Mitropa
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Public transport | |
Founded | 1916 |
---|---|
Successor | SSP Group |
Headquarters | , |
Area served | Central Europe |
Services | Catering, foodservice |
Revenue | €120 million (2003) |
Number of employees | 1,950 (2004) |
Mitropa was a
Since a 2002 reorganization, when the onboard catering branch was taken over by DB Fernverkehr, the company only provided stationary food services for rail and road customers. The remaining business was sold to Compass Group in 2004 and merged into the Select Service Partner (SSP) subsidiary in 2006.
History
The company was founded during
trains.After the war, CIWL was able to take over most routes in Central Europe, while Mitropa maintained most of its routes within Germany and Austria as well as routes to the
In those times, Mitropa developed its burgundy-red
While from 1933 the corporate management was brought into line in the course of the Nazi
In the
Based at
After German reunification in October 1990, both Mitropa and DSG continued to operate in their respective areas of Germany until 1 January 1994, when Reichsbahn and Bundesbahn were merged to form Deutsche Bahn AG. Mitropa and DSG were also re-merged under the Mitropa logo. This was one of the very few instances, and the most prominent, in which a West German company was "taken over" by an East German one, as Mitropa was the surviving entity after the merger.
The new Mitropa continued catering to travellers on rail, road, and water and provided services at railway stations. As expenses could not be met, the on board ship business on the Baltic ferries was sold to Scandlines in 1999/2000. On 1 July 2002, the traditional core business of railway catering and sleepers was handed over to DB Reise & Touristik AG, renamed DB Fernverkehr in 2003, a hundred-percent subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn AG. Sleeper-coaches on Deutsche Bahn trains were managed by City Night Line services.
On 1 April 2004 the remainder of Mitropa AG was sold to the German branch of the
Movies
In the movie Enemy at the Gates, Major Erwin König (Ed Harris) is shown in a plush Mitropa dining car en route to Stalingrad when he notices on the opposite track returning Mitropa couchette cars full of wounded soldiers.
The movie
In the movie Goodbye Lenin the lead character, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl), instructs his sister's boyfriend Rainer (Alexander Beyer) to lie about his employment as a manager at Burger King and claim that he is a food purchaser for a Mitropa restaurant.
In the seventh episode of the movie Seventeen Moments of Spring, the logos of the company are visible, when the General, Stierlitz's travel companion walks through the railway station.
Other
The opening of a Café Mitropa in West Berlin in 1979, then a popular venue for artists and bohèmiens, met with protest by the East German Mitropa AG who enforced the renaming as Café M.
A "Friends of Mitropa" (Freunde der Mitropa) association for classic dining car restoration was founded on 28 November 1996.
Mitropa model railway coaches have been manufactured by many companies including Märklin, Fleischmann, Trix, and others.
References
- ^ "The Rheingold Express". Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. England. 26 June 1928. Retrieved 5 November 2017 – via British Newspaper Archive.
- ^ "New Jewish Ban". Portsmouth Evening News. England. 6 March 1939. Retrieved 5 November 2017 – via British Newspaper Archive.