Deutsche Oper underground station

Station sign of the Deutsche Oper underground station

The Deutsche Oper underground station is a station on the Berlin underground line U2 . The train station is located next to the building of the same name on Bismarckstraße in the Charlottenburg district . It was opened on May 14, 1906 under the name Bismarckstrasse .

history

The subway station two years after it opened - you can see, among other things, the skylights that let daylight into the station

planning

As early as 1900, two years before the completion of the first Berlin underground line, the then independent city of Charlottenburg negotiated with the elevated railway company about an extension of the main line between Knie , Leipziger Platz and Warschauer Brücke, which was to be completed at that time . The goal with the highest priority was to connect the Charlottenburg town hall on Wilhelmplatz with the elevated and underground railway. The tour along the then Berliner Straße (today: Otto-Suhr-Allee ) would have been cheap . But especially the Berlin-Charlottenburg tram , which also drove through this street, was concerned that it would lose passengers due to the parallel service. Therefore, the negotiating partners agreed to run the underground line from the knee further west under Bismarckstraße, at the intersection of Bismarck- / Sesenheimer Straße (today: Richard-Wagner-Straße) the line should make a sharp curve to the north to the town hall do.

Construction work on the new line began in 1905. A total of two stations were planned: Wilhelmplatz station , the temporary terminus, and Bismarckstraße (still under the working title Krumme Straße ), which was to be the first German four-track underground station. The city of Charlottenburg had given this an important role in a future Charlottenburg subway network, here, among other things, another route was to branch off towards Westend .

Opening and architecture

Entrance portal of the
underground station, 1908

The design of the four-track station was, as was customary at the time, done by the architect Alfred Grenander . The station, which is equipped with three rows of columns, was fitted with skylights on both 111-meter-long central platforms so that daylight could shine in there. The walls were decorated with small gray tiles . Behind the station, or behind the branch to Wilhelmplatz , the elevated railway company had rooms built for an electrical substation that supplied the subway section there with electricity. The Wilhelmplatz - Knie section, including the Bismarckstrasse station, was opened on May 14, 1906.

For two years, the U-Bahn trains only used the inner tracks to Wilhelmplatz . From March 29, 1908, the two outer platforms were also used for the route to Reichskanzlerplatz in Westend.

In 1929 the station was rebuilt and a large vestibule was built at the western end. For this reason, the only entrances to the station - there were none at the eastern end - no longer led directly to Bismarckstrasse, but to the sidewalks. As part of this construction work, the station was also given a new name: since August 1, 1929, it has been honoring the adjacent opera building with the station title Städtische Oper (Bismarckstraße) .

New rulers, new names

Scheme of the location of the underground station until 1970

To express the changed ownership of the opera house - it no longer belonged to Berlin, but to the German Reich - the station was called Deutsches Opernhaus (Bismarckstrasse) from August 16, 1934 . In the Second World War , which began five years later , the station hardly suffered any damage, and no bomb hits are documented. In general, the western section of Line A was hardly affected, and the neighboring stations were hardly damaged either. On May 17, 1945, a shuttle service could be set up on the routes Knie - German Opera House - Kaiserdamm and Kaiserdamm - Reichskanzlerplatz - Ruhleben . From September 15, 1946, line A on the Ruhleben - Pankow route (Vinetastraße) was in continuous circulation again.

Changes in the post-war period

The neighboring opera house suffered considerably more damage, it burned out completely and could no longer be used. Therefore, in 1956, the construction of a new concert and opera house began on Bismarckstrasse under the direction of the architect Fritz Bornemann . The inauguration of the new building took place on September 24, 1961, two days earlier the station was given its new name Deutsche Oper (Bismarckstrasse) .

Since 1970, the central tracks of the station are no longer used in regular traffic

During the demonstration on June 2, 1967 in West Berlin against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the immediate vicinity of the subway entrance, the student Benno Ohnesorg was shot by the police officer Kurras . This event contributed significantly to the radicalization of the student movement . The relief The Death of the Demonstrator, created in 1971 by the Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka , has stood at the north-western entrance to the subway at the opera since 1990 .

Since 1945, the BVG has been operating the Deutsche Oper - Richard-Wagner-Platz section ( Wilhelmplatz was given this name in 1934) as a separate line (initially A ^III , from March 1, 1966, line 5). This also showed the market value of this stub route, for which there were major expansion plans, but which were not implemented. In order to improve this unsatisfactory condition, the section of the line should be replaced by the new U7 subway line in accordance with the Berlin Senate's subway construction program . For this reason, the BVG ceased traffic on this route on May 1, 1970. Since then, regular trains have only been running on the two outer tracks of the station, while emergency trains are occasionally made available for events in the opera on the southern central track . The tunnel to the Richard-Wagner-Platz underground station was occasionally used for rescue exercises by the fire brigade until the training facility at Jungfernheide station was commissioned ; today it only serves as a route connection for work trips . The BVG started underground traffic on line 7 on April 28, 1978, and since then passengers on what was then Line 1 (today: U2) at the Bismarckstraße transfer station, 380 meters away, have been able to transfer to the new line to Richard-Wagner-Platz.

In 1983 the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe did not modernize the station in accordance with a listed building . Since then, yellow and white tiles have been hanging in the station instead of the previous gray ones, the BVG had the ceiling lowered; The station also received a new lighting system, and the lobby was also renovated . The total cost was 2.5 million marks .

Fire in the train station

The newly built east entrance to the station on the median of Bismarckstrasse

On July 8, 2000, during the Berlin Love Parade , there was a devastating fire in the train station. A burning train of the GI / I series drove into the station from the direction of Ruhleben. Because there was only one exit at the end of the platform where the burning car was parked, passengers could only use the tunnel as an emergency exit. 21 people suffered smoking injuries. The train burned out completely. The fire also badly damaged the station, and it was not until September 2000 that trains stopped at the station again.

Originally, the BVG only planned a simple refurbishment of the station, but shortly afterwards it decided to reverse the changes made in 1983 and restore the state of 1906. In June 2001, the renovated station was fully reopened. As a consequence of this incident, the Berlin fire brigade in particular , but also the police and politicians , demanded that all stations be equipped with at least a second access. The first work and planning began in the same year.

New tiles, new exits

On the occasion of the end of the accreditation of the Portuguese ambassador João Diogo as well as the centenary of the Berlin subway in October 2002, the latter donated numerous works of art by the artist José de Guimarães - made of tiles - to the city, and thus the Deutsche Oper station . The vestibule and the entrances also received new design elements.

The first construction work for a second exit at Deutsche Oper station began in 2005. In contrast to the other entrance, the exit on the east side did not have a vestibule. The construction work was largely finished in May 2006, and the opening took place shortly afterwards. There is no precise cost estimate, but the construction work for new entrances at the stations Theodor-Heuss-Platz , Sophie-Charlotte-Platz and Deutsche Oper together cost around 5.8 million euros.

Connection

At the underground station there is no possibility to change to other local public transport lines in Berlin .

line	course
	Pankow - Vinetastraße - Schoenhauser Allee - Eberswalde road - Senefelderplatz - Pink-Luxembourg-Platz - Alexanderplatz - Abbey Road - Märkisches Museum - Spittelmarkt - Hausvogteiplatz - City Center - Mohrenstrasse - Potsdamer Platz - Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Park - Gleisdreieck - Bülowstraße - Nollendorfplatz - Wittenbergplatz - Zoological Garden - Ernst-Reuter-Platz - German Opera - Bismarckstraße - Sophie-Charlotte-Platz - Kaiserdamm - Theodor-Heuss-Platz - Neu-Westend - Olympic Stadium - Ruhleben