New Panels Retell the Ghost Station Story at Friedrichstrasse and Nordbahnhof

As part of the programme marking 65 years since the Wall went up, Kulturprojekte Berlin and the Berlin Wall Foundation have put new signage into the S-Bahn stations along one of the most quietly strange stretches of the divided city: the line running from Brandenburger Tor via Friedrichstraße to Oranienburger Straße and Nordbahnhof.

Large-format signs have gone up in the stations themselves, with fuller exhibition panels at Bahnhof Friedrichstraße and Nordbahnhof. Together they retell the story of what these stations were during the division of the city.

Why these stations

When the border closed in August 1961, several West Berlin lines still ran underneath East Berlin. The trains kept going, but the stations along the way were sealed, their entrances bricked up and their platforms patrolled by armed guards. Passengers passed through dim, empty stations without stopping. West Berliners called them Geisterbahnhöfe, ghost stations.

Friedrichstraße was the exception, and the strangest case of all: not sealed but converted into a border crossing inside a working railway station, with the Tränenpalast, the Palace of Tears, alongside it for the farewells. Nordbahnhof is where the story is most legible today, and it already holds a permanent exhibition on the border and ghost stations.

Our guide to the ghost stations of the Berlin Wall covers the full network, station by station, and every one of them is on the interactive map.

How long they stay up

The signs and panels were installed for the anniversary programme of 13 to 16 August 2026. None of the organisers has said whether they are permanent or whether they come down when the programme ends, so if you want to be sure of seeing them, go before the programme ends on 16 August. The permanent exhibition at Nordbahnhof is unaffected either way.