Weimar Berlin: The Stettiner Bahnhof


Above, a scene from Babylon Berlin S02 E07

The real Stettiner Bahnhof

The Stettiner Bahnhof opened in 1842 as a terminus of the railway line to the Pommeranian city of Stettin (today we know it as Szczecin, a part of Poland since 1945).

The station connected the capital with the holiday resorts on the Baltic Sea, also known as the Pomerania Riviera. One of them was the island of Rügen. As the number of passengers increased rapidly, the station soon became one of Berlin's busiest railway stations and had to be enlarged several times.

When the Wall was built, the underground station under the Stettiner became one of East Berlin’s « ghost stations », where trains from the West were not allowed to stop.

There is a train station there in our days too, but it is called Nordbahnhof.

If Stettiner Bahnhof’s destinations, fashionable beaches on the Baltic, were elegant, the neighbourhood of the station was not. Streets like Elsasser Strasse and Ackersstrasse were known for their prostitutes, who received their customers in rooms conveniently located there.

From Goldstein, a Gereon Rath mystery, by Volker Kutscher :

"That part of town was the Poetenviertel, near Stettiner Bahnhof, but the only thing poetic about it were the street names, named after Germanys great Romantics. Otherwise, the area was devoid of both poetry and romance. It was a railway district: dilapidated house fronts, dim rear courtyards, dive hotels, prostitution, drugs, the whole shebang."

From Berlin Expo, a novel by Jorge Sexer :

"Hundegustav was a hangout near the Stettiner Bahnhof, where all sorts of asocial characters mingled. But also fine people seeking thrill; some obtained it by inhaling cocaine, others went slumming to Hundegustav’s. There, they could enjoy a beer while watching the girls with their pimps, the burglars talking business with the pickpockets, or the Africans joking in Berlin slang with an accent from Cameroon or Togoland, while at the same time admiring the tango dancers sporting newsboy caps and a scarf around the neck, a kind of Parisian apaches, East Berlin-style."