Berlin Friedrichstraße station

Berlin-Friedrichstraße
Architectural information
Location	Berlin
State	Berlin
Country	Germany
Local authority	Mitte
Friedrichstraße
Operations
DS100 code	BFRI
Station code	0527
Type	Bf
Category	2
Deutsche Bahn - Stations in Germany
BW BY BE BR HB HH HE MV NI NW RP SL SN ST SH TH

Berlin Friedrichstraße ([bɛɐˈliːn ˈfʁiːdʁɪçˌʃtʁaːsə]  ( listen)) is a railway station in the German capital Berlin. It is located on the Friedrichstraße, a major north-south street in the Mitte district of Berlin, adjacent to the point where the street crosses the Spree river. Underneath the station is the subway station Friedrichstraße.^[1]

Due to its central location in Berlin and its proximity to attractions such as the Unter den Linden boulevard, the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, the station is a favorite destination for tourists. At the same time, it is the main junction for regional traffic in Berlin, measured by the number of passengers.^[2]

During the Cold War, Friedrichstraße became famous for being a station that was located entirely in East Berlin, yet continued to be served by S-Bahn, U-Bahn trains from West Berlin as well as long distance trains from countries west of the Iron Curtain. The station also was a major border crossing between East and West Berlin.

Train services

The station is serviced by regional trains as well as the Berlin S-Bahn and the Berlin U-Bahn.

S-Bahn and regional trains stop at the upper platforms A - C on the Berlin Stadtbahn viaduct, elevated above city streets. This upper level of the station is enclosed by two train shed halls. The smaller shed on the north side is used for the S-Bahn, the larger on the south for regional trains. Platform D is a station on the North-South tunnel of the S-Bahn, located underground approximately aligned with the eastern bank of the Spree river.

The underground station for the U6 line is located at the eastern end of the station, directly under the Friedrichstraße. In addition, the south side of the station serves as station and terminus for a number of trams and buses of the Berlin transportation company.

History

The initial station

The first Friedrichstrasse station in 1900

Inside the train shed of the first station

In 1878, the first station was build after plans by Johannes Vollmer between the Friedrichstraße and the river Spree as part of the Berlin Stadtbahn construction. The architect was working on the neighbouring Hackescher Markt station at the same time. Just as the elevated viaduct the station is integrated into, the station rests on large arches build with masonry. The station had two platforms with two tracks each, covered by a large, curved train shed which rested on steel trusses of different length to cover the curvature of the viaduct underneath. The main entrance was on the northern side, the pick-up for horse carriages on the south side. Station opening was on February 7, 1882, as part of the ceremonial opening of the Berlin Stadtbahn. Long distance trains started on May 15 of the same year.^[3]

Extensions and remodel

The remodeled station in 1926

Destruction around the station after World War II

Flooded S-Bahn tunnel under the Friedrichstrasse station

Because of the large amounts of traffic going through the station even before World War I, plans were made in 1914 to extend the station. There were a new, slightly elevated platform on the northern side for the S-Bahn, and the existing platforms had been made slightly narrower, leaving one platform for the S-Bahn, and two platforms for long distance trains. The steel-truss, double arched train shed was build between 1919 and 1925, featuring large glass fronts. On the northern side of the building, two entry halls in expressionist style were build, and the whole northern side was covered by a characteristic dark tile. The southern facade was only plastered until the last renovation in 1999, when it was also covered by tile.

In 1923, the Friedrichstrasse underground station for line C (today's U6 and southeastern U7) was finished, creating the first part of the underground maze the station still has today.

In the beginning of the 1930s, construction returned again to the Friedrichstrasse station, as the North-South tunnel of the S-Bahn was driven under the station. A long pedestrian tunnel connecting to the homonymous underground station of Berlin U-Bahn was also driven under the northern end of the station, and that underground station received the characteristic yellow tile still featured today^[4]. On 27 July 1936, just before the 1936 Summer Olympics, the belowground S-Bahn station was opened.^[4]

After the "Kristallnacht", starting December 1, 1938, thousands of Jewish children started or passed through the station to leave Germany as part of the Refugee Children Movement.

