Hamburger Bahnhof is the former terminus of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, Germany, on Invalidenstrasse in the

Moabit Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood i ...

district opposite the

Charité The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine) is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research Cen ...

hospital. Today it serves as a

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

museum, the , part of the

Berlin National Gallery The National Gallery (german: Nationalgalerie) in Berlin, Germany, is a museum for art of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. It is part of the Berlin State Museums. From the Alte Nationalgalerie, which was built for it and opened in 1876, its exh ...

Original use as a railway station

The station was built to

Friedrich Neuhaus Friedrich may refer to: Names *Friedrich (surname), people with the surname ''Friedrich'' *Friedrich (given name), people with the given name ''Friedrich'' Other *Friedrich (board game), a board game about Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' ...

's plans in 1846/47 as the starting point of the Berlin–Hamburg Railway. It is the only surviving terminus building in Berlin from the late neoclassical period and one of the oldest station buildings in Germany. The building has not been used as a station since 1884, when northbound long-distance trains from Berlin began leaving from Lehrter Bahnhof (now

Berlin Hauptbahnhof Berlin Hauptbahnhof () (English: Berlin Central Station) is the main railway station in Berlin, Germany. It came into full operation two days after a ceremonial opening on 26 May 2006. It is located on the site of the historic Lehrter Bahnhof, ...

), just 400 m to the southwest. The original train shed was removed during the 1880s, when the building became an office and apartment complex.

Use as a railway museum

On 14 December 1906, the former station became home to the new ''Royal Museum of Building and Transport'' (german: Königliches Bau- und Verkehrsmuseum), supervised by the Prussian State Railways, which was incorporated into the new all-German national railways Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1920. The present "train shed" was constructed on the site of the old one for exhibition purposes, but also to illustrate building techniques. The term 'royal' was dropped with the end of the Prussian monarchy in 1918. The museum attracted crowds and was twice extended with additional wings to the left and right of the main building in 1909–11 and 1914–16. Hit by Allied bombing in 1944, the museum was closed; however, most of the collection survived. After the war, although located in what had become the British sector of Berlin, the museum remained under the supervision of the East German Reichsbahn, which—by agreement of all the Allies—operated the railways in all of Berlin in addition to

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. The Reichsbahn's East German management had no interest in reopening a museum now located in

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

, but only in the exhibits, which the Western Allies did not allow to be brought to the East. In 1984 the Reichsbahn transferred both the building and the collection into Western hands. The collection included examples of industrial and technological developments of its time—many locomotives and rolling stock—and was thus a precursor of the

Museum of Technology The Museum of Technology the History of Gadgets and Gizmos (formerly The Museum of Technology, The Great War and WWII) is a technology museum in Throckenholt, a village in Lincolnshire, England, UK. The museum was originally started in the Old To ...

, which now displays many of the exhibits once shown in Hamburger Bahnhof. In 1987, the empty halls were used for temporary exhibitions.

Rebirth as an art museum

In the mid-1980s the Berlin entrepreneur Erich Marx offered his private collection of contemporary art to the city. The Berlin Senate decided in 1987 to establish a museum of contemporary art in the former railway station. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation agreed to operate the museum as part of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

. A competition for the renovation of the station was announced by the Senate in 1989, and was won by the architect Josef Paul Kleihues. Between 1990 and 1996, Kleihues refurbished the building, and in November 1996 the museum was opened with an exhibition of works by Sigmar Polke. The ''Museum für Gegenwart'' exhibits modern and contemporary art. Permanent loans from the Marx collection, including works by artists such as Joseph Beuys,

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan hav ...

Robert Rauschenberg Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...

Cy Twombly Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor and photographer. He belonged to the generation of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Twombly is said to have influenced you ...

and

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

, are on permanent display. An emphasis of the Nationalgalerie collection is art on video and film, including a collection of 1970s video art—a gift of Mike Steiner—and the Joseph Beuys media archives.

Rieckhallen

In 2004, another part of the building complex, the former Güterbahnhof, which is connected to the Hamburger Bahnhof, was rebuilt as an exhibition hall, the ''Rieckhallen'', for the

Friedrich Christian Flick Collection The Friedrich Christian Flick Collection is a modern art collection founded by Friedrich Christian Flick, an art collector and heir to the fortune of the ignoble Flick industrial family. It is one of the world's leading modern art collections. C ...

. Between 2004 and 2010, the ''Museum für Gegenwart'' exhibited parts of the

, whose main focus is on the late 20th century. The collection contains large-format works by

Paul McCarthy Paul McCarthy (born August 4, 1945) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Life McCarthy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1945. He studied art at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and later continued ...

Jason Rhoades Jason Fayette Rhoades (July 9, 1965 – August 1, 2006) was an American installation artist. Better known in Europe, where he exhibited regularly for the last twelve years of his life, Rhoades was celebrated for his combination dinner party/ ...

Rodney Graham William Rodney Graham (January 16, 1949 – October 22, 2022) was a Canadian visual artist and musician. He was closely associated with the Vancouver School. Early life Graham was born in Abbotsford, British Columbia, on January 16, 1949. ...

Peter Fischli and David Weiss Peter Fischli (born 8 June 1952) and David Weiss (21 June 1946 – 27 April 2012), often shortened to Fischli/Weiss, were a Switzerland, Swiss artist duo that collaborated beginning in 1979. Their best-known work is the film ''Der Lauf der D ...

, and

Stan Douglas Stan Douglas (born October 11, 1960) is an artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Douglas' film and video installations, photography and work in television frequently touch on the history of literature, cinema and music, while examining t ...

, including elaborate installations and complex filmic spaces. Due to its connection with the

Flick family The Flick family is a wealthy German family with an industrial empire that formerly embraced holdings in companies involved in coal, steel and a minority holding in Daimler AG. Friedrich Flick (1883–1972) was the founder of the dynasty, establis ...

, the display (which had been rejected by the city of Zurich) gave rise to protests in 2004. Flick nonetheless agreed to lend 1,500 works to the Berlin State Museums, initially for seven years. He then extended the loan for another ten years to 2021. He also invested 8 million euros into having architects

Kuehn Malvezzi Kuehn Malvezzi is an architectural practice in Berlin founded by Johannes Kuehn, Wilfried Kuehn and Simona Malvezzi in 2001. They work as exhibition designers, architects and curators, with a focus on museums and public spaces. Kuehn Malvezzi's ea ...

renovate the Rieckhallen, the former depot of the German Imperial Railway, to showcase his works. In 2020, the museum building's owner – Austrian property company CA Immo – announced plans to demolish the Rieckhallen after the rental contract expires in September 2021. The planned demolition prompted Flick to end the loan of his collection. Shortly after, the Federal Agency for Real Estate (BIMA) entered into negotiations to buy the Hamburger Bahnhof.

References

External links