THE LAST TRAIN TO KA-WE

Today in Berlin: April 30, 1951

On April 30, 1951 one of Berlin’s oldest still existing railway stations, Görlitzer Bahnhof, terminated its passenger service.

It marked the end of a long and remarkable era - and meant that one of Berlin’s last Kopfbahnhöfe (terminal stations) went off the grid for individual traffic. Lehrter Bahnhof followed in August the same year while the last remaining relics of Berlin’s railway glory-days, Anhalter Bahnhof and Nordbahnhof (until December 1950 Stettiner Bahnhof) closed in May 1952. All four stations were eventually demolished.

Görlitzer Bahnhof on the Berlin-Görlitz Line between the Prussian capital and the city on the river Oder (and on the way to then Prussian Silesia), designed by August Orth, served millions over the over 80 years of its service. In the last years of the Second World War it also saw evacuation of thousands of Berlin children, brought away to (so their parents still naively believed) safety in Silesian children’s facilities and villages. The station also became a stage for a drama which was the eventful evacuation of one of the world’s first programmable computers (more about it in the next weeks).

1920 view of Görlitzer Bahnhof and Wendenplatz (now Spreewaldplatz) from Wiener Straße

But before all that happened, how did it all begin? With the Prussian army, as was so often the case: the first train to leave Berlin's Görlitzer Bahnhof was a military train. It departed before the actual station had been completed: on June 13, 1866 it carried troops which were to face the wrath of the Austrians in what came to be known as Prussian-Austrian War.

Compared to others, the station survived the Second World War in a pretty good shape, but it fell prey - first and foremost - to new urban-planning projects. Like a new motorway planned as the Südtangente (Southern Orbital Road) which was to be built straight through Kreuzberg.

Only by a hair’s breadth (and through powerful local resistance) the Bethanien-Krankenhaus, an 1848 historic hospital on Mariannenplatz, avoided similar fate.

The train shed photographed in 1867 by Hermann Rückwardt. Photo, in public domain, from the collection of Berlin’s Architekturmuseum’s.

Quite incredibly and unlike passenger trains, goods trains operated on the former site of Görlitzer Bahnhof until 1985 (“former” as the station itself was blown up in the 1960s). And they did so despite the Berlin Wall cutting straight across the tracks only metres outside the station site. They crossed a bridge spanning the Landwehrkanal where a special inspection ramp was erected by the East German border security.

Inside the abandoned historic train shed at Görlitzer Bahnhof in February 1954. Photo by Ralf Goetzte, from the collection of Berlin’s Stadtmuseum (City Museum Berlin).

Here it might be worth adding that the date April 30, 1951 was not a coincidence: on the same day a new S-Bahn line between Berlin and Königs Wusterhausen (or KaWe), now S46, opened for service. The same connection as the very last train that left Görlitzer Bahnhof at 8.45 PM on that last April Monday.

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