The GESOLEI Exhibition
In autumn 1924, while the Rhineland region was still under French occupation, a group of politicians and businessmen, councillors Thelemann and Liertz, industrialists, Poensgen, Schloßmann, Haniel, Lueg, Wiedemeyer and the General Director of the Rheinbahn, Max Schwab, went to Duesseldorf’s mayor with a request. They discussed the possibility of organising an exhibition in Duesseldorf. An association called the "Duesseldorf Exhibition for Healthcare, Social Welfare and Exercise 1926" (abbreviated from the German ‘ Ge sundheitspflege, so ziale Fuersorge und Lei besuebungen’ to Gesolei) was founded to implement the exhibition. The city council was also involved in the association. The architect who was commissioned to realise the project was Wilhelm Kreis. He is the man who built the Wilhelm-Marx-Haus in 1924, which was the biggest office building in the German Empire at the time. The exhibition buildings were erected on the banks of the Rhine on the 1902 exhibition site, right next to Oberkassel Bridge. Some were designed as permanent buildings, and they remained standing after the exhibition. Today, they are the ensemble of buildings called "Am Ehrenhof".
The Rheinbahn took advantage of Max Schwab being one of the exhibition’s organisers to present itself in an exemplary way. Obviously, one of its main functions was to transport the more than 5 million visitors from all over the German Empire to and from the exhibition. The company also had its own exhibition area, and used information media that are still modern today. By way of graphics, information boards and models, the company demonstrated the benefits of local public transport, leisure time organisation with the Rheinbahn, the modern design of its vehicles and the technology behind them. The models, which were all built in the Rheinbahn’s workshops, were of museum quality and are still owned by the company today. For example, a full-scale model of a tram car that was cut in half demonstrated, with the assistance of mechanical rolling technology and thousands of contacts, how electric current is transported from the overhead wire to the motor, which was naturally in working order.
The most impressive effort to boost the Rheinbahn’s image was the mini train that was pulled through the exhibition by a steam locomotive. More than one million people rode through the park on it during the exhibition summer. The steam locomotive was a precise model of a Deutsche Reichsbahn express train locomotive on a scale of 1:5, though it had been modified to operate on the mini railway.
In the 1920’s, the Rheinbahn also implemented a series of projects in the same way that a long-established industrial enterprise would. Walter Ruttmann’s film about Duesseldorf "Kleiner Film einer großen Stadt" (Little Film of a Big City) provides fascinating insights into these projects. Towards the end of the film, Ruttmann – who only used a few narrative commentaries in his film – portrayed Duesseldorf’s industries by way of music. Neon billboards, which were very modern at that time, display the logos of major Duesseldorf companies such as Henkel, Mannesmann, Stumm, Rheinmetall and the Rheinbahn AG .