Berlin Ostbahnhof (1867)

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Old Ostbahnhof Berlin
Entrance building on Cüstriner Platz around 1900
Entrance building on Cüstriner Platz around 1900
Data
Location in the network Terminus
Design Terminus
opening October 1, 1867
Conveyance 1882
location
City / municipality Berlin
Place / district Friedrichshain
country Berlin
Country Germany
Coordinates 52 ° 30 '44 "  N , 13 ° 26' 28"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '44 "  N , 13 ° 26' 28"  E
Railway lines
Railway stations in Berlin
i16 i16 i18

Berlin Ostbahnhof (sometimes unofficially also known as Küstriner Bahnhof ) in Berlin was a terminus , which was opened in 1867 together with the last section of the Berlin – StrausbergKüstrin section of the Royal Prussian Eastern Railway . The passenger station was located at today's Franz-Mehring-Platz, the associated freight yard to the south of it adjoining the Schlesischer Bahnhof (today Berlin Ostbahnhof ).

The station was only used for passenger traffic until 1882, after which both parts of the station were only used for freight traffic. The ruins of the station hall, which was destroyed by the effects of the war in 1944 and 1945, and the reception building, which was used as a variety theater until the Second World War, were later demolished.

In the area of ​​the southern part of the station, a separate platform was built in 1903 for the passenger trains of the Wriezener Bahn , which later became the independent Berlin Wriezener Bahnhof station . In connection with the renaming of the neighboring Schlesisches Bahnhof as Ostbahnhof , the former Ostbahnhof was renamed Berlin Wriezener Bahnhof on December 1, 1950 .

In 1996 the freight traffic was stopped. Some of the facilities were built over in the following period.

location

Station location, map from 1875

The station building with the station hall was east of Cüstriner Platz (today: Franz-Mehring-Platz ) in today's Friedrichshain district . The tracks of the passenger station ran north of the former street Am Ostbahnhof , which was roughly in the extension of today's street Am Wriezener Bahnhof .

The freight yard was located further south on Fruchtstrasse (today: Strasse der Pariser Kommune ), directly to the north, following the facilities of the Schlesisches Bahnhof, to which there was no track connection.

architecture

View from the Bromberger road on the northeastern side of the concourse with the reception building at the far right, 1928

The station building was designed by Adolf Lohse , a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , and after Lohse's death by Hermann Cuno . It was “characterized by a wealth of architectural features that was not customary in such buildings”. It consisted of a three-story head building with two mostly single-story side wings along the platform hall. The facilities for arriving passengers were set up in the north wing and for departing passengers in the south. In the middle part of the south wing, the main hallway with the ticket office emerged, which was followed by a pillared vestibule. Baggage handling and waiting rooms were also located on the main floor. The king's rooms were in the front building. Its upper floors contained consulting and business rooms as well as officials' apartments.

The platform hall measured 188.3 meters × 37.7 meters. The Bayenthal machine factory was commissioned with the technical execution of the construction .

history

The construction costs were about half a million thalers . Inaugurated on October 1, 1867, the station was only in operation for passenger traffic until 1882 : With the opening of the Stadtbahn , the Frankfurt train station at that time - located almost 400 meters to the south-west - was converted into a through station and passenger traffic on the Eastern Railway via the new Silesian train station was converted to the Tram route. The reception hall and the platform hall of the old Ostbahnhof were closed and the other facilities on what was then Bromberger Strasse (today: Helsingforser Strasse ) were only used for freight traffic on the Ostbahn.

In the southern part of the facilities, directly adjacent to the Silesian railway station, a platform for the passenger trains of the Wriezener Bahn went into operation in 1903 . Together with a small station building, it became the independent Wriezen train station in 1924 , which was only used for passenger traffic. In 1949 passenger traffic was stopped there.

After the closure, the platform hall of the old Ostbahnhof was initially used as a warehouse and by the Red Cross . For the Varieté Plaza , which opened on February 1, 1929 , it was converted into an auditorium for up to 2940 guests and the stage was built in. The 31 meter high stage was the only major renovation that could be seen from the outside of the building. In 1938 the Nazi organization “ Kraft durch Freude ” took over the variety show.

Neues Deutschland publishing house on the site of the former train station; To the right behind the building, the tracks up to the Warschauer Strasse bridge can still be seen

The station building of the Ostbahnhof was destroyed by bombs in 1944 and demolished after the Second World War . The New Germany publishing house was built in its place from 1969–1974 .

After the recognition of the Oder-Neisse border by the GDR leadership in July 1950, the two stations were to be renamed with names from the areas that had come to Poland. In a competition, the Reichsbahndirektion Berlin called for new names for the Silesian and Szczecin stations . Ultimately, it was decided to use the names Ostbahnhof and Nordbahnhof , which had already been assigned to other stations serving freight traffic. Therefore the previous (old) Ostbahnhof and the old Nordbahnhof also had to be renamed. All four stations were given their new names on December 1, 1950 - according to contemporary press reports "in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the Berlin population". The original Ostbahnhof, which continues to serve freight traffic, has since been referred to as Berlin Wriezener Bf (based on the name of the station used for passenger traffic until 1949) and kept this name until its closure. The name Wriezener Güterbahnhof was also common.

After 1990 the freight traffic in the station was stopped.

The old railway line west of the Warschauer Brücke and along the southern edge of Helsingforser Straße, which has largely been cleared of tracks, is still clearly recognizable up to the level of Berghain today (as of 2019) .

literature

  • Hassenkamp: The station building of the Royal Eastern Railway in Berlin . In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , vol. 20 (1870), col. 3–16, plates 1–6. Digitized
  • Alfred Wedemeyer: Plaza, a Volksvarieté in Berlin . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung , March 30, 1929. Issue 26/27, pp. 233-239 (describes the conversion of the former station building into a theater).
  • Lothar Uebel: Railway workers, artists and newspaper makers. On the history of the Küstriner train station . review

Web links

Commons : Alter Ostbahnhof Berlin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Royal Prussian Minister of Public Works (ed.): Berlin and his railways 1846–1896 . tape 1 . Verlag Ästhetik und Kommunikation, Berlin 1982, p. 233–234 (first edition: Julius Springer Verlag, Berlin 1896).
  2. Illustrirte Zeitung No. 1282 of January 25, 1868, p. 62 (with two illustrations p. 61)
  3. ^ Official station directory , Deutsche Reichsbahn, 1944, digitized version on Gen-Wiki
  4. The Plaza - the theater of the 3000
  5. ^ Neue Zeit , October 27, 1950, p. 3.
  6. Berliner Zeitung , November 30, 1950, p. 6.
  7. ^ Reichsbahndirektionskarten der RBD Berlin from 1953 to 1991.