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.

Are they still there?

The signs and panels went up for the anniversary programme of 13 to 16 August 2026, which has now ended. No organiser ever published a removal date, and Kulturprojekte Berlin now describes the station signage in the past tense on its project page, so treat it as a temporary part of the programme rather than something you can count on finding. What is certainly still in place is the permanent exhibition on the border and ghost stations at Nordbahnhof, in the station building itself.

Event details last checked 25 Aug 2026