Prinzenstrasse underground station
The Prinzenstrasse underground station in Berlin is an elevated station of the Berlin underground in the Kreuzberg district . The double-track railway line of the U1 and U3 lines runs parallel to Gitschiner Straße . At the eastern end of the station is the intersection with Prinzenstraße , which was named in 1849 after the then Prince Wilhelm, who later became Kaiser Wilhelm I.
The station is 896 meters from the Kottbusser Tor station and 1014 meters from the Hallesches Tor station. It is listed in the station directory of the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) under the abbreviation Pr . The two side platforms are both 3.1 meters wide and 120.7 meters long. The station only has an elevator on the southern side (east direction) and is therefore only partially barrier-free .
The Prinzenstrasse station was put into operation by the Hochbahngesellschaft on February 18, 1902, together with the opening of the first line between the Stralauer T (h) or and Potsdamer Platz stations and is therefore one of the oldest stations in the history of the Berlin subway .
history
Planning and construction
The groundbreaking ceremony for the first line of the Society for Electric Elevated and Underground Railways in Berlin (Elevated Railway Company ) took place on September 10, 1896 in Gitschiner Strasse. The construction of the stations on the so-called "Eastern Line" between Warschauer Strasse and Möckernbrücke was carried out almost entirely according to plans from 1891. The construction company from Siemens & Halske had the stations implemented in a standardized way, so that today it is hardly possible to present the individual station designs to individual engineers and architects attributable to. In their original form, the stations Stralauer T (h) or, Görlitzer Bahnhof , Kottbusser Tor, Prinzenstraße and Möckernbrücke corresponded to the standard type . According to the taste of the public, these consisted mainly of a light hall construction made of glass and metal, which was completely supported on the superstructure of the corresponding metal viaduct. At Prinzenstrasse station, which was north of the Hellweg gas lighting facility ( Englische Gasanstalt , today's area of the Kreuzberg summer pool ), there were individual problems - even if the station itself was built in the standard version. Gitschiner Strasse, at least on the northern side, was not wide enough to accommodate an entrance and staircase on the side, and direct exits to the street, such as at Görlitzer Bahnhof, were also not possible. Therefore, the Siemens design office decided to build the entrance in Gitschiner Strasse 71, as is quite common in other cities such as London . On the southern side there was more space available, so that Paul Wittig had a historicizing access building built from bricks, the floor plan corresponded to a triangle. On the side facing the gas station, the building was given a gable front in the Renaissance style and a high, curved roof. The access stairs themselves, however, only occupied a small part of the building, the other part on the ground floor was leased by the elevated railway company to catering establishments - “a welcome additional source of income”.
After long delays due to the construction of the paved railway in the area of the Zoologischer Garten subway station , the main line was completed after around 5½ years of construction, so that on February 15, 1902 the so-called "ministerial trip" on the line Potsdamer Platz - Zoologischer Garten - Stralauer Thor - Potsdamer Platz could take place. On February 18, 1902, the elevated railway company officially opened the first section of the Berlin U-Bahn between Stralauer Thor and Potsdamer Platz, and the Prinzenstrasse station went into operation.
Between the wars
Due to the increased number of passengers, the elevated railway company, which shortly thereafter merged with the Berliner Verkehrs-AktienGesellschaft (BVG), decided in 1929 to extend the two side platforms from 88.4 to 120.7 meters. In the meantime, the elevated railway had not only become an attraction for foreigners and other onlookers, as it was at the beginning, the Berliners also used the elevated and underground railway routes more and more for their everyday commute, etc.
Second World War and the first post-war years
The Allied air raids of the Second World War, the station suffered severe damage; Bomb hits are for the 28./29. Recorded January 1944 and February 3, 1945. Towards the end of the Battle of Berlin , operations had to be stopped on April 22, 1945. On June 11, 1945, the BVG was able to start provisional operations on the elevated railway line between Prinzenstrasse via Kottbusser Tor to Schlesisches Tor, which the BVG expanded on October 14th in both directions to Hallesches Tor and Warschauer Strasse. It was not until April 27, 1947 that the entire route between Uhlandstrasse and Warschauer Strasse was open to traffic again. The heavily damaged elevated railway entrances were restored in 1950/1951 in a greatly simplified, unadorned form.
