User:AmWoll/Berlin-Grunewald station

Berlin-Grunewald Station in the Grunewald district of Berlin (Borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf) is an S-Bahn station on both the Berlin-Blankenheim railway and the extended Stadtbahn. The Hundekehle carriage shed, a stabling facility for passenger carriages, is located to the south of the station. The platform and other buildings of the station are currently listed as protected buildings.

Countless Jews were deported out of Berlin via trains departing from this station during the Nazi era.

Before 1939
In 1873, the Royal Cabinet decided to build the modern Grunewald railway station on the Wetzlar Railway, a strategically valuable part of the so-called "Kanonenbahn". The station began operation on 1 August 1879 under the name Hundekehle. This name referred to the Hundekehlefenn nature reserve, which was located near the station in the Grunewald forest. The station was at its largest at this time, having four platforms (three island platforms and one side platform). The two original Wetzlar railway platforms were joined by two additional platforms built to service "Grunewald trains" - journeys coming from the Ringbahn (Berlin city circular railway) and terminating at Grunewald station. The station was finally named Grunewald just under five years later on 15 October 1884. Before then, the name Grunewald had belonged to another station on the Berlin Ringbahn, which was renamed to Halensee in 1884.

An impressive entry building designed by Karl Cornelius was built for the station in 1899 following the construction of the Grunewald villa colony. The plastered brick construction and sandstone details lend the building a castle gate-like appearance, with a Flügelrad (the traditional symbol of rail transport in Germany) emblazoned above it. The building is crested by a steam train shaped weather vane. The rest of the station complex was also redesigned at this time and the two access tunnels were built, although only one of these is still in use today.

On 11 June 1928, direct current electrification was integrated into Grunewald Station by means conductor rails. The "Grunewald trains" from the Ringbahn were discontinued again with the launch of the S-Bahn railway on the Wetzlarer Bahn, and the station's Ringbahn platforms were dismantled.

Two areas of Grunewald Station are listed as protected complexes. The first of which is the Grunewald terminal station complex consisting of a station building built in 1879, a signal box, utility buildings, railway tracks, as well as the memorial dedicated to the Jewish citizens who were deported from the station. The second area consists of the Grunewald S-Bahn station complex, the 1899 station building, designed by Karl Cornelius, the tunnel, and two platforms.

Deportations
During the Holocaust, over 50,000 Jews were deported from Berlin between October 1941 and the end of the Second World War. Along with trains from Grunewald Station, trains from Moabit Goods Station and Anhalter Bahnhof began carrying out deportations as well. The very first deportation train left Grunewald Station on 18 October 1941, carrying 1,013 Jews. This day marked the beginning of the systematic mass deportation of Jews out of Berlin. These trains mostly went to the Eastern European ghettos in Łódź, Riga und Warsaw. By the end of 1942, almost all deportation trains travelled exclusively to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp or the Terezín concentration camp. Of all the deportation trains that departed from Grunewald station, around 35 of them were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau directly, with 17,000 Jews being transported there in total.

The Deutsche Reichsbahn's role in the Holocaust was overlooked for a long time.

Grunewald Station's involvement in the holocaust would first be addressed in the 1980's and 1990's - where multiple monuments of remembrance were raised to commemorate this chapter of the station's history. The first of these monuments, however, were raised by groups who were not associated with Deutsche Bahn.

The first memorial plaque dedicated to the deportees was placed on the signal box on 8 November 1953 - marking the 15th anniversary of Kristallnacht. The plaque was removed for unknown reasons at an unknown time however, with there being no existing documentation regarding the removal. The dedication ceremony was disrupted by West-Berlin police officers, who blocked public access to the goods station (it being property of the East German Reichsbahn), believing members of the VVN, who had organised the ceremony, to be predominantly communist. The second memorial plaque was placed 20 years later in 1973 and was then stolen in 1986. On 18 October 1987, the 46th anniversary of the first train deportations, another memorial was placed by a women's group from the Grunewald Protestant community, consisting of a railway sleeper standing vertically on top of two other sleepers, with an inscription reading: "18.10.41"Complete with a brass plate with the following epigraph, that read: "Wir erinnern / 18. Okt. 41 / 18. Okt. 87"(In English)

"We remember /

18. Oct. 41 /

18. Oct. 87"

After the women who had made the memorial grew too old to properly maintain it, it became overgrown and the brass plate was stolen. The memorial was then refurbished in 2005, using a more simplified design with the third sleeper being laid across the other two instead of standing upright, and mounting a new brass plate, with the following engraving:

"'Im Gedenken an die Menschen, die von diesem Bahnhof deportiert wurden'

'(In English) 'In memory of the people who were deported from this train station'' 18. Okt. 1941–18. Okt. 1987"On 3 April 1987, a bronze tablet was unveiled on the old signalman's tower. The tablet features the following inscription in Hebrew: "(translated) 'In memory of the victims of the genocide'" And below in German:"'Zum Gedenken an Zehntausende jüdischer Bürger Berlins, die ab Oktober 1941 bis Februar 1945 von hier aus durch die Nazi-Henker in die Todeslager deportiert und ermordet wurden'"

