page_title: Berlin Anhalter Bahnhof
section_title: Expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Berlin Anhalter Bahnhof / Expansion
caption_attribution_description: English: Berlin - Anhalter Bahnhof, construction of the hall around 1878. Engineer: Heinrich Seidel Deutsch: Berlin - Anhalter Bahnhof, Bau der Halle um 1878. Konstrukteur: Heinrich Seidel
context_page_description: The Anhalter Bahnhof is a former railway terminus in Berlin, Germany, approximately 600 m southeast of Potsdamer Platz. Once one of Berlin's most important railway stations, it was severely damaged in World War II, and finally closed for traffic in 1952, when the GDR-owned Deutsche Reichsbahn rerouted all railway traffic between Berlin and places in the GDR avoiding the West Berlin area. The station's name lives on in the Berlin S-Bahn station of the same name, opened in October 1939 as part of the North-South S-Bahn link.
context_section_description: Like nearby Potsdamer Bahnhof, the Anhalter Bahnhof opened as a fairly modest building (behind administration block); the platform was just 15 m (49 ft) wide. However, as the German rail network expanded throughout the 19th century so did the Anhalter Bahnhof to handle the growth.
  In 1872, architect Franz Heinrich Schwechten (1841-1924) designed the vast new station that would also be the biggest in Germany and at the time the biggest in Continental Europe, though it was later surpassed. A temporary station was opened in 1874; the old one was demolished in 1875 and the new one begun in 1876. On 15 June 1880, the new terminus was opened by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The new façade was 101 m across and embellished with zinc sculptures titled Day and Night by Ludwig Brunow (1843-1913), positioned on either side of the clock above the main entrance. Emil Hundrieser (1846-1911) was responsible for a sculpture on the very top of the façade called The International Traffic. Inside the building was a lavish and spacious booking hall with separate waiting rooms and facilities for no fewer than four classes of ticket holders. A separate entrance and reception area were provided for visiting royalty, and these saw frequent use. Behind all this, the huge iron and glass train-shed roof by writer and engineer Heinrich Seidel (1842-1906) measured 171 m long by 62 m wide (covering 10,600 m², under which 40,000 people could stand), and rose to 34 m in height along its centre line. The Anhalter Güterbahnhof (goods station), also opened, south of the Landwehr Canal on the same date as the passenger station.
   
  Initially the rebuilt terminus was still handling train services mainly to and from Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main and Munich, over the old Anhalter route. However, two years later it inherited a whole new range of services with the closure of the Dresdner Bahnhof. This terminus had opened on 17 June 1875, with trains to Dresden (over the so-called "Dresdener line"), Prague and Vienna, but was small and inconveniently sited some distance from the centre of the city, south of the Landwehr Canal. The Anhalter Bahnhof was more than capable of handling these services as well, and so on 15 October 1882 they were switched, and the Dresdner Bahnhof closed (its building actually still exists, next to the present Gleisdreieck U-Bahn station, having for many years served as part of a major mail-handling facility, itself since closed, called the Postbahnhof). This move was the key to establishing the Anhalter Bahnhof's ultimate importance, as the terminus became Berlin's “Gateway to the South,” with services via Dresden not only to Prague and Vienna, but to places as far away as Rome, Naples and Athens.
  Next to the passenger terminus, was the Anhalter Güterbahnhof (goods station). The building, which had also been built by Franz Heinrich Schwechten, was located on the south bank of the Landwehr Canal immediately to the east of the parallel passenger lines. This artistic representation is Schwechten's own front elevation, showing the twin administration blocks linked by an attractive bridge structure, with three arches through which road vehicles passed into the so-called "ladestrasse" (loading road), 20 m (66 ft) wide. On either side were covered goods-handling areas some 210 m (690 ft) in length, with the railway sidings on the other side, to enable efficient movement of goods from railway wagons to road vehicles or vice versa.
  Since the early 20th century, the area around the Anhalter Bahnhof was popular with industrialists looking for a suitable location to build a nationwide cartel headquarters. The most renowned cartel of these was the German potash syndicate.
caption: Anhalter Bahnhof - the new train shed roof takes shape c. 1878
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