Märkisches Museum is a

Berlin U-Bahn The Berlin U-Bahn (; short for , "underground railway") is a rapid transit system in Berlin, the capital and largest city of Germany, and a major part of the city's public transport system. Together with the S-Bahn, a network of suburban train li ...

station located on the in the

Mitte Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding. It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kreuzb ...

district. Since 1935 it has been named after the nearby

Märkisches Museum The Märkisches Museum ( Marcher Museum; originally Märkisches Provinzial-Museum, i.e. Museum of the Province of the March f Brandenburg is a museum in Mitte, Berlin. Founded in 1874 as the museum of the city of Berlin and its political regi ...

, the municipal museum of the

history of Berlin The history of Berlin starts with its foundation in the 14th century. It became the capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1417, and later of Brandenburg-Prussia, and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia grew about rapidly in the 18th and 19th ...

and the Mark Brandenburg.

Design

In the course of the extension of the then so-called Spittelmarktlinie as a center line to Alexanderplatz was the station island bridge in the immediate vicinity of the bank in the subsequent route to crossing the Spree, which is why it was buried six and a half meters below the street level, unusually deep for that time. Thanks to its deep location, Alfred Grenander, as an architect, was able to equip the station with a large and spacious hall and a wicker arch vault. Because of this unusual construction in Berlin, the station was often associated with those of the Paris Métro. In the Berlin subway network, only the subway stations Märkisches Museum and

Platz der Luftbrücke Platz der Luftbrücke is a landmarkedJürgen Meyer-Kronthaler: ''Berlins U-Bahnhöfe – Die ersten hundert Jahre''. be.bra Verlag, Berlin 1996, , S. 125, 167. For the station, as well as for the station Leipziger Platz, Grenander chose the color code green, because its color scheme for this distance provided for a regular repetition of the colors. The station, which has a small mezzanine floor at each end, received a 121.3 meters long and 7.6 meters wide central platform. After lengthy construction work, the elevated railway company started operation on 1 July 1913 on the 1.7 kilometer Spittelmarkt - Alexanderplatz line.

History

The station, then called ''Inselbrücke'', opened on 1 July 1913 in the course of the eastern continuation of

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 ...

's second U-Bahn line from

Spittelmarkt Spittelmarkt is a Berlin U-Bahn station on line U2, located in Mitte at the eastern end of Leipziger Straße. History The station was opened on 1 October 1908, and was then the terminus of Berlin's second U-Bahn line, connecting it with Pot ...

Alexanderplatz () ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the nort ...

. Architect

Alfred Grenander Alfred Frederik Elias Grenander (26 June 1863 – 14 March 1931) was a Swedish architect, who became one of the most prominent engineers during the first building period of the Berlin U-Bahn network in the early twentieth century. Biography Gre ...

designed a vaulted hall relatively deep beneath street level due to the depth of the adjacent

Spree Spree may refer to: Geography * Spree (river), river in Germany Film and television * ''The Spree'', a 1998 American television film directed by Tommy Lee Wallace * ''Spree'' (film), a 2020 American film starring Joe Keery * "Spree" (''Numbers' ...

underpass leading to Klosterstrasse. It was renamed in 1935 to Märkisches Museum. On 24 May 1944, aerial bombing caused slight damage to the ceiling. In early April 1945, an air raid damaged the seal of the subway tunnel under the Spree between the stations Klosterstraße and Märkisches Museum. As a result, the tunnel was filled using explosives. On 31 July 1945 Märkisches Museum station was put back into operation. Initially it was the terminus of a shuttle service to Stadtmitte. Until 1 November 1945 the Spree underpass to the underground station Klosterstraße could initially be restored in a single track. On 15 September 1946, the circulation operation between Pankow and Ruhleben was again complete, at least until the construction of the wall interrupted the line. In 1987 and 1988, as part of events for the 750th anniversary of Berlin, the GDR government commissioned decorations for the station with the theme of "the history of Berlin". Artist Jo Doese constructed twelve mosaics depicting maps of the city of Berlin, from its beginnings as the twin towns of Berlin and Cölln in 1237 through to the modern city in 1987 (where only East Berlin is shown), with each mosaic being constructed from building materials that would have been used in the city at the time (stone cobbles in the first map, later other forms of stone, brick, marble, cement, etc.). There are two copies of each of six maps on opposite walls of the station, one set near each track. In between the maps are reliefs by artists Karl-Heinz Schäfer and Ulrich Jörke, each in a style appropriate to the time period of the adjacent map (from Renaissance at the start through to socialist realism at the end); unlike the maps, each side of the station has unique reliefs.

Current Operations

Märkisches Museum is operated by BVG, the provider of most of Berlin's rapid transit. Situated on the line, trains from Märkisches Museum serve

Pankow Pankow () is the most populous and the second-largest borough by area of Berlin. In Berlin's 2001 administrative reform, it was merged with the former boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee; the resulting borough retained the name Pankow. P ...

to the north, stopping at significant destinations such as Alexanderplatz, and Ruhleben to the west, stopping at

Potsdamer Platz Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corne ...

Kurfürstendamm The Kurfürstendamm (; colloquially ''Ku'damm'', ; en, Prince Elector Embankment) is one of the most famous avenues in Berlin. The street takes its name from the former ''Kurfürsten'' (prince-electors) of Brandenburg. The broad, long boulevar ...

and the Olympic Stadium.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Markisches Museum (Berlin U-Bahn) U2 (Berlin U-Bahn) stations Buildings and structures in Mitte Railway stations in Germany opened in 1913