"(In English) 'In memory of tens of thousands of Jewish citizens of Berlin who were deported from this train station to be butchered in the Nazi death camps from October 1941 to February 1945'" The bronze plate was integrated into the Gleis 17 memorial (see below) upon its construction. On 18 October 1991, following an initiative by the Wilmersdorf district (before it became part of the current Charlottenberg-Wilmersdorf borough), a memorial created by the Polish artist Karol Broniatowski was unveiled at the ramp to the goods depot. The memorial consists of a concrete wall with negative imprints of human bodies and a descriptive bronze plaque. The memorial addresses the train deportations as well as the countless marches carried out from the collection centres in Berlin to the deportation stations. Deutsche Bahn AG held a private contest for the design of a main memorial at Grunewald Station: one intended to remind people about the role of the Reichsbahn during the Nazi regime. The design that was chosen was proposed by a team of architects consisting of Nicolaus Hirsch, Wolfgang Lorch, and Andrea Wandel. Cast iron slabs were laid on both sides of Gleis 17 - the platform from which most holocaust trains departed. The slabs contain inscriptions on their edges that document all the trains from Berlin in chronological order, their destinations, and how many deportees they carried. The more natural appearance of the Gleis 17 memorial is a significant departure from the more brutalist design of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. It appears modest at first from the outside, but with every step the visitor takes deeper into the station, the sheer scale and number of cast iron slabs becomes more apparent and ever more poignant. The vegetation that, over the years, has grown over part of the tracks has been incorporated into the memorial to symbolise that no train will ever leave from Gleis 17 again. The memorial was unveiled on 27 January 1998. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited the Gleis 17 memorial during his first trip to Germany on 12 December 2006. Olmert delivered a speech alongside the then Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit.

The Moses Mendelssohn Foundation is planning to expand the Platform 17 memorial into a memorial campus.

Post-war era
Due to the impact of the Second World War, the station was out of service between April and July 1945.

Following the division of the city, the importance of the S-Bahn in West Berlin transport policy declined rapidly. The station would subsequently serve primarily as a convenient access point for pedestrians and cyclists, who used the underpass to travel through the extensive railway infrastructure in order to reach the nearby Grunewald forest to the west, the largest recreational zone in Western Berlin. It was not until 1980, during the Berlin railway strike, that S-Bahn services were again suspended from 19 to 27 September, and then once more during the eventual transition to the West Berlin operated BVG from 9 January to 30 April 1984.

In 2011, renovation works were carried out as part of the economic stimulus programs of the Federal Republic of Germany. During these renovations, two elevators were installed leading to the S-Bahn platforms in an effort to promote accessibility, the elevator on the north side being integrated into the original structure.

Efforts by the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf to reopen the southern station access point, which has been closed since 1961, have so far been unsuccessful. Reopening the access point would allow people to access Auerbachstraße from Douglasstraße. In 2002, the state of Berlin declared to Deutsch Bahn that the restoration of this access point would not fall under the purview of their plans to remodel the S-Bahn line from the ground up. Their decision was based both on the project's high refurbishment costs as well as its projected low number of users.

Future
Currently, there is controversy regarding the construction of urban villas on a ten hectare plot of land that is no longer in use by Deutsch Bahn AG. This plot of land is relatively close to the Platform 17 memorial and any development on it would have to take place near the ramp where Karol Broniatowski's memorial is located. Critics are concerned that developing this plot of land would diminish the memorial's commemorative nature.

Hundekehle carriage shed
The modern "Hundekehle carriage shed" lies south-west of the passenger station. The five-track shed was built in 1907 and features an iron framework with wooden supports - a plain design presumably owing to Otto Blum and Erich Giese (see literature), that was constructed to be part of a "stabling station for urban transport". The facility is complemented by a warehouse and office building attached to the north end which features a steep gable roof and decorative gables in the style of Märkische Backsteingotik, a design style popular in Brandenburg. Additional buildings are located in the vicinity, including a small switching station, built according to the plans of Richard Brademann around 1930, which is located just off the eastern track.

Deutsche Bahn emergency rail vehicle workshop
The first railway workshop began operating on Cordesstraße as early as 1879. The current building, dating back to 1929, used to be home to the Berlin-Grunewald railway service depot of the Reichsbahn. The Grunewald service depot was closed down on 26 September 1998.

Millions of Euros were invested into the property after DB Netz, a major subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, took ownership of it in 2009. The facility was ceremonially reopened in May 2013. Today, the property houses one of the nation's five DB Netz workshops, specialising in the maintenance and repair of emergency technical rail vehicles, such as rescue trains, rail-cranes, and -snowplows.

Services
The S-Bahn station is served by the S7 line of the Berlin S-Bahn. There are also transfer connections to the M19, 186 and 349 Omnibus lines operated by the Berlin transport company.