Szczecin tunnel
The Stettiner Tunnel (also called Schwartzkopffstrasse pedestrian tunnel ) is a partially filled in pedestrian tunnel under the park at the Nordbahnhof , the site of the former Stettiner Bahnhof in Berlin . Opened as the first pedestrian tunnel in Berlin in 1896, in the absence of other cross-connections it served as a link between Schwartzkopffstrasse in the Oranienburger suburb and Gartenstrasse in the Gesundbrunnen district .
history
Over the years, more and more residents settled around the Stettiner Bahnhof, one of the largest Berlin terminal stations . Initially, a simple pedestrian crossing was sufficient as an extension of Schwartzkopffstrasse over the tracks of the long-distance train station as a cross connection between the densely populated tenements in Gartenstrasse and the mechanical engineering factories along Chausseestrasse .
When, however, in 1895 the Royal Railway Directorate decided to redesign and raise the station in Szczecin, the conditions for a pedestrian tunnel were specified, which the city building deputation had already requested in 1891 with a draft sketch. Provided that the entire length of the tunnel is arched, that there are no light and air shafts between the tracks and that the municipality pays for all costs, Karl von Thielen , the Prussian Minister of Public Works at the time, commissioned the Royal Railway Directorate To start negotiations with the magistrate.
Since the tunnel had to be completed before the long-distance train station in Szczecin was raised and the new station was built for the suburban train station in Szczecin, the railway operations office, which also built the station buildings with the help of Armin Wegner , was commissioned to build the tunnel.
The tunnel was completed on October 1, 1896 and "opened to pedestrian traffic" two days later. On February 12, 1898, the pedestrian tunnel was named 'Stettiner Tunnel'; At the same time, the previously unnamed street section that widened here from Pflugstraße to the access stairs of the tunnel was incorporated into Schwartzkopffstraße.
In the 1920s, the tunnel was often the scene of fights between two rival youth gangs, whose members lived at the respective exits of the pedestrian tunnel.
On May 26, 1932, on the stairs of the exit to Schwartzkopffstrasse, there were clashes between Communists and National Socialists , in which allegedly two shots were fired. National Socialists distributed the Gau newspaper The Attack in the area around the garden square and on the way to Schwartzkopffstrasse through the tunnel they were pursued by the communists, which led to the first brawls. An auxiliary porter of the railway who was on duty at the tunnel heard “two shots resp. Detonations ". The police investigation was stopped in June 1932 because it could not be determined whether shots had been fired or who started the brawl.
When construction work on the north-south tunnel with the Humboldthain - Unter den Linden section began in 1934 , the Szczecin tunnel could not be completely driven under. During the relatively short construction phase from October 1934 to December of the same year, the decision was made to interrupt the pedestrian tunnel and initially relocate it over the entire width of the new S-Bahn route using a temporary wooden structure.
In the end, a ten-meter-wide platform-like structure was built from reinforced concrete over the tunnel below. Seen from Gartenstraße, the associated staircase with twelve steps runs straight to the step with a platform and after about three meters leads straight down again with an intermediate platform with seven steps each. This western piece of the elevation of the floor protrudes into the outer track in the south direction (S-Bahn in the direction of Friedrichstrasse) shortly after entering the north-south tunnel and is still clearly visible today on the tunnel ceiling.
During one of the first air raids by the Royal Air Force on Berlin, part of the tunnel ceiling was destroyed on the night of November 2, 1940. 18 people were buried, only 8 of whom survived. The destroyed ceiling area was repaired from January to March 1951 and poured with concrete.
The Cold War did not stop at the tunnel either. Initially, only arrows (still recognizable today) indicated that the portal in Gartenstrasse, now in the French sector of the divided city, is no longer in the Democratic Sector, the tunnel was closed by the GDR authorities on September 18, 1952 walled up. Nevertheless, committed railway workers decided in 1955 to turn the ruins of the old S-Bahn depot into a cultural center for railway workers. Due to the closure of the associated train station, this could only be reached from the pedestrian tunnel. However, it is not known when the transition to the depot was built while maintaining the architectural specifications.
In the construction files of the pedestrian tunnel, however, at the beginning of 1900, among other things, the "District Association of Oranienburger Vorstadt" or the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft made demands on the municipal construction deputation for a tunnel from the Szczecin tunnel running parallel to Chausseestrasse.
After the wall was built in 1961, additional masonry was put into the tunnel; the death strip was now directly above the tunnel. The tunnel has not been on the city maps since 1969.
The Szczecin tunnel was forgotten and was first used by Deutsche Bahn AG in 2002 to determine the condition of the underpass. Several "damage to the substance" and "obstruction" by two crossing gas pipes of size DN 600, which were installed in GDR times, were found.
The development plan I-52 a Nordbahnhof, which led to numerous conversions on the former site of the Szczecin train station, provides for a right to walk from Schwartzkopffstraße to Feldstraße in accordance with Section 9 (1) No. 21 BauGB .
Therefore, in May 2005, the tunnel area at the Schwartzkopffstrasse entrance, which had already been dismantled during the GDR era, was exposed during road construction and the tunnel was then sealed with concrete slabs to connect the extended Schwartzkopffstrasse with the Caroline-Michaelis-Strasse, which opened on November 18, 2005.