The station escaped larger damage during the bombing of Berlin in World War II. U-Bahn and S-Bahn ceased operations on 23 and 25 April 1945, respectively, due to shortage of electricity supplies. Most likely on fore-noon of 2 May 1945, the day of Berlin's capitulation, the SS exploded the ceiling of North-South tunnel under Landwehrkanal, which caused the subsequent flooding of the tunnel, including Friedrichstraße belowground S-Bahn station along with a large part of the Berlin underground system via the connecting tunnel between the S-Bahn and the Berlin U-Bahn at their respective Friedrichstrasse stations.^[4][5] Like this the waters disgorged into one third of Berlin's Undergound flooding 63 km of tunnels with 25 further stations. To this day it is unclear who set off the explosion: One theory says that it was executed by the German SS in accordance with Hitlers Nero Decree.

Another, however, smaller leak in the tunnel ceiling under the Spree was either caused by German forces exploding the Ebertsbrücke street bridge crossing at the river at the same section, where the tunnel passes underneath. Or some months later, after the end of fighting, Soviet military engineers created the hole in the process of clearing the Spree river of large concrete obstacles created by the bridge explosion. It is also unknown how many people (if any) drowned in the tunnel, most likely is that the bodies found later in the tunnel were wounded soldiers that had been dead before the tunnel flooding, since the tunnel S-Bahn station under the Friedrichstrasse station was used in the last days of the war as a emergency military hospital, with trains used as hospital rooms.^[6][7]

With the belowground rail system flooded, the aboveground railways heavily damaged due to bombings, the traffic ceased shortly before the end of the war, but reconstruction started in 1945. Trains were redirected at first to the aboveground facilities. By the end of May and early June 1945 the BVG, the operator of Berlin's U-Bahn, sealed up the pedestrian tunnel between tunnel S-Bahn and U-Bahn station to stop water flooding into the underground tunnel. Reichsbahn, the operator of the S-Bahn, had declared it lacked the means to close the tunnel leaks. On 4 June BVG started the drainage of its underground system. On 12 July the underground reopened its Friedrichstraße station for two one-track shuttle operations, one from north and one from south meeting there, regular two-track traffic restarted on since 5 December 1945.^[8] Reichsbahn drained its North-South tunnel only later and reopened belowground S-Bahn service on 2 June 1946. On 1 December the same year North-South tunnel and Friedrichstraße belowground S-Bahn station shut again for a serious refurbish lasting until 16 October 1947, when the North-South tunnel was fully operational again.

Border crossing during the cold war

Sketch of the border crossing Friedrichstrasse station. Traffic into East-Berlin is marked red, traffic into West-Berlin marked blue, and areas accessible to East-German citizens are marked green

The station in the early 1950's

Border crossing at the station in 1964

Passport stamp of the border crossing Friedrichstrasse

The outside of the Tränenpalast or "Palace of Tears" where many goodbyes were when people left for West Berlin.

During the onset of the cold war and its tensions between the Western and the Soviet occupied sectors of Berlin, the Friedrichstrasse station played an important role for citizens of Berlin to reach their friends and relatives in other sectors of Berlin. At the end of 1946, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany had created an East-German border police tasked with preventing Republikflucht (escape from the East German republic). With the erection of the Inner German border in 1952, East Germany was to a large degree sealed off from the west. However, Berlin, and particular the public transport system that criss-crossed between the Allied and Soviet sectors was still a hole in that iron curtain. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961 totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population^[9], many using the Friedrichstrasse station with its bustling traffic as the starting point for their escape.

When the East German government erected the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, it also severed the U-Bahn, S-Bahn and long distance train connections that criss-crossed through Berlin. The district of Berlin Mitte, where the Friedrichstrasse station is located, was surrounded on three sides by Western Sectors: For the S-Bahn at the Friedrichstrasse station, the next station to the west was across the wall in West Berlin, to the north were three more stops in the Soviet sector and only two to the south. The situation was similar for the U6 subway underneath the Friedrichstrasse, which had three stations to the north and two stations to the south before crossing the wall.

Therefore, all of the stations underground facilities - the S-Bahn platform of the North-South tunnel and the underground station - were only usable for passengers from the western sectors as a transfer station wholly located in East-Berlin, or to access the border crossing at the ground level.

The facilities above ground, on the arches of the Stadtbahn, were separated along the platforms:^[10]

• Platform A was used for long distance trains. This included the so called Interzonenzuege, trains running non-stop from Berlin through East-German territory to West Germany. For those trains the Friedrichstrasse station was a terminus. This platform was also a stop for trains with international destinations such as Copenhagen, Stockholm (using the ferry connection between Sassnitz and Trelleborg) or the legendary Paris - Moscow express. The latter could not be boarded by East-German passengers at this station, they could only board the train at its next stop Berlin Ostbahnhof.
• Platform B became the terminus for the Stadtbahn arriving from West-Berlin to and from Wannsee and Staaken. Passengers were able to transfer to the underground lines of the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn, or to long distance trains without entering East-Germany.
• Platform C in the smaller train shed on the north side was used by traffic going to East Berlin and East Germany, which became now the terminus for the Stadtbahn lines to Erkner, Königs Wusterhausen, Strausberg Nord, Ahrensfelde, Wartenberg and to the Berlin-Schönefeld airport.

