Story

The starting point of the cinematic journey is Budapest with its famous railroad stations, the Keleti and Nyugati stations, two magnificent cathedrals of the railroad age. Georg Habsburg guides us through Budapest, where his grandfather Charles was crowned the last king of Hungary, and accompanies us to Gödöllö, Queen Elisabeth’s favorite castle. A visit to Europe’s largest railroad museum, the Budapest Locomotive Park, is also included, as is a ride on a historic steam train on Hungary’s oldest railroad line.

Just as the railroad network in the Hungarian half of the empire branched out from Budapest in a star shape and led in all directions, the documentation also follows the old railroad lines to Temesvar in today’s Romania, to the “Banater Semmering” with its numerous bridges and tunnels, to the forest railroads in the southwest of Hungary or to Croatia, where the so-called “Hungarian Riviera” attracted numerous aristocrats, artists and citizens year after year. The port city of Fiume, today’s Rijeka, competed with the Austrian port of Trieste and even today many buildings in the old town or the old shipyards still bear witness to Rijeka’s former splendor during the Habsburg era.

“On the Rails of the Double Eagle – From the Puszta to the Adriatic” is a cinematic journey through time and to remote corners of the former multi-ethnic state of Austria-Hungary, which was held together until its demise not least by its railroad network of more than 46,000 kilometers.

Production data:

Format

Documentary, 52 min, 2019

Production

GS-Film, ORF/3sat

Written and directed by

Björn Kölz and Gernot Stadler

Camera

Gernot Stadler

Music

Manfred Plessl

Production management

Monika Orsini-Rosenberg

Distribution

ORF Enterprise