At the request of the Emperor, a new route was designed, to run in the area "in between" and bypass the railway hubs of Hamburg and Lübeck.

Wilhelm II used the approach that had already been used by Tsar Nicholas I for the Moscow – Saint Petersburg Railway, with a ruler giving the approximate course.

The Emperor participated personally and used the line from the first day as it was 25 km shorter than the two alternative routes.

These trains ran between Ratzeburg and Kiel via Lübeck and thus over the line of the private Lübeck-Büchen Railway Company.

However, on the western side, the Hollenbek–Klein Zecher section was reactivated as early as 1950; apart from the new terminus, the stations of Hakendorf, Sterley and Alt Horst were re-opened.

On 1 September 1971, the transport of freight between Hollenbek and Klein Zecher and between Ratzeburg and Bad Oldesloe was abandoned; a year later was the track was dismantled on these sections.

Passenger traffic was sparse, but it was maintained until the turn of the millennium, while the carriage of freight between Zarrentin and Wittenburg was discontinued on 31 December 1994.

The Hagenow Land–Zarrentin line was taken over in September 2004 from DB Netz by Planungsverband Transportgewerbegebiet Valluhn/Gallin, a railway infrastructure company[2] that was based locally in Zarrentin, so that rail freight could run to the MEGA-park business park on the A24 autobahn.

Operations from line km 0.766 are carried out by the TME (Torsten Meincke Eisenbahn GmbH), which also provides the staff for the signal boxes at Hagenow Stadt, Wittenburg and Zarrentin.

Currently, Hagenow Stadt station is served hourly by the R3 service, which is operated by Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn GmbH (ODEG).

Since 6 April 2008, on the first Sunday of the month in the summer, two pairs of trains are operated on the line by Westmecklenburgischen Eisenbahngesellschaft (WEMEG) between Hagenow Land and Zarrentin.

In addition, in the autumn of 2010, around 60 trains were loaded in Zarrentin with pipes for the North European Gas Pipeline, which had been brought from Wittenburg by truck.