Direct HSR service connecting Paris with Berlin, to be operated with ICE and TGV equipment coming next year (2023)
The distance is similar to Boston to Richmond. It won't be exactly Chinese style HSR. It will clock in at 7 hours suggesting there will be some significant running on upgraded classic tracks somewhere enroute...
Willkommen, Bienvenu, Welcome: You’ll soon be able to travel smoothly from one city to the other in just seven hours.
robbreport.com
On the French side there is a high-speed route that runs almost all the way to the German border.
But on the German side this isn't really so and there isn't really an obvious "as the crow flies" direct rail route. Instead a train would zig-zag using various other lines, some of them HSR, some conventional, taking in various major and some lesser cities en route.
This is largely because Germany and France have fundamentally different geographies. In France, Paris is the main city and the number two and number three cities are some way behind. So it is natural that the bulk of investment goes into getting people from all corners of the country into and out of Paris as efficiently as possible. Links between secondary cities exist as well of course, but these are very much second fiddle.
In Germany, Berlin is not the most important city by a long stretch, and if you look at the list of Germany's main cities, you have a list of quite a few cities that are more or less equal, each one of which deserves to be connected to the others as well as possible. So Germany's rail topography is much more complex and the planners need to balance all the interests rather than creating massive here to there superlinks. This is compounded by Germany having a federal system politically, in which individual regions have the means to bring in their interests and wishes and influence policy accordingly.
