Berlin-Anhalt Railway Company

On 1 July 1841, the railway ran from the northern terminus of the line, at the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, for a distance of 63 kilometers to Jüterbog.

At the time, passenger rail traffic experienced steady growth, and with the continued expansion of industrialization, which required reliable supply of fuel and raw material, especially brown coal from the central German strip mines, rail transport saw a growth period.

On the 1 October 1871, the BAE purchased the 13-kilometer-long Anhaltischen Leopoldsbahn, which travels from Rosslau to Zerbst, and which had originally opened on 1 November 1863.

On the 15 October 1875, the line between Wittenberg and Falkenberg was put into service, which completed the railway network of the Berlin-Anhaltische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft.

The BAE did expand its influence again when it acquired the management rights of the tracks of the Oberlausitzer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft on the 1 July 1878, which ran from Falkenberg via Elsterwerda–Hoyerswerda, and across the Lausitzer Neiße river to Kohlfurt.

Some of the first express trains traveled from Berlin via Köthen to Halle, Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main and Munich, as well as to Dresden, Prague, and Vienna via Jüterbog-Röderau.