Elisabeth-Schwarzhaupt-Platz, Berlin

Elisabeth-Schwarzhaupt-Platz is a contemporary, urban square that also pays tribute to the former Stettiner Bahnhof railway station. Opened in 1842, the terminus station was the starting point of the Stettiner Bahn and Berlin’s third railway station. Its numerous connections to the Baltic seaside towns of Mecklenburg and Pomerania promoted the reputation of the Stettin railway station as Berlin’s holiday station. The design of today’s square, between Invalidenstraße and Park am Nordbahnhof, takes up references of the site’s history and the travelers destinations – track elements, sand-coloured paving, dune-like planting beds and vegetation reminiscent of the Baltic coast.

“But every now and then it was also Arendsee or Heiligendamm, and it went off there from Stettiner Bahnhof. It is, I think, since that time that the dune landscape of the Baltic Sea appears to me here on Chausseestraße like a fata morgana, leaning only on the sandy yellow colors of the station building and the image of a horizon that opens behind its walls without a barrier.”

Walter Benjamin