Between the platforms B and C was a metal-glass barrier that practically fulfilled the same function as the Berlin wall: The station had two completely isolated areas, separating the two cold war systems in the same station building with a maze of connecting hallways, barriers, numerous cameras, armed guards with sniffer dogs, plain-cloth agents and a loggia under the roof for surveillance by armed border patrol and Stasi officers.^[11]

Tracks between the western and eastern system were, aside from the long distance tracks, completely separated. S-Bahn trains using the heavily guarded passing track west of platform C required permission from the commander of the border guard detail. An exchange of rolling stock between the divided S-Bahn segments of Berlin was only possible via the long distance tracks on platform A. These tracks were equipped with derailers to prevent escape attempts.

At the ground level, between the elevated and the underground part of the station, were the facilities for crossing into East-Berlin. This included three individual passport checks, customs control, waiting rooms (since the crossing could take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours), interrogation rooms, arrest cells, offices to register and record people crossing the border, and a counter for visa fees and the (mandatory) currency exchange.^[11]

Due to location in downtown Berlin, with its many shops, offices, official buildings, embassies, hotels as well as cultural and entertainment (Friedrichstadtpalast, Metropol theater house, opera house, Museum Island), as well as being a border crossing, traffic in the station was enormous. In the beginnings after the wall had been built, both the eastbound and the westbound border traffic was controlled on the ground level of the station. These rather constrained circumstances, compounded by the traffic in and around the station, lead to the construction of a building on the square north of the station, which was connected underground to the main station. This new building was used for westbound border crossings, with separate check points for citizens of West-Berlin, citizens of West-Germany, foreigners and diplomats, transit travelers and East-German citizens. On the door was a guard station to separate people permitted to cross the border from those ineligible, leading to many tearful "goodbye"s in front of the building. This gave the building the questionable moniker Tränenpalast ("Palace of Tears").^[4][10][11]

On the southern side of the station building was the so called "service entry" (Diensteingang) for personnel of the national railway. This entry, which lead through its own control room, and then via several corridors to a door on the ground floor of the "western" side^[12], was used to infiltrate and ex-filtrate agents of the East German intelligence service, and to allow members of the West-German communist party and West-Berlin socialist party to pass without being checked or recorded. This secret pathway between the two cold war fronts was also the escape route for some members of the West-German terror organization Red Army Faction to avoid arrest in West-Germany. On July 7, 1976, the officially wanted Movement 2 June members Inge Vieth, Monika Berberich, Gabriele Rollnik and Juliane Plambeck escaped following their escape from prison, and on May 27, 1978 Till Meyer, escaped into East-Germany via the Friedrichstrasse station, though they didn't stay there. Vieth later escaped to East-Germany again and stayed there until the fall of the Berlin Wall.^[13][14]. In opposite direction, on January 18, 1979, the East-German double agent Werner Stiller used this path to escape to the West.^[12][15]

The train station held another attraction during those times: The ground level and the underground platforms on the "western" side of the station had so called Intershops^[11], created specifically for travellers from West-Berlin who did not want to pass through the East-German border controls. Initially just mobile carts offering alcohol and tobacco, they were soon shops integrated into the station offering food, alcohol, tobacco, books, toys, jewelry, cosmetics, gift items and more. One could disembark from the subway, make a purchase, and then get back on the next train and go back to West-Berlin, all without processing through the East-German border controls. Purchases could be paid with any fully convertible currency, such as U.S. dollars, British pounds, Swiss francs, and especially the West German mark. The merchandise was offered duty free, which made especially the alcohol and tobacco products attractive to passengers from West-Berlin. This was also known to the West-Berlin customs agency, which sometimes checked travelers coming from the Friedrichstrasse at their first station in West-Berlin.^[11]

Between 1985 and 1987, a small renovation of the train shed took place, where the middle wooden roof section was replaced with glass. The lighting was replaced, and the metal parts of the train shed were painted.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall until today

Thousands of East Berliners line up at the station to cross into West Berlin on 10 November 1989, a day after the Fall of the Wall

Crowds going through checkpoints inside the Palace of Tears in 1990.

