Cemetery railway: A walk along the forgotten S-Bahn line from Stahnsdorf to Wannsee

Cemetery railway: A walk along the forgotten S-Bahn line from Stahnsdorf to Wannsee

around 1900 Berlin experienced a real population explosion, which led to the cemeteries that were hopelessly overcrowded. To solve this problem, the corpses were transported from the city by S-Bahn. A foray to the "Cemetery Railway" in the southwest of Berlin, whose remnants still captivate Lost Place adventurers today.

on August 12, 1961, at about 20 minutes before two in the morning, a train ran off at the empty S-Bahn station in Stahnsdorf. Nobody got in. Two minutes later, the sound of the railcar was heard when he continued from Dreilinden train station to Wannsee. The train was supposed to come back half an hour later, but it didn't come. Instead, two members of the transport police were spotted, who told the accessible that her work had ended here and that she should no longer come back.

Today Gras grows over the S-Bahn line from Stahnsdorf to Wannsee. Forest and Heide have almost completely recaptured the southwestern part of Berlin. The route is the shortest of all disused routes around Berlin, but also the best known and it is most passionate. Because which other local transport route in Berlin was built specifically to transport corpses?

To explore the history of the old route from Wannsee to Stahnsdorf, you can now take a walk on the old route for a walk for a walk. Here you can still discover foundations of signal masts or soft levers and some isolated track gravel stones under the moss. It is calm and the imagination is stimulated by the embankments, straight lines and curves.

The ground swallowed the first railway line of Prussia, which led from Berlin to Potsdam in 1838. The foundations of the bridges of the so -called “parent train” can still be seen. The old “Königsweg”, on which the Hohenzollern ran between Berlin and Potsdam, also crosses the route. Next door was also the first transit navity to Marienborn and the transition to Munich. Today the route also runs over the Teltow Canal.

The railway line from Stahnsdorf to Wannsee had a special function from the start: the transport of dead. It was therefore also called the "cemetery railway". In the early 1900s, Berlin had grown sharply and there was a problem with the burial of the deceased. The cemeteries were full and new plots of land outside the city had to be acquired. In order to transport the corpses there, the Berlin city synod agreed with the Prussian state railway. The synod took care of the construction and maintenance of the railway while the state railway provided the lands. Of course, living passengers were also allowed to travel.

The railway line was not spared controversy. She was interrupted in the war when the bridge over the Teltow Canal was destroyed. After the wall building, West Berliners were also allowed to be buried in Stahnsdorf, but it ended after the bridge was demolished. A re -commissioning of the railway line, including the continuation to Teltow, has been discussed again and again, but so far without success.

For walkers along the route of the cemetery railway, there are also guided tours where you can learn more about the history of this special railway line.