tourisme russe en France,” 163.

71.Iakubovich, Putevoditel’ po Evrope, I.

72.Iakubovich, VI.

73.This is a roughly approximate value based on the official data of inhabitants and household income for the five estates for 1904 and back-calculated to 1876. Sources: Lindert and Nafziger, “Russian Inequality on the Eve of Revolution”; “Russisches Reich,” in Meyers großes Konversations-Lexikon. . . . Bd. 13, 893; “Russisches Reich,” in Meyers großes Konversations-Lexikon. . . . Jahres-Supplement 1910–1911, 735.

74.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 93 E, Nr. 2353 (letter of November 24, 1894). On the graduated tariff and its impact on the number of rail passengers in third and fourth class, refer to Schenk, Russlands Fahrt in die Moderne, 148–154.

75.On buffets on German stations in general, refer to the traveler accounts in Krohn, Welche Lust gewährt das Reisen!, 127–128.

76.“Briefe eines Erholungsreisenden,” St. Petersburger Zeitung (June 5, 1867 [June 17, 1867]). Translation: Jesse Lillefjeld. It seems as if the traveler went to Verzhbolovo in 1866, just before a new leaseholder took over the buffet.

77.RGIA, fond 258, opis 3, delo 1763, 10.

78.RGIA, 23–25. I kept the Russian transliteration. In French, the name was most probably “Thibault Gousset.”

79.Michell, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, 1868 ed., 52. Between 1861 and 1864, the bureau de change was led by the Marcus Cohn trade business from Königsberg. Refer to RGIA, fond 258, opis 3, delo 3, 4–6, 35.

80.Demps, Der Schlesische Bahnhof in Berlin, 63–67.

81.Brophy, Capitalism, Politics, and Railroads, 76. The discussion on night trains is on pp. 75–86.

82.On the sleeper on German railroads in general, refer to the traveler accounts in Krohn, Welche Lust gewährt das Reisen!, 129–130.

83.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 93 E, Nr. 1620, 3, 267; GStA PK, Nr. 1622, 107–109; Koebner and Krotowski, Auf Reisen, 6, 40–41.

84.Concerning the history of the International Sleeping Car Company and the Nord-Express, refer to Oldenziel and Hård, Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels, 101–108; Mühl and Klein, Reisen in Luxuszügen, 11–31, 112–116. On the Nord-Express, refer to Commault, “Le Nord-Express. Jours sombres”; Roger Commault, “Le Nord-Express. 2. Destination—Riga!”; Commault and Durandal, “Le Nord-Express. 3. Fin du voyage.”

85.Compagnie internationale des wagons-lits, Guide officiel, inlet.

86.Nabokov, Speak, Memory, 107–108.

87.Keller, “Liternyi poezd ‘Severnyi ekspress.’”

88.Razvozjaeva, “L’histoire du tourisme russe en France,” 165–172; Nabokov, Speak, Memory, 107–116.

89.Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Dritter Band, 429; Schmucki, “‘Nothing Reminds You on the Journey That England Is an Island . . .,’” 310.

90.GStA PK, I. HA, Rep. 93 E, Nr. 1620, 86–90.

91.Refer to the study on traveling Englishmen prior to the Second World War: Schmucki, “‘Nothing Reminds You on the Journey That England Is an Island . . .,’” 310–311.

92.Fahrmeir, “Passports and the Status of Aliens,” 95–97.

93.Joanne, Itinéraire descriptif et historique de l’Allemagne, XVII.

94.Fahrmeir, “Passports and the Status of Aliens,” 103.

95.Clinquart, L’administration des douanes, 111–112, 218, 222.

96.“Das Paßgesetz,” KHZ 147 (June 27, 1862): 1141.

97.CADMAE, fonds 40CCC, t. 14, 222–224.

98.Baedeker, Paris und Nord-Frankreich, XV.

99.Michell, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, 1868 ed., 51.

100.For example, in 1867, many western Europeans, among them numerous French, were traveling without proper passports. Government officials in St. Petersburg sent telegrams to the border station at Verzhbolovo to let them pass. Refer to RGIA, fond 2128, opis 1, delo 914, 25–28, 30–34, 37–41, 55–58, 60–66.

101.Letter by J. P. Altberger from Königsberg to American consul Alexander Eckhardt in Königsberg on July 9, 1904. Series “Various Correspondence, January 1, 1904, to April 30, 1906.” Consulate Konigsberg, Germany, vol. 4. Record Group 84: Records of Foreign Service Posts, US National Archives in College Park.

102.Michell, Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, 1893 ed., 67

103.Vecheslov and Tarasievich, Russkii putevoditel’, 1.

104.Lohr, Russian Citizenship, 93–94.

