Independent, Visible and Inconvenient: magnetbahn.de in 2025
2025 was an extraordinary year for magnetbahn.de, not only in reach and impact but also in depth of content. Five years after its founding, the platform has clearly confirmed and further developed its role as an independent and factual source of information on the maglev.
With around 17.1 million cumulative social media impressions, 530,000 Google impressions, roughly 100,000 page views on the website and around 30,000 followers as of November 2025, magnetbahn.de now reaches an audience in the millions. This visibility is not an end in itself; it is the prerequisite for making public the issues that were ignored, suppressed or deliberately marginalized for years, and it lends weight to research that would have had no consequences elsewhere.
It is precisely this reach that explains why the operator of magnetbahn.de remains a target of verbal attacks, especially from players and structures that have lost their relevance and whose influence on the debate is, in fact, absent. While self-absorption instead of impact dominates there, at magnetbahn.de the work is research, contextualization, evidence and publication. This criticism does nothing to change the platform’s substantive relevance; on the contrary, it confirms that magnetbahn.de looks where others look away, especially regarding the dismantling of the Transrapid Test Facility and the political facts surrounding the maglev.
In terms of content, 2025 marked a clear turning point. Reporting became more analytical and realistic. magnetbahn.de deliberately moved away from blind enthusiasm for the technology and instead worked consistently on the basis of facts. This independence made it possible to state openly that the maglev’s standstill is not caused by politics alone. Manufacturers and networks that have grown over the years also bear responsibility, for instance through strategic wrong decisions, inadequate communication and a lack of dialogue with the public.
Politically, the year was dominated by the Transrapid petition with almost 62,000 signatures. magnetbahn.de treated all relevant parties and political actors equally, contacted parliamentary groups across party lines and deliberately relied on the democratic process. The public response, however, stood in clear contrast to the political reaction; a renewed objective review of the technology was not taken up by the majority of political decision-makers. The handovers to the Federal Ministry of Transport and the Bundestag (German parliament) petitions committee took place exclusively by mail, as nobody there was interested in a handover.
Another focus was on the revelations about the dismantling of the Transrapid Test Facility in Emsland. Non-transparent allocation of funds, contradictory statements and sharply increased costs were publicly documented and put into context by magnetbahn.de, while precisely those players kept silent who had presented themselves for years as the guardians of the technology. 2025 thus made it impossible to overlook that relevance does not arise from association names or self-promotion, but from publicity, research and reliable facts.
magnetbahn.de explicitly sees itself as a democratic, non-partisan platform. All political actors are treated equally, positions are examined and contradictions named, even when the results are inconvenient. This very stance sets magnetbahn.de apart from outdated structures and explains the platform’s effectiveness today. In 2025 no other organization dared to stand up to politicians and the companies profiting from the demolition and actively demand the preservation of the Transrapid Test Facility Emsland – it is the last monument to the Transrapid in Germany, and its demolition would be the final removal of decades of Transrapid history and an erasure of Emsland’s heritage.
The year’s balance is unambiguous: 2025 showed that magnetbahn.de no longer merely accompanies debates but also triggers them.
Merry Christmas and peaceful holidays!
David Harder
Operator of magnetbahn.de
