Berlin Julius-Leber-Brücke Station

Julius-Leber-Brücke is a railway station in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. Located under a bridge over the cutting created for the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg railway. It was officially opened on 2 May 2008 and is served by the S-Bahn line .

The bridge is named after Resistance fighter Julius Leber. It was formerly named ''Sedanbrücke'', after the Prusso-German victory in the Battle of Sedan in the Prusso-German war against France in 1870/71. The bridge connects the two ends of ''Kolonnenstraße''.

The station has two platforms, of which only the inner platform edges are being used, serving the Wannseebahn line of the Berlin S-Bahn running between them.

History

The station is located next to the original site of the historic ''Bahnhof Schöneberg'', opened in 1881 at the ''Südringspitzkehre'', the branch terminal line closing the southern Ringbahn by a switchback or hairpin turn at the Berlin Potsdamer Bahnhof, where the circular trains reversed, and could change the steam locomotives for servicing them and refilling with coal and water. In 1932 it received the name ''Kolonnenstraße'' according to the name of the street crossing the bridge, to distinguish it from the newly erected interchange station Berlin-Schöneberg at the crossing of the Ringbahn with the Wannseebahn S-Bahn line.

This ''Schöneberg'' station had a single platform, where passengers riding on S-Bahn trains on the ''Ring'' could change trains, to cut short the trip to the Potsdamer Ring station in the city center, where the ''Ring'' trains reversed to continue their circular ride. Passengers could change to the Wannseebahn by crossing the long distance rails via a foot bridge accessible from the north tip of the ''Kolonnenstraße'' station to reach the southern tip of the original Großgörschenstraße station platform, which stretched southwards from the eponymous street, and was replaced 1939 by the new ''Großgörschenstraße'' station, which stretches north from the epinomous street up to ''Yorckstraße'' and is now called Yorckstraße (Großgörschenstraße).

As part of the 1930s plans to build a North-South-S-Bahn link between the Northern and Southern sections of the ''Ring'', the then ''Kolonnenstraße'' called station should be converted to an interchange station of the Ringbahn and Wannseebahn trains, with the old ''Ringbahn''-only platform becoming the interchange platform between the northbound trains of both the Ringbahn and the Wannseebahn, complemented by a new platform for southbound trains of both lines. For this, the ''Sedanbrücke'', as it was then called, was to be widened by replacing it in two steps by a new, longer bridge. The construction for a new southern half of the bridge started in 1936, which was inaugurated in March 1937, eight meters longer on the eastern end, and six meters longer on its western end. The station building on the north-eastern edge of the bridge was also demolished in 1936 and replaced by a simple shack with a wooden bridge to the platform.

This plan was, after the work had already started in 1936, cut short by the announcement, on 30 January 1937, of Hitler's plans for converting Berlin into the Welthauptstadt Germania, after which all work on the North-South-S-Bahn link already under construction, which conflicted with this plan, were called off. While the ''Wannseebahn'' tracks were moved by a tunnel from the western side of the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg Railway to the east of that line, the tunnel was shortened, and the ''Wannseebahn'' remained west of the ''Ringbahnspitzkehre''. The ''Welthauptstadt'' plan called for the ''Südringspitzkehre'' to be closed, and to use the preparations for its introduction into the underground Potsdamer Platz station at the northern and southern ends of that station instead for a new direct S-Bahn link between two new long distance stations located on the northern and southern ''Ring'' sections, and this link was to use, between Yorckstraße and the southern section of the ''Ring'', not the corridor along the Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg railway, but that of the Dresdener and Anhalter Bahn.

Heavily damaged by air raids, Bahnhof Kolonnenstraße was closed in 1944 and not reopened after World War II, as the Potsdamer Bahnhof and its Ringbahn subsidiary were more or less completely destroyed and never rebuilt. Before 1950, the switches linking the ''Ringbahn'' with the ''Südringspitzkehre'' were removed.

Plans for replacing the old ''Kolonnenstraße'' station by a new one emerged in the 1980s, after the West-Berlin government took over the running of the S-Bahn in Westberlin. A plan was developed to divert the suburban S-Bahn lines to Lichtenrade and Lichterfelde-Ost from the Papestraße station via the ''Ring'' westwards to the corridor containing the ''Wannseebahn'' line, the former Berlin-Potsdam-Magdeburg Railway and the ''Südringspitzkehre'' and to build an interchange station between ''Wannseebahn'' and the diverted suburban line near the location of the old ''Kolonnenstraße'' station. This called for a station with two platforms, the ''Wannseebahn'' tracks being served by the inner edges of the two platforms, and the Lichtenrade and Lichterfelde tracks using the outer edges. A competition of architects was called, and in July the design of the Berlin-based architectural office ''Medenbach'' was selected. This plan did not come to fruition before two years later the fall of the Berlin wall changed the whole situation. The Lichtenrade and Lichterfelde lines were revitalized in their original places. Nonetheless, the construction of the planned station was begun in 2007, and completed in 2008.

Overview

The new station called ''Julius-Leber-Brücke'' lies slightly west from the location of the ''Kolonnenstraße'' interchange station planned in 1936, because the northern mound of the ''Wannseebahn'' tunnel is located further west as originally planned, as explained above. It differs also from the old plan by the two platforms extending both north and south of the eponymous bridge, whereas the old ''Kolonnenstraße'' platform(s) were completely north of the then ''Sedanbrücke''; without the planned widening of the bridge, the northbound ''Ringbahn'' trains had even to curve around the eastern abutment to reach the eastern platform edge.

The two platforms are accessible from both sides of the ''Julius-Leber-Brücke'', with lifts on the northern side of the bridge.

The outer edges of the two platforms could in future serve for the planned new variant of the North-South-S-Bahn link, being planned and built under the name S21.

References

External links

Image gallery documenting the construction of the S-Bahn station "Julius-Leber-Brücke"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berlin Julius-Leber-Brucke station
Julius-Leber-Brucke
Julius-Leber-Brucke
Railway stations in Germany opened in 2008