All smiles while undergoing immigration checks in 1990.

The renovated station, with its restored terra cotta clinker bricks as wall covering

Platform and train shed on the Berlin Stadtbahn viaduct

The Berlin U-Bahn station of the Friedrichstraße station

Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the traffic for the S-Bahn in Berlin as well as long distance train traffic to and from Berlin increased dramatically.^[4][16] At first, to immediately ease travel between East- and West-Berlin, the walls and barriers that were built to separate the station were removed. By July 1990, the severed tracks on platform C were reconnected, and after almost 29 years, there was again uninterrupted traffic on the Stadtbahn viaduct line from Berlin Alexanderplatz station to Berlin Zoo station. Very little maintenance had been done to the station during the East German years, and especially the underground section looked like a relic from a different time.

Between August 1991 and February 1992, the North-South S-Bahn tunnel including the underground section of the Friedrichstrasse station was closed for a complete overhaul. Between October 1995 and September 1999, the ground level and the raised level on the Stadtbahn viaduct was completely renovated, costing the Deutsche Bahn a total of 220 Million German Marks. The facade of the building was covered with terra cotta clinker bricks as the original building had^[17], this time including the southern face of the building. An additional tunnel for traffic to the U-Bahn U6 was driven under the station, and elevators were added between the floors. The 5,200 square metres (56,000 sq ft) ground floor was converted into a shopping area with 50 businesses. Since reopening, regional trains now stop on platform A and B.

Beginning in 2002, the North-South S-Bahn tunnel was again renovated, which removed the last traces of East Germany - the green tile covering the walls - from the Friedrichstrasse station.

On November 30, 2008, a memorial was unveiled for the 10,000 Jewish children saved by the Refugee Children Movement that started their journey on this station. Frank Meisler, the sculptor of the memorial, was himself saved by one of the trains bound for Liverpool and London.^[18]

Services

• Aboveground, on platform C, depart the Berlin Stadtbahn lines S5 (Strausberg ↔ Westkreuz), the S7 (Ahrensfelde ↔ Potsdam), the S75 (Spandau ↔ Wartenberg), and the S9 (Berlin Schönefeld Airport ↔ Spandau).
• The underground platform of the station is serviced by the Berlin S-Bahn lines S1 (Wannsee ↔ Oranienburg), S2 (Blankenfelde ↔ Bernau), and S25 (Teltow ↔ Hennigsdorf).
• The subway station is serviced by the U6 (Tegel ↔ Mariendorf).
• Platforms A and B of the station are a stop for the Regional-Express RE1 between Magdeburg and Frankfurt (Oder), the RE2 between Cottbus and Rathenow, and the RE7 between Dessau and Wünsdorf. In addition, the regional train RB14 between Nauen and Senftenberg stops at the station as well.

Since the remodel in 1999, the station houses numerous shops, boutiques and restaurants, making the station blend in with the neighboring Friedrichstrasse shopping street. In addition, the station houses a Berlin S-Bahn customer center, and a Deutsche Bahn travel center. On the plaza on the south side of the station is a large Taxi stand, and the station is also connected to the Berlin bus and tram system.

The former Tränenpalast was used as a club and stage for various performances, such as readings, concerts and cabaret until 2006^[19]. The building is currently under construction.

In pop culture

There are numerous movies that include scenes filmed at the Friedrichstrasse station:

• In the Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne escapes the police by leaping off the bridge in front of the station onto a boat below.
• The movie The Legend of Rita has numerous scenes where the RAF terrorists use the station to escape to East Berlin.
• In Wie Feuer und Flamme, Nele travels through the Friedrichstrasse station into the east.

In addition, the East German spy Werner Stiller describes his escape through the station in his memoirs Beyond the Wall.

In Mr. Norris Changes Trains, novelist Christopher Isherwood has William Bradshaw eating ham and eggs with Arthur Norris at the first class restaurant of the station.

References

External links

• Station information (S-Bahn) (German)
• The Berlin S-Bahn at the The Locomotive & Carriage Institution

Long-distance stations in Berlin ICE/IC stops Gesundbrunnen • Hauptbahnhof • Ostbahnhof • Spandau • Südkreuz Other stations Alexanderplatz • Friedrichstraße • Lichtenberg • Potsdamer Platz • Schönefeld Flughafen • Wannsee • Zoologischer Garten