Berlin Alexanderplatz train station
| Berlin Alexanderplatz | |
|---|---|
 Station hall with regional platform (left) and S-Bahn platform (right)
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| Data | |
| Operating point type |
Stop (long-distance train ) Train station (S-Bahn) |
| Location in the network | Intermediate station |
| Design | Through station |
| Platform tracks | 2 (long-distance train) 2 (S-Bahn) |
| abbreviation | BALE (long-distance train) BALX (S-Bahn) |
| IBNR | 8011155 (long-distance train) 8089001 (S-Bahn) |
| Price range | 3 |
| opening | February 7, 1882 (S-Bahn) May 15, 1882 (long-distance railway) |
| Website URL | sbahn.berlin |
| Profile on Bahnhof.de | Alexanderplatz |
| Architectural data | |
| architect | Johann Eduard Jacobsthal |
| location | |
| City / municipality | Berlin |
| Place / district | center |
| country | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Coordinates | 52 ° 31 '17 " N , 13 ° 24' 43" E |
| Railway lines | |
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| Railway stations in Berlin | |
The Alexanderplatz station is a station of the Deutsche Bahn at Alexanderplatz in Berlin district of Mitte . The through station on the Stadtbahn is classified in station category 3 of DB Station & Service and is one of the metropolitan stations . In terms of the number of daily passengers in regional traffic, the Alexanderplatz station was in third place in 2018 behind the Ostkreuz and Friedrichstrasse stations with around 140,000 travelers.
In the Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg (VBB) it is a station for both regional and S-Bahn trains and includes the Berlin U-Bahn crossing station of the same name , which is one of the largest BVG underground stations and is served by three lines. In front of the Alexanderplatz train station, people can switch to inner-city transport with buses ( Metrobus ) or trams .
Because of its location at the Berlin TV tower and the Alexa shopping center as well as its proximity to the Museum Island , the Nikolaiviertel and the Red City Hall , it is also a popular starting point for tourists.
City train station
The station of the same name was built on Alexanderplatz from 1881 to 1882 for builders based on designs by Johann Eduard Jacobsthal for the Berlin Stadtbahn, built from 1875 onwards . The construction took place on the filled in Königsgraben, a former fortress moat of old Berlin . The station was laid out as a four-track through station with central platforms and equipped with a 164-meter-long, semicircular platform hall. Most of the station's operating rooms were located in the brick arches of the viaduct . On the east side of the station, a two-storey porch with domed ends was also built. The first suburban trains stopped at Alexanderplatz station on February 7, 1882, the first long-distance trains a good three months later when the timetable changed on May 15.
Between 1925 and 1926, the platform hall was renewed based on designs by Friedrich Hülsenkampf . The old hall had become dilapidated due to a lack of maintenance measures during the First World War and the inflationary period . When redesigning the hall, the Deutsche Reichsbahn attached particular importance to improved lighting of the platforms.
On June 11, 1928, the S-Bahn era began on the Stadtbahn and thus also in the Alexanderplatz station. At the beginning of the traction changeover , however, steam locomotives were still in operation, which were gradually replaced by electric railcars.
From 1929 to 1932 the counter halls and waiting rooms were converted. The architect Reichsbahnoberrat Fritz Hane produced the designs for this . This renovation was in connection with the necessary static reinforcement of the light rail arches carried out at that time. The exposure of the station foundations to strengthen them was used to equip the station with a basement. A direct transition to the subway transfer station ( see below ), which was built at the same time , was also created and equipped with escalators .
The Allied air raids on Berlin during World War II damaged the station complex on November 23, 1943 when bombed. During the Battle of Berlin from April 1945, the S-Bahn traffic in Alexanderplatz station was idle. Long-distance traffic had already ceased in 1942. The resumption of the S-Bahn traffic took place on November 4, 1945. From the end of 1945 the reconstruction or renovation of the station building took place, which lasted until 1951.
The next redesign took place as early as 1962, mainly in connection with the removal of the above-ground roundabout. By 1964, the station building was adapted to the socialist cityscape emerging on Alexanderplatz according to designs by the architects Hans Joachim May and Günter Andrich . The side walls received a simple high glazing and the substructure a granite veneer. A pedestrian passage was led across the substructure.
