The Schlesischer Bahnhof

This is the fourth posting about train stations. What’s with train stations ? Who cares about them today ?

Well, I have always been very interested in the Berlin of the 1920s. I have read Isherwood, I have browsed history books, I have watched films from those years, I have seen Grosz’ and Dix’ paintings, listened to Kurt Weill’s melodies. I have the general idea of what Berlin was like during the 1920s. But, not having experienced that personally, I want to know more about people’s daily life at that time. What music they listened to, but also how they moved around town, which were the tram and bus lines, exactly how their homes looked. I suppose it’s a compensation for not having actually seen that with my own eyes at the time it went on.

Having explained that, over to train stations.
If you lived in Berlin in the 1920s and wanted to travel to the Baltic Coast, you bought a train ticket at the Stettiner Bahnhof. If you instead felt like going to the French Riviera, or to Italy, then the Anhalter Bahnhof should have been your choice. Danmark, Norway ? Go to the Lehrter Bahnhof in that case.

But what if you for some reason needed to get to Poland or even to Leningrad ? Then your first alternative would be the Schlesischer Bahnhof (the Silesian Station), known as The Gate to the East. Silesia belongs today to Poland, but back in those days it was still a part of Germany, its most important town being Breslau.

The Silesian Station was also known as "the catholic station", as people from Silesia, mostly Catholics, came to Berlin through that gateway. It took 4 hours to Breslau (Wroclaw), 6 to Danzig (Gdánsk) and 8 to Königsberg (Kaliningrad).

From Silesia Station you could even go to Japan, via Siberia, in twelve days.

Many of the Russian Jews who emigrated to America arrived here to travel on to the emigration harbors in Hamburg or Bremen. This station was also the scene of the Spartakist revolt in 1919.

Its name today is Ostbahnhof (Eastern Station), and it is indeed located in the eastern part of the German capital, in the Friedrichshain district.

From Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J00861 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de,

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5364144