New additions
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Nevertheless, little changed at the station itself in the following decades, if at all the lines and designations changed.
Between 1982 and 1984, however, the BVG had the north entrance completely rebuilt. The silver-colored building designed by Wolf-Rüdiger Borchardt not only houses the stone and escalators to the platform, but also a regional signal box for the elevated railway and a parking garage . The costs amounted to around 6.7 million marks (adjusted for purchasing power today: around 6 million euros).
The same architect took over the construction of the new south entrance only insignificantly later, between 1989 and 1991. The glass-metal construction in postmodern form - a transition to the train station is to be created - includes an elevator and two escalators and cost a total of 7.2 million marks, originally planned was 6.5 million marks. A renovation of the old building would have cost more than nine million marks. An "open gallery" for Kreuzberg artists was to be built on the top floor of the access building, but this was not realized. Previously, the Kreuzberg district commission had decided against the renovation of the old building from the 1950s, as the building fabric would have been too dilapidated and this would not meet the "high comfort requirements" of BVG passengers. Ivo Köhler describes the building, which was completed on December 17, 1991, as “of no use”, it would just stand around in the area, Jan Gympel criticizes the access building as a “walkable dovecote”; However, Rainer Stache dubbed it in the Berliner Morgenpost as the “Crystal Palace”.
Since the neighboring Kottbusser Tor and Hallesches Tor stations already have elevators, Prinzenstrasse station will probably not have any more elevators. The addition of the visually impaired took place between 2000 and 2002.
A detail of the station that has survived to this day is the porcelain frog, which presumably used to sit on one of the destination displays. Today it is at the beginning of the northern side platform. The frog wears a small, gold-colored crown and sits on a large porcelain ball. In the tale of the Frog Prince is well known, the frog transformed into a prince.
Connection
At the underground station you can change from lines U1 and U3 to bus line 140 of the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe.
Web links
- BVG map of the station (PDF, 31 kB)
- Description of the eastern trunk line (Warschauer Straße – Potsdamer Platz) at berliner-untergrundbahn.de
- More pictures at untergrundbahn.de
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
Individual evidence
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↑
On the origin of the street name:
Prinzenstraße. In: Street names lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
Wilhelm was the presumptive heir to the throne with the title “Prince of Prussia”. The other princes of the House of Hohenzollern were also honored (a few years later the neighboring Prinzessinenstrasse; namely Heinrich, Adalbert, Waldemar, Alexandrine, Marianne). The direct reference to Prince Wilhelm is that in the months before the street was named, he played a leading role in the military suppression of the revolution in Prussia - and that this was to continue in the months after the Baden Revolution . - ^ A b Jürgen Meyer-Kronthaler: Berlin's subway stations - the first hundred years. be.bra Verlag, Berlin 1996, p. 214. ISBN 3-930863-16-2
- ↑ a b Sabine Bohle-Heintzenberg: Architecture of the Berlin elevated and underground railways / planning - drafts - buildings. Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-922912-00-1 , p. 42.
- ↑ Chronicle of the 1940s ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2011 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. at the Berlin subway
- ↑ a b c Monument Preservation Association Berlin Local Transport: U1 - History (s) from the underground . GVE, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89218-031-8 , p. 90.
- ^ Jan Gympel: U-Bahn Berlin - travel guide. GVE-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89218-072-5 , p. 24.
- ↑ Rainer Stache: Crystal Palace as an entrance. In: Berliner Morgenpost , January 10, 1990.
- ↑ Biagia Bongiorno: Traffic monuments in Berlin - The stations of the Berlin elevated and underground railway. Michael Imhof, Berlin 2007, p. 52 f, ISBN 978-3-86568-292-5 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 54.2 " N , 13 ° 24 ′ 21.5" E