In addition, the S-Bahn now also used one side of the long-distance platform, which had been out of service since 1942, and which was increased from around 70 to 96 centimeters for this purpose. Since then a much more flexible operational management has been possible. Due to the high cycle of up to 90 seconds on the light rail, some groups of trains also ended up at the S-Bahn platform (inside) in order to move to Kehrgleis 13 as a shunting run and from there to start in the opposite direction at the former long-distance platform.
After the political turnaround , the now responsible Senate of Berlin planned again to redesign the train station and the city railway arches, this time with Deutsche Bahn's focus on marketing the space. The architects Robert Paul Niess and Rebecca Chestnutt created a concept of the "architecture of the layers of time" for the renovation. With this, segments of the different development stages of the station should be preserved or made visible. The renovation lasted from 1995 to March 12, 1998. The "Zeitschicht GDR" was not documented during this renovation, but completely removed. Numerous shops as well as a S-Bahn customer center and a DB travel center moved into the converted station. Since 1998, the S-Bahn has stopped exclusively on the eastern platform, while the western platform now serves regional trains.
Subway station
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The Alexanderplatz underground station is the largest underground station on the Berlin underground . The lines U2 , U5 and U8 go there . The station is designed in an H-shape; the U2 runs in the eastern arm, the U8 in the western arm and the U5 on the lower transverse level. The platforms of the U2 and U8 are also connected by a shopping arcade above the U5 station.
The platform for today's U2 line, planned by Alfred Grenander , was built between 1910 and 1913 and opened on July 1, 1913. At that time, a shell fragment for a future line to Friedrichshain was built under the platform . However, this was never built due to the First World War .
A few years later, AEG wanted to build its own underground line in a north-south direction (today's U8 line). For this purpose, a tunnel has already been dug to the west of the viaduct of the light rail . After the AEG was unable to complete the project for financial reasons, the city of Berlin took over the line that had been started. However, the experts decided to run the new line over Alexanderplatz in order to enable a connection to the current U2 line. From 1926 this new station was built next to the light rail and opened on April 18, 1930.
As early as 1926/1927, the construction of a new line to the east, today's U5 line, began. The four-track station was laid across the existing stations and connects them. The outer tracks are intended for another line (planning name: U3 ) to Weißensee . This line has not yet been implemented (as of 2020). The station of today's U5 was opened on December 21, 1930. The platform of the U5 is 11.25 meters below the surface.
The stations of the U5 and U8 lines as well as the underground pedestrian level connecting them, which was to become the model for many similar systems in other cities, were built as a uniformly planned building in the New Objectivity style . The architect was Alfred Grenander, whose style had changed significantly in the 17 years since the completion of the U2 platform. Instead of historicizing details, such as the column heads reminiscent of Ionic column capitals, the later components of the rapid transit junction have a well thought-out sequence of rooms, visual relationships and the clarity of the spatial composition.
After the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the complete division of Berlin , the platform of the U8 line was separated from the rest of the station and its entrances were bricked up, as the trains on the line running from the west through the east back to the west sector were without Stop. This made the platform one of the ghost stations . In order to disguise the existence of the platform, the walled-up areas were clad with true-to-original copies of the typical station wall tiles.
After the political change , the underground station was extensively renovated for 36 million euros. The BVG again used the characteristic turquoise tiles . The platforms of the U5 and U8 lines received new, light granite floors, and a new asphalt floor was made on the platform of the U2 in accordance with the listed building standards. Some stairs were moved to accommodate elevators. Today the station has four elevators, 86 stairs and nine exits. In addition, a control center for passenger information was built in stainless steel and glass in the northeast end of the shopping arcade . In June 2012, a new BVG customer center opened in the underground station.
Turning point
To the west of the station on the U5 line, which ends here, there is a four-track reversing track system . When it was built in the 1920s, this was already designed as a two-story building for planned route extensions, but the lower part was filled with sand. Since 2010, the U5 has been extended westwards from here. It will then establish the connection to the current U55 line via the Brandenburg Gate and Bundestag to the main station . In 2016, the renovation of the sweeping system began in order to connect it to the two -story Rotes Rathaus underground station . The so-called “ orphan tunnel ” is connected to the sweeping system , with which vehicles can be exchanged with the U8 line.
Since April 9, 2018, the sweeping system behind Alexanderplatz station has been out of order due to the extension of the U5 towards the main station. Until the extension of the U5 is completed, every train will leave the platform on which it arrived. The track change takes place - sometimes before, sometimes after - at the new switch point between the Schillingstraße and Alexanderplatz underground stations.
