TODAY IN BERLIN: GOING DEEPER UNDERGOUND
Opening of the first section of Berlin's municipal underground line
On January 30, 1923 it was done at last: the first section of the new underground railway line built not by a private company (like, for instance, today’s U1 and U2) but by the city as investor, was ready to open.
The four-kilometre-long tunnel took 11 years to complete. Not because of anyone’s grave incompetence but because the First World War brought the project to a sudden halt by the end of 1917. Even when the works, which first started in 1912, could be recommenced in 1919, so dire was the financial situation that some voices demanded that instead of digging any further, the tunnels be filled again.
But not even in hyperinflation could stop a job once commenced: on the last day in January in 1923 the first seven stations on the line could welcome first passengers. Those stations were:
U-Bahnhof “Stettiner Bahnhof” (later “Nordbahnhof”, then “Zinnowitzer Straße” and today “Naturkundemuseum”)
U-Bhf “Oranienburger Tor”
U-Bhf “Stadtbahn” - today better known as U-Bhf “Friedrichstraße”
U-Bhf “Französische Straße” (sadly closed now)
U-Bhf “Leipziger Straße”, later renamed “Friedrichstadt [Leipziger Straße]”, “ and today called “Stadtmitte”
U-Bhf “Kochstraße”
U-Bhf “Hallesches Tor”
Until March 8, 1923 U-Bhf “Stettiner Bahnhof” (named after the nearby the no longer existing terminal station Stettiner Bahnhof) was the northernmost station on this line. Until “Seestraße” opened. Later the line - Linie C (now U6) - was gradually extended both to the north and to the south as well as east (as Linie C I and C II).
Things worth remembering about the section of the line opened on this day in 1923: the stations were designed by the master of Berlin’s underground architecture, Alfred Grenander, who worked with his excellent colleague, architect Alfred Fehse.
Grenander created most of Berlin’s pre-war U-Bahn stations and gave us the ingenious colour-coding system: each station on every line got its own colours of wall tiles, beams and frames. This way passengers who could not see the name of the station on the platform or on the opposite wall of the tunnel, recognised the stop by the hues it was kept in. Ingeniously simple and, as is still being proven every day today, it does work.
To build the tunnel between “Stettiner Bahnhof” and “Hallesches Tor” several buildings had to be given extra support from below. Some cellars under those buildings ended up having unexpected shapes or end in a wall where none used to be before. But the most complex job was tunnelling under the river Spree.
And last but not least, the section of the Linie C opened in January 1923 crossed with the already existing “Centrumslinie” (today’s U2) in what was the very first line crossing in Berlin. But since Turmbahnhöfe (tower-stations where two lines cross under one stop and platforms of different lines are placed at different levels) had not been built yet, another solution was needed.
That solution was a 160-metre long underground pedestrian tunnel connecting the platforms on today’s “Stadtmitte” of U2 und that of U6. And that tunnel - which most first-time visitors to Berlin find both perplexing and hilarious - is known in Berlin as Mäusetunnel (Mouse Tunnel). You will know why once you have seen crowds rushing through it after work.