Berlin's Ruins: Anhalter Bahnhof and the Bunker
Opened on July 1, 1841, Anhalter Bahnhof became one of the major train stations in Berlin. It was built just outside the Prussian-built city wall and was less than one kilometer from Potsdamer Platz. After being redesigned, rebuilt and reopened in 1880, it was considered as one of the largest train stations in Continental Europe. A S-Bahn line was built in the 1930s, and opened up just after the Berlin Olympic Games in 1939. During World War II, Anhalter Bahnhof was primarily used for deportations of Jews and others persecuted in the war to Thereisienstadt. The train station then was mostly destroyed by bombing raids, and by 1952, the train station had closed down. After the Berlin Wall was built, Anhalter Bahnhof served as a border checkpoint for those who were entering East Berlin and was the last stop in West Berlin before being entering a “restricted section”. Today, Anhalter Bahnhof is still an open S-Bahn station and the surviving central portion of the front façade is still standing as a memorial.
We didn’t know what and how we would feel before we explored the Anhalter Bahnhof…none of us have ever been there so we weren’t sure what to expect. It was about a thirty-meter walk from the S-Bahn stop, [the new] Anhalter Bahnhof to what used to be the main train station of Berlin, [the old] Anhalter Bahnhof. Only the front façade was still standing, this huge, massive façade—which apparently was only a small portion of the overall train station. Seeing the ruins of what used to be Berlin’s most crucial train station in the 20th century and witnessing the clearly visible destruction was overwhelming. Standing before the remaining façade of the Anhalter Bahnhof made us recall Sebald’s in-depth and gruesome descriptions of the air raid’s destruction in Natural History of Destruction. Homes were destroyed; thousands died a horrible, instantaneous death, many were left starving, homeless, alone…but it wasn’t just the people that suffered, the architecture suffered drastically as well, “The fire burned like this for three hours. At its height, the storm lifted fable and roofs from building, flung rafters and entire advertising kiosks through the air…Behind collapsing facades, the flames shot up as high as houses, rolled like a tidal wave through the streets…The glass in the tramcar windows melted…”[1] In Schivelbusch’s The Prize, Berlin was the trophy for the Allies, “To have Berlin, and consequently Germany, was…to have Europe.”[2] Germany was then divided, the Soviets in control of the East, whereas the Americans, the British, and the French had control over the West. At the time we visited the train station, we thought that the majority of the train station was completely destroyed leaving only the front façade standing. However, after doing some research, we discovered that the air raids caused some damage to the train station but most of it was still intact. It wasn’t until 1960 when the rest of the train station was torn down because of the East-West relations. The train tracks were heading East whereas the train station was located in the West. Once the wall was built the following year, the trains went nowhere because of the barricade and as a result; the majority of the station was destroyed. After the fall of the wall, the train station was never rebuilt and it now stands exactly as it once did back in 1960, “The very idea seems monstrous, even barbaric…to rebuild on German rubble what made it rubble; obsoleteness, outlived purpose, and an architecture of spent respect.”
Next to the Anhalter Bahnhof was a bunker built by Hitler as part of his 1940-1942 bunker building campaign in response to the start of the Second World War. Many German residents gathered together during the night as Allied bombs fell upon the city. Many bunkers were underground, while some were above ground. About 12,000 people have stayed at the cement, windowless bunker. Today, the shelter is only one of a few sites where visitors can imagine what it was in the 1940s in Germany. In our reading of “Life Among the Ruins” this style of bunker is one of the public bunkers discussed in the writing as more of a propaganda enforcing machine than that of a truly protective measure. These bunkers would have been ran by the Hitler Youth in a very organized manner very at odds with the alternative option of a neighborhood cellar.
1 Sebald, W.G. A Natural History of Destruction. 4 Nov. 2002. The New Yorker. 4 Oct. 2011, 70.
2 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Prize. In Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin 1945-1948. UC Press, Berkeley, 1998.
3 Quoted Martin Wagner. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Prize. In Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin 1945-1948. UC Press, Berkeley, 1998, 15. 
I like how you knitted together your experience, the readings, and the history of the site here! Good job, guys!
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