Essen Hauptbahnhof is the main railway station in the city of Essen located in the Ruhr district of western Germany. It is located south of the old city centre, next to the A40 motorway. It was opened in 1862 by the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn. The striking early 20th century building was severely damaged during the Second World War and was completely rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s and thereafter, resulting in the city losing one of its most valuable and distinctive buildings.
Essen’s first station building was built in 1862 on today’s Hachestrasse. It was a partly half-timbered building that failed to cope with the rapidly growing city during the industrialisation period of the late 19th century. In 1902, a magnificent new station building was completed, designed by architect Fritz Klingholz, in collaboration with other architects and under the direction of Prussian building director Alexander Rüdell. The new building was given a Neo-Renaissance style with Neo-Gothic elements and finished in brick and sandstone. A characteristic element of the building’s composition was a tower with an illuminated clock and high, richly decorated gables. The roof of the station was covered with modular tiles.
Postcard from 1910 Source: Ansichtskarte von 1910, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Most impressive was the main hall of the station, which was given a rich neo-Gothic style. The waiting rooms, equipped with a ladies’ toilet and a non-smoking room, were located in the east wing of the building. The walls of the waiting rooms for first and second class passengers were two metres high and tiled in reddish brown and dark green, while the walls of the rooms for third and fourth class were finished in dark yellow brick. The basic structure of the building was ironwork, which was dictated by fears of collapse as a result of intensive coal mining in the city area. The platform housed a branch of the main post office, including a telegraph office, and the northern square in front of the station was a carriage stop.
During the First World War, many transport trains with troops passed through the station, as well as hospital trains with wounded soldiers. The facility also served as a reception point for wounded soldiers. During the Second World War, nine trains departed from Essen Hauptbahnhof and Segeroth station, taking a total of around 1,200 Jews to extermination camps in Nazi-occupied central Europe, mainly to the General Government and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The first train took about 200 people to the Lodz ghetto, while eight more trains went to Auschwitz concentration camp and the Theresienstadt ghetto.
As a result of Allied air raids in 1944 and 1945, the station building and the surrounding buildings comprising the entire complex were severely damaged or completely destroyed. In the post-war period, the station was replaced by a new, much simpler building in the typical style of the 1950s, partly designed by architects Kurt Rasenack and Bernd Figge. Shortly afterwards, the building was rebuilt, as a result of which the station lost its spaciousness.
In 2008, another major refurbishment of the station began, aimed at increasing the retail space and improving the accessibility and functionality of the building. Works included the reconstruction of the entrance hall, the installation of lifts on the platforms, and the refurbishment of the subways and bus station. The modernisation was completed with the official opening in January 2010, just before Essen was designated as one of the European Capitals of Culture. The cost of the renovation was €57 million, much of which was covered by the federal and state governments and Deutsche Bahn.
Today, around 400 trains pass through the station every day, making Essen Hauptbahnhof the third busiest railway station in the Ruhr district, after Dortmund Hauptbahnhof and Duisburg Hauptbahnhof.
Source: bahnhof.de, einkaufsbahnhof.de
Also read: railway station | Metamorphosis | Facade | Curiosities | Architecture | Germany
