magnetbahn.de Turns 5
On July 13, 2025, magnetbahn.de celebrates its fifth anniversary – a milestone for a platform that has been committed to a clear goal from the start: to give the maglev in Germany a serious perspective again. What began as a response to misinformation and a lack of information online is now an established voice in public debate. Independent, fact-based, with accessible technical depth and a social mission.
After the political end of the Transrapid in 2011, the maglev disappeared not only from public view but also from politicians’ infrastructure planning. There was a lack of knowledge, of well-founded education, of a place that dealt with this complex topic in an understandable and accessible way. That was exactly the motivation in 2020 for founding magnetbahn.org – at the time the world’s only platform reporting on developments and political processes in Germany and China, and above all wanting to do one thing: to inform, educate and inspire.
Over the years it has become far more. The website grew into a movement. magnetbahn.de, the modernized and further developed successor platform since September 2024, is now a central information hub for everyone in Europe interested in German maglev trains – or wanting to understand them for the first time. The platform provides comprehensive yet easy-to-understand information on technology, history, advantages, politics and future prospects. It produces content for social media, writes articles, designs information material, organizes sticker campaigns, collects tens of thousands of signatures, publishes books, gives talks and takes part in public debates. All of this is free, ad-free and fully independent. Since 2023, magnetbahn.de has been successfully financed by MagnetBahn+ memberships and shop revenue – a great achievement that shows how many people share and support the cause.
The track record so far is impressive: a cumulative reach in the high single-digit millions in 2025 alone, a petition with 62,000 signatures calling for the Transrapid to be put back on the federal political agenda, the successful prevention of the repurposing conversion of the Transrapid TR04 at the Technik Museum Speyer (2023), talks at events such as the “Tag der Schiene” (Rail Day, 2023), participation in major media projects such as the YouTube documentary by the channel DAVE (2024), the design of materials for the Transrapid visitor center in Lathen (2022 – 2024), and the MagnetBahn sticker, redesigned every year, which has been in circulation in the tens of thousands since 2020.
But all of this is not an end in itself. The real engine behind magnetbahn.de is the vision that Germany gets the chance to see the Transrapid chapter not as a closed episode but as the starting point for a modern, independent transport system. The maglev is not nostalgia – it is a concrete proposed solution to the challenges of the 21st century: growing traffic, overloaded rail, climate protection, land consumption and competition between locations. No other technology combines so many advantages: high speed, energy efficiency, low maintenance, no wear from friction, no noise, no emissions.
That is why the journey does not end here. magnetbahn.de will keep growing, informing, provoking and persuading. That takes information, perseverance and a critical public. magnetbahn.de will keep delivering all of that.
The website magnetbahn.de – faster, more modern, with better search and improved presentation than the former magnetbahn.org – is only one tool among many. The real strength lies in the community of supporters, readers and fellow campaigners who believe in this goal: that Germany can lead technologically again – if only there is political will.
Five years of magnetbahn.de are just the beginning. The future of long-distance travel does not run on crumbling tracks – it levitates through the country at 500 km/h. And I work every day to make this vision a reality.
Thank you for five successful years,
David Harder – operator of magnetbahn.de