Art in the train station (light rail and subway)
- History of the square on tiles
- When the new central transfer hall of the train station opened on December 21, 1930, there were murals made of tiles that had been made at KPM based on old engravings, maps and paintings . Initially there were 5 pictures showing the development of Alexanderplatz between 1730 and 1920. The wall tiles, executed in the colors beige and brown, measured 70 by 110 centimeters. A sixth picture was added at short notice, showing the chaos during the construction of the train station in a bird's eye view. The massive war destruction of the station from 1943 also affected some tile pictures, which were salvaged and stored by Berliners interested in art. It was not until the complete renovation of the station complex in the 1960s that some people remembered the historical murals and made sure that copies were made in the Meissen porcelain factory based on the fragments that were now in the warehouse of the East Berlin Monument Office in Berlin-Heinersdorf. The previous six pictures were supplemented by two more: one showed the S-Bahn station in ruins, the second showed the construction work in the 1960s.
The magistrate chose the walls on both sides of a newly constructed pedestrian tunnel as the new installation location, which led from the entrance to the mezzanine to a new exit at the House of Electrical Engineering . When it was decided in 2005, in connection with the Kolhoff plans, to fill in the pedestrian tunnel, the director of the Stadtmuseum Berlin , Irina Tlustek, was able to retrieve the tiles that came to the museum's Spandau depot. - The artifacts of the original tiles were returned to the art barracks of VEB Tiefbau Heinersdorf after the copies were made. After the fall of the Wall , however, their track was lost.
- The tile pictures mentioned here showed:
- The area around the Königstor around 1730
- Ox market on the Contrescarpe in front of the Königstor, 1780
- The King's Bridge 1785
- 1830: The wool market on Alexanderplatz
- Around 1900: Alexanderplatz
- Alexanderplatz on September 1, 1930
- Berlin Alexanderplatz • May 1945
- Alexanderplatz in autumn 1968
- For almost 50 years, from 1958 to 2006, the subway area of the U2 line at Alexanderplatz station was one of the largest public art spaces in Berlin. Artists and art students from the GDR and later all of Germany showed photographs, collages , paintings, video installations, graffiti art and the like. a. The very different works of over 300 artists from these years gave the general public a contemporary insight into current affairs in art and society. In 2006 the city of Berlin sold the space to Wall AG , which has been advertising there ever since.
- On the occasion of the 150th birthday of Alfred Grenander , BVG erected a Grenander memorial stele in the shopping arcade of the underground station .
Connection
In the Berlin night transport network, Alexanderplatz is one of the central transfer points in Berlin, along with the Zoologischer Garten S and U-Bahn stations.
From the train station you can change to tram lines M2, M4, M5 and M6, bus lines 100, 200, 245, 248 and 300 as well as night bus lines N2, N5, N8, N40, N42 and N65.
Web links
- BVG map of the station (PDF; 235 kB)
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
- Alexanderplatz station on stadtschnellbahn-berlin.de
- Pictures of the underground station ( Memento from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Station price list 2020. In: Deutsche Bahn. Deutsche Bahn, January 1, 2020, accessed on July 10, 2020 .
- ↑ Berlin S-Bahn transports half a billion passengers. Der Tagesspiegel, April 3, 2018, accessed on April 4, 2018 .
- ^ A b J. Grapow: The renewal of the large station halls Schlesischer Bahnhof and Alexanderplatz . In: Die Bautechnik , 5th year, issue 46 (October 21, 1927), p. 678 f.
- ^ The reconstruction of the Alexanderplatz station in Berlin . In: Verkehrstechnik , Vol. 12, Issue 39 (September 25, 1931), pp. 478–479.
- ^ Berlin and its buildings, Part X, Volume B, systems and buildings for traffic, (2) long-distance traffic . Verlag Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1984.
- ^ Peter Neumann: Berlin's train stations yesterday, today, tomorrow. Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89773-079-0 .
- ↑ New customer center in Alexanderplatz underground station. Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, June 6, 2012, accessed on June 10, 2012 .
- ↑ News in brief - U-Bahn . In: Berliner Verkehrsblätter . June 2016, p. 115 .
- ↑ The U5 goes back to Alex. BVG.de, accessed on April 17, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Maritta Tkalec: Lost: Berlin originals with images of all tile images. In: Berliner Zeitung , February 10, 2020, p. 8 (print edition).
- ↑ News in brief - U-Bahn . In: Berliner Verkehrsblätter . No. 10 , 2013, p. 198 .