Talk:Berlin Potsdamer Bahnhof

The fate of the Potsdamer Bahnhof was determined by World War II, and yet even if the war had not occurred, major changes would still have taken place. Under the grand plan by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), to transform Berlin into the Welthauptstadt (World Capital) Germania, to be realised by Albert Speer (1905–81), the building would have ceased to be a railway terminus. The new North-South Axis, the linchpin of the plan, would have severed its approach tracks, leaving the terminus stranded on the wrong side of it. The Anhalter Bahnhof would have suffered similarly. All trains arriving in Berlin would have run into either of two vast new stations located on the Ringbahn to the north and south of the centre respectively, to be known as Nordbahnhof (North Station) and Südbahnhof (South Station), located at Wedding and Südkreuz. In Speer's plan the former Anhalter Bahnhof was earmarked to become a public swimming pool; the intended fate of the Potsdamer Bahnhof has not been documented. In the event things took a different course.

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During World War II the terminus, like most of Berlin, was devastated by British and American bombs and Soviet artillery shells. Despite some rubble clearance and emergency repairs, damage to rail infrastructure further out was so great that the mainline terminus never saw another train, it and the Ringbahnhof closing on 3 August 1944. Many sections of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn were also closed during the war due to enemy action, and the sections through Potsdamer Platz were no exception.

The S-Bahn North-South Link, less than six years old, became the setting for one of the most contentious episodes of the final Battle for Berlin, in late April and early May 1945. With Hitler already dead, the remaining Nazi leaders resorted to increasingly desperate measures to slow the Soviet advance, whatever the consequences for their own citizens. Fearful that the Soviets might try to storm the centre of Berlin by coming through the underground rail tunnels, on 2 May the Nazi leaders ordered SS troops to blow up the bulkheads where the North-South Link passed beneath the nearby Landwehrkanal. Altogether up to 26 km of tunnels and many stations were flooded by this action, most of which had been used as public shelters and also to house military wounded in hospital trains in underground sidings. No one knows how many people were drowned as figures are so diverse and unreliable. According to Soviet propaganda up to 15,000 may have lost their lives, but a more likely figure is two or three hundred.

Shortly after war's end the Ringbahnhof got a reprieve of sorts, temporarily reopening on 6 August 1945 while the U-Bahn and S-Bahn received massive repairs (millions of gallons of water had to be pumped out for starters). The Ringbahnhof closed for good on 27 July 1946 after some fragmentary train workings had resumed along the U-Bahn and North-South Link on 2 June. Full services recommenced on 16 November 1947, although repairs were not complete until May 1948. The services were extended further in 1951. Another interruption of services was caused by the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, no trains running between 17 June, the day of the uprising, and 9 July. Above ground the remains of the terminus were cleared away in stages between 1957 and 1960 after a vague attempt at restoration was aborted. The Anhalter Bahnhof and all of Berlin’s other rail termini suffered a similar fate, leaving a network that remained fragmented and inconvenient for decades, exacerbated by the Division of Berlin and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (see below).

Have you noticed the similarity between this and the Anhalter Bahnhof article?

I have some pictures that show the model made by Speer. The Potsdamer Bahnhof is shown, so it would have not been demolished. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.230.122.169 (talk) 15:53, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Here is it, look at the left side. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.230.133.131 (talk) 17:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Location section

German Wikipedia has a section on 'location' immediately below the lead. Is it worth including similar here? A translation/adaptation would be something like...

"Location

The station was built in the 1830s at the (then) South-western outskirts of Berlin, beyond the city gates. The main entrance was South of Stresemannstraße near Potsdamer Platz (until 1930 it was called Königgrätzer Straße). From there, the tracks headed South to, and across, the Landwehrkanal.

The passenger station was in the Mitte district of Berlin from 1938 to 1972, and was only connected to the rest of the district by a narrow strip of land at the Potsdamer Platz. The districts bordering on the long sides were Tiergarten (to the West), and Kreuzberg (to the East). Thus, the legal border between East and West Berlin after 1945 ran along three sides of the station (even if the Wall took a different course). After an exchange of territory in 1972 the former area of the passenger train station became part of the District of Tiergarten, in West Berlin.

The eastern part of the site of the passenger station was built on at the beginning of the 2000s.

The goods station was South of the Landwehrkanal in Kreuzberg, adjoining the freight yard of the Anhalter staton.

Two subsidiary stations opened in 1891, the Wannsee station and the 'Potsdamer' station on the ringbahn. These were at the southern end of the main station, to the West and East of the approach tracks, respectively."

(links need checking - I have only included the brackets to indicate the words that need to be linked, not found the right targets) DrArsenal (talk) 09:09, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Berlin Potsdamer Bahnhof/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Needs references

Last edited at 22:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC). Substituted at 09:29, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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