the two cities. This was probably at the urging of Holstein and especially of the Kiel district, which considered that the trading activities of Hamburg and Lübeck and their tax and customs laws discriminated against Kiel. Following pressure from the other states of the German Confederation, as well as Russia and France, the Danish government committed itself on 23 June 1847 to the construction of a railway from Lübeck to Büchen in the Duchy of Lauenburg to connect with the Berlin–Hamburg Railway. Among the supporters for Lübeck's proposal were such renowned figures as Alexander von Humboldt, Klemens von Metternich and the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV. Consent was given three days before the beginning of the German-nationalist public song festival in Lübeck, and three months before the start of the Germanists’ day (Germanistentag) in Lübeck (27–30 September 1847), chaired by Jacob Grimm, following the first Germanists’ day meeting in the previous year in Frankfurt am Main. The Germanists’ days were part of a political movement in opposition to Denmark's control of Schleswig-Holstein, which gave rise to the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Among other reasons for the selection of the venue for the Germanists’ day had been that the blocking of rail services to Lübeck by Denmark was seen as a "national question", despite the remote location of Lübeck in Germany and the poor accessibility of the missing rail link. The line was to be an indirect, 35 km-long connection from Lübeck to Hamburg. This compromise meant that the competing Altona-Kiel Railway Company (Altona-Kieler Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) had an advantage in that the connection from Lübeck to Hamburg via Büchen now had about the same track length as the rail link between Altona and Kiel (both then in Holstein). Construction of the network After the Lübeck-Büchen Railway Company was established on 27 February 1850, work began on the construction of the line from Lübeck via Ratzeburg and Mölln to Büchen. A labour force of 2,500 mostly unskilled workers were engaged on the line's earthworks for a total of 400,000 working days up to April 1851. On 15 October 1851 the line went into operation, although the Danish concession for operations from 1848 to 1857 was granted late because of the revolutions of 1848. The LBE station in Lübeck was close to the Holsten Gate (Holstentor). The line ran by the ramparts of the Lübeck city walls. The felling of numerous street trees and the