105.Lohr, “Population Policy and Emigration Policy in Imperial Russia,” 171.

106.Lohr, Russian Citizenship, 97.

107.“Ostatnie wiadomości,” Nadwiślanin 50 (June 30, 1857): 4; “Zjazdy koronowanych,” Nadwiślanin 56 (July 21, 1857), 1; Lohr, Russian Citizenship, 26, 48.

108.Scheijen, Diaghilev, 67.

109.Oldenziel and Hård, Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels, 107.

110.For an overview of Diaghilev’s life, refer to Buckle, Diaghilev; Scheijen, Diaghilev.

111.Schlögel, In Space We Read Time, 354.

112.Scheijen, Diaghilev, 290–302. I checked the New and Old Style dates in the primary sources indicated by Scheijen. While it is not always clear if diary entries and letters between the Russian Empire and the rest of Europe are in Old or New Style, I made an effort to only utilize the New Style.

113.Schlögel, In Space We Read Time, 355. Refer also to Figes, Europeans, 475–483. While Karl Schlögel clearly perceives cultural contributions from the Russian Empire as an integral part of a European cultural space, Orlando Figes repeatedly draws a (somewhat blurry) line between “Europe” and “Russia,” while also declaring Turgenev, one of the heroes of his book, to be a European. Refer to Figes, 206, 218, 240, 304, 370.

114.Gyr, “History of Tourism.”

115.This version was based on Professor J. A. Klein’s Rheinreise von Mainz bis Köln, Handbuch für Schnellreisende of 1828. Baedeker purchased the guidebooks’ publishing house and changed its outlook and content. See Pretzel, Die Literaturform Reiseführer, 63–64.

116.Baedeker, Die Rheinlande von der Schweizer bis zur Holländischen Grenze, III. Translation: Jesse Lillefjeld

117.Iakubovich, Putevoditel’ po Evrope, V.

118.Dybiec, Guidebook Gazes, 84.

119.Pretzel, Die Literaturform Reiseführer, 148–150; Koshar, “‘What Ought to Be Seen’”; Allen, “‘Money and Little Red Books,’” 215.

120.Baedeker, Russia with Teheran, xiv.

121.Baedeker, xxiii.

122.MacCannell, Tourist, 3, 34; Dybiec, Guidebook Gazes, 17–18; Bauerkämper, Bödeker, and Struck, “Einleitung: Reisen als kulturelle Praxis,” 14.

123.Dybiec, Guidebook Gazes, 88.

124.Allen, “’Money and Little Red Books,’” 214.

125.Pretzel, Die Literaturform Reiseführer, 60–61; Koshar, German Travel Cultures, 16, 17.

126.Koshar, “‘What Ought to Be Seen,’” 328.

127.Joanne, Itinéraire descriptif et historique de l’Allemagne, IX. Translation: Agnieszka Zawadzka and Jesse Lillefjeld.

128.Baedeker, Russia with Teheran, xlii.

129.Deutsch, Nationalism and Its Alternatives, 15.

130.Dybiec, Guidebook Gazes, 19, 21, 31, 90; Farhi, “All History Is the History of Migration,” 66.

131.Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe.

132.Schlögel, Das russische Berlin, 66. For examples of Eydtkuhnen’s significance in Russian writers’ works, refer to Dement′ev, Chernyshevskoe. On travel to western Europe and Russian literature in general, refer to Rothe, “Reisen und Reiseerlebnisse,” 310.

133.Refer to Erenburg’s 1913 poem “Rossii.”

134.Leving, Vokzal—Garazh—Angar, 168.

135.Leving, 167.

136.Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6.

137.Dostoyevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 8. Although in 1963 Joseph Frank had already elaborated on Dostoevsky’s rejection of western European values in theses sketches, the value of his description for the research on travel has not found much interest. Refer to Joseph Frank, “Dostoevsky.”

138.Kleespies, “Caught at the Border,” 242. Compare to Count Louis-Philippe de Ségur’s impressions while traveling from Paris to St. Petersburg in the 1780s. Wolff, “Traveler’s View of Central Europe,” 24.

139.Rozanov, “Pogranichnye zapakhy.”

140.Mayakovsky, “Rossiia. Iskusstvo. Mir.” German version in Ivaškevičius, “Die Zivilisation Wershbolowo,” 44. English translation from the German: Robert Kohn.

141.MacCannell, Tourist, 3.

142.Koshar, German Travel Cultures, 9.

143.Larry Wolff analyzed travel reports of western European travelers to Poland and the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century, before the railroad age. Refer to Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 17–49.

144.Refer to Said, Orientalism.

145.Schlögel, Das russische Berlin, 66.