A S-Bahn parking facility was initially to be built along Caroline-Michaelis-Straße, which will be required by the reopening of the Nordring. As a result, the provisional ground-level access from Schwartzkopffstrasse to the park at the Nordbahnhof and thus to Gartenstrasse should be interrupted again. But it will be a successor to the pedestrian tunnel that existed before the Cold War, which Deutsche Bahn describes as "very narrow"; other than initially intended in the development plan, do not give. The reason for this is the too narrow development along Caroline-Michaelis-Straße. Instead, it was between the stations Tempelhof and Southern Cross on the site of the former S-Bw Papestraße the marshalling yard Tempelhof built.
In November 2007, the portal in Gartenstrasse, which was closed in 1952, was opened and initially only closed with a wooden wall to protect against vandalism, before an iron grating was installed in mid-December of the same year. On the occasion of the Open Monument Day in September 2008, the tunnel was opened to the public for the first time in over 50 years. In 2017, the Berlin Wall Memorial will be offering further guided tours of the tunnel.
The pedestrian tunnel and the park at the Nordbahnhof are managed by Grün Berlin GmbH .
construction
When it opened , the pedestrian tunnel, spanned by a stitch vault, was 176.65 meters long, 4 meters wide and 2.8 meters high at the top of the vault. From the sidewalk of Gartenstrasse (opposite Feldstrasse), the tunnel is easily visible through its still eye-catching portal, from which only seven steps lead down. This means that the tunnel is covered by around 2.20 meters, and only 1.50 meters at the height of the platform.
From Schwartzkopffstrasse, an iron canopy protected the steps of the tunnel mouth from the weather. This was illuminated by an arc lamp. However, the Schwartzkopffstrasse entrance no longer exists.
The entire path in the tunnel was again illuminated by 21 electric light bulbs, each of which was located at the top of the vault. The entire pedestrian tunnel consists of " glazed straps tiles" and was in his conversions with these equalized. The total cost of building the tunnel was 186,434 marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 1,347,000 euros).
Sector markings still visible today under the portal on Gartenstrasse.
The Berlin Wall stood directly above this wall , looking west (Gartenstrasse).
Staircase above the north-south tunnel of the S-Bahn (view towards Schwartzkopffstraße)
A piece of the hinterland wall still stands roughly above this wall
Right behind the wall: the former entrance to the cultural center.
Numbering (view Gartenstrasse)
Today's end of the tunnel, just before Schwartzkopffstrasse. Behind it is a gas pipe.
Debris from the portal in Gartenstrasse scattered in the park
literature
- Official Journal of the Royal Government of Potsdam and the City of Berlin . Potsdam 1898, p. 86.
- Commercial & Building Annals . Volume 40. FC Glaser Verlag, Berlin 1897, pp. 223-239 u. Fig. P. 236 f.
- Report on the municipal administration of the city of Berlin in the administrative years 1895 to 1900 . First part. Carl Heymanns Verlag, Berlin 1904, p. 98 f.
- Passing under the Szczecin long-distance train station in Berlin , Polensky & Zöllner, Berlin around 1935, p. 9 ff.
- Kathrin Chod; Herbert Schwenk; Hainer Weißpflug: Berlin Mitte, Das Lexikon , Stapp, Berlin 2001, p. 579. ISBN 978-3-87776-111-3 .
Web links
- Image of the tunnel portal on Gartenstrasse from 1897
- Opening of the park at the Nordbahnhof at the Mitte district office on berlin.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ See local advertisements in: Vossische Zeitung , October 3, 1886.
- ^ Official Journal of the Royal Government of Potsdam and the City of Berlin . Potsdam 1898, p. 86
- ^ Andreas R. Kuhrt A journey through Ackerstrasse . Berlin 1997 - Online
- ↑ Political clashes again - several injured . In: Vossische Zeitung , No. 252 evening edition of May 26, 1932
- ^ Copy from the diary of the 4th police station from May 27, 1932
- ^ Final report of the 4th police station from June 18, 1932
- ↑ Article: "Hospital and residential district again - bombs from great heights on Berlin". In: Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , evening edition of November 2, 1940, title page
- ↑ Federal Archives; Police order: R –19 / 803.
- ↑ Magistrate of Greater Berlin Dept. Transport and Municipal Enterprises: Stettiner Pedestrian Tunnel, removal of a floor breakthrough at the eastern end of the tunnel (garden street side), Berlin January 9, 1951.
- ↑ cf. under local things bricked up . In: Nacht-Depesche , No. 218/3, September 19, 1952
- Jump up: the weekly newspaper of the German railway workers , issue 4, Berlin, January 24, 1956, p. 11
- ↑ February 20, 1900
- ↑ January 11, 1900
- ↑ Szczecin pedestrian tunnel . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
- ↑ Development plan I-52 a Nordbahnhof ( Memento from October 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 505 kB)
- ↑ historyliveforum.de
- ↑ a b Jürgen Meyer-Kronthaler: The Stettiner Tunnel . In: Berliner Verkehrsblätter . No. 3, Berlin March 2008, p. 39
- ↑ Chronicle - The year 2008. Berliner Unterwelten e. V., accessed on July 9, 2017 .
- ↑ Ghost stations in divided Berlin - guided tour with inspection of a former pedestrian tunnel. (No longer available online.) Berlin.de , archived from the original on July 19, 2017 ; Retrieved July 9, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ berliner-unterwelten.de ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '11.6 " N , 13 ° 23' 0.6" E