The record
A ghost station whose trains never stopped, and 900 metres of a brick station wall from 1895 that the GDR bricked up and topped with barbed wire.
Berlin stopped being a railway hub when it was divided, and no station shows it better. The Nordbahnhof — the Stettiner Fernbahnhof until 1950 — had its grounds cleared into the border strip and its main building demolished in the 1960s; only the entrance hall of the suburban station survives. The S-Bahn station below was closed after the Wall went up, and trains from West Berlin ran past its underground platforms without stopping. It reopened after 1989 and is now served by the S1, S2 and S25.
The longest surviving piece here is 900 metres along Gartenstraße, on the eastern side of the railway property, and like the Ulbricht curve it was not built as a border. It is a brick station wall of 1895, put up to secure the railway land, which after 1961 became the wall between East Berlin and the West Berlin borough of Wedding: the existing passageways were bricked up and Y-shaped supports for barbed wire fixed along the top. When a new border wall went up behind it in the mid-1960s, the old station wall was kept as an extra barrier.
The border strip was unusually wide here, and in 1984 a second hinterland wall was built between the S-Bahn station and Pflugstraße, leaving the older one further west to secure the uneven railway ground. Remains of that second hinterland wall survive with the colour scheme used on its eastern face — long white rectangles framed in grey, the pattern the GDR painted for the benefit of the people it was keeping in — along with a 100-metre run between the houses on Pflugstraße, and a 200-metre security wall of concrete slabs between steel supports separating the railway land from the St Hedwig cemetery to the west.
The remains have been protected since 2001, and the ground around them is being turned into a public park with sports facilities, with a section of the patrol track built into the plan.
How did it get here?
In place. Listed as monuments since 2001. The Gartenstraße wall was built in 1895 to secure the railway property and taken into the border fortifications after 1961.
Sources & verification
Rund um den Nordbahnhof — Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Wall monuments ↗
The Nordbahnhof's history as the Stettiner Fernbahnhof, the clearing of the grounds into the border strip and demolition of the station building, the closed S-Bahn ghost station and its reopening on the S1, S2 and S25, the 900-metre brick station wall of 1895 on Gartenstraße with its bricked-up passageways and Y-shaped barbed wire supports, its retention behind the new border wall, the 1984 second hinterland wall and the preserved eastern colour scheme of white rectangles framed in grey, the 100-metre run on Pflugstraße, the 200-metre security wall beside the St Hedwig cemetery, the 2001 monument protection, and the planned park with the patrol track.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Last verified: Not yet verified
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