In 1843, August Leopold Crelle presented a design for a railway from Berlin to Breslau (now Wrocław) that would run near Briesen.

In 1871 and 1872 the Halle-Sorau-Guben Railway Company built lines from Leipzig and Halle to Cottbus with connections to Guben and to Sorau (now Żary).

Semi-fast and express trains ran between Cottbus and Frankfurt on this line until 1945, but they were then diverted on the slightly longer and better maintained route through Guben and Eisenhüttenstadt in order to serve these two important towns.

Due to the lack of traffic on the line, Deutsche Bahn closed passenger services between Grunow and Peitz on 1 June 1996.

In August 2002, the section between Cottbus and Willmersdorf was reactivated since in this area the Cottbus–Guben railway had to be moved for the expansion of the Cottbus-Nord open cast mine.