The green table lamp. The rustic rotary dial telephone. Ashtrays and coffee dishes on crocheted doilies. As if time had been frozen, everything here is still as it was half a century ago. At that time, chaos suddenly broke out in the orderly life of the Danish state railway officials Godtfredsen and Brodersen. The notorious Olsen Gang and their boss Egon were causing havoc outside on the tracks.
Chaos in the control center
An entire carriage has disappeared! Unable to be found! Impossible! The lights on the control panel of the signal box are going crazy. A switch box is smoking. "I'm afraid that Karl Marx is behind it," says Godtfredsen.
A sentence that the GDR film company Defa prudently translated into a harmless "I don't know either, Mr Brodersen." Børge, the offspring of gang member Kjeld Jensen, becomes the savior of the sacred timetable that has gotten out of control.
The scene of the signal box crew having a coffee party with the youngest gang member, who was smuggled in as an alleged apprentice, is now an unforgettable part of East German culture of remembrance: Outside, Kjeld and Benny in the yellow socks are lugging dozens of gold boxes that have to be recovered from a "Franz Jäger" safe wagon.
Up in the signal box tower, generally known among fans as "Det Gule Palæ", there are sweet pastries and coffee for the young gangster with the stolen service cap. In ‘The Olsen Gang on Track’, the three gang members use a shunting tractor too as an implement to steal millions of Danish kroner.
The tractor is almost the fourth gang member in this much-loved comedy - and here he is: Egon has learnt the timetable off by heart and is able to navigate between the large trains. Benny deftly steers the tractor, while Kjeld changes the points. All is going to plan, until the Danish State Railways changes to the summer timetable and all the train times change.
Fans save Olsen Gang film tower
Actually, all of this should have disappeared long ago. Det Gule Palæ, − the yellow palace − stood on the freight yard in Copenhagen until a few years ago, waiting to be demolished. Built in 1909 according to plans by the architect Heinrich Wenck, it was considered dilapidated and not worthy of being a monument. But the planners had not reckoned with the fans of the Olsen Gang.
The German fan club and its Danish counterpart, the Olsen Gang fan club, took to the barricades to save the iconic palace from “The Olsen Gang On The Track". First there were protests, then petitions, then concerts and events. Jes Holtsø, who plays the teenager Børge in the film and is now a blues musician, was touring around Europe to raise money for the construction of the tower. 200,000 euros were ultimately raised.
At the end of the 1960s, the screenwriter Henning Bahs had the idea for a film about three small-time crooks who dream of a big coup but keep failing. The first film, "The Olsen Gang," was shown in GDR cinemas from 1970. It was so successful that twelve more adventures found enthusiastic audiences in the East by 1984.
"Mighty awesome, Egon!"
"The Olsen Gang on the Track" is considered by fans to be the best film in the series about the cigar-chomping safecracker Egon Olsen, who ends up in prison after every sure-fire million-dollar robbery and constantly comes up with new, ingenious plans, which his buddy Benny comments on with "Mighty awesome, Egon!"
The fact that Det Gule Palæ ended up at the southernmost point of Denmark is a stroke of luck for vacationers who vacation on the other side of the Baltic Sea. A day ticket from Rostock to Gedser costs 28 euros.
After two hours on the Baltic Sea, it is another one and a half kilometers to the Gedser Remise, the rustic railway museum, which is maintained by a busy association exactly where German and Danish railways sailed long-distance trains across the Baltic Sea by ferry from October 1903.
The Last ferry
In the 1950s there was a daily direct connection from Berlin to Copenhagen with the Baltic Express. But in 1995 the oldest German ferry connection to Scandinavia was discontinued.
Hans Østergaard, head of the association that runs the museum and the locomotive workshop, is satisfied with the visitor trend that has become apparent since not only railway freaks make the pilgrimage to the two dozen old locomotives in the depot, which can not only be admired but also entered.
The Yellow Palace and the replica of the safe wagon from "Franz Jäger Berlin" also attract Olsen Gang supporters, who reminisce in the rebuilt signal box by Godtfredsen and Brodersen. "Most visitors come from East Germany," says club member Uffe Junker, who knows exactly the special love of former GDR citizens for the Danish national shrine, the Olsen Gang.
Increasing number of visitors
And how they come. Since the inauguration of the time capsule from 1975, which was attended by Jes Holtsø and Morten Grunwald alias Benny, who died in 2018, the number of visitors to the depot has risen from 800 annually to over 10,000.
In summer, trolley rides can be taken from the Jernbanemuseet to Marrebæk, 13 kilometers away. The journey back to the ferry terminal is on the “Remise Expressen”, a cute little train that is of course decorated with the silhouette of the Olsen Gang.
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