The station building overlooks the Hardenbergplatz square, named after Prussian prime minister Karl August von Hardenberg, Berlin's largest city bus terminal and night bus service centre. It is also used by long-distance buses/coaches, however the "ZOB", Berlin's central intercity bus terminal, is located on Messedamm in Westend, not far from the Funkturm. Zoologischer Garten is also a Berlin U-Bahn station and S-Bahn station located at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten terminal, serving the U-Bahn lines and, as well as by the S-Bahn lines,,, and.
History
The original station, served by Berlin Stadtbahn commuter trains, opened on 7 February 1882. On 11 March 1902, the first Berlin U-Bahn line, today the U2, was opened under ground. With a view to the 1936 Summer Olympics, the station was rebuilt and expanded between 1934 and 1940. On the night of 23 and 24 November 1943, the track area was directly hit by bombs, and further damage accumulated during the Battle of Berlin. After the final closure of the Anhalter Bahnhof in 1952, Bahnhof Zoo remained the only long-distance railway station operated by the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany within West Berlin. On 28 August 1961, two weeks after the erection of the Berlin Wall, the new U-Bahn Line 9 was opened below the U2, connecting the station with the transport network in the north-south direction. leaves with a train for the West, 1973 The fact that, with only two platforms and four tracks for long-distance trains, the station was still the most important in West Berlin, was another unnatural phenomenon of the divided city. After reunification, despite the outcry from nearby Kurfürstendamm retailers and local politicians, the station lost its importance following the launching of the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof on 28 May 2006, because long-distance services began passing through the station without stopping. An exception was the famous Sibirjak, which departed from Bahnhof Zoo for the NovosibirskTrans-Siberian railway station until 2013.
Train services
The station is served by the following services:
Regional services Hamburg – Uelzen – Stendal – Berlin
The station is well known as the setting of the 1978 book Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, written by the Stern journalists Kai Hermann and Horst Rieck according to the interviews with Christiane Felscherinow. It became a bestseller in Germany, dramatising the period in the late 1970s when the rear of the station facing Jebensstraße was a meeting point for rent-boys, teen runaways, and drug addicts. The film Christiane F. – We Children from Bahnhof Zoo directed by Uli Edel was released in 1981.
The 1991 U2 song "Zoo Station" was inspired by the station, written while the band was recording Achtung Baby at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin, which in turn inspired their Zoo TV Tour and the albumZooropa. Although the U-Bahn line U2 today passes through the station, it was numbered U1 at the time; a rearrangement and renumbering of the line took place in November 1993, when the section linking it to the remainder of the line in former East Berlin was reopened.
The song "Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo" by Nina Hagen released on the 1978 album Nina Hagen Band refers to the station.
The song "Zootime" by Mystery Jets ends with the line Wir sind die Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo.
The book "Zoo Station: Adventures in East and West Berlin" by Ian Walker was published in 1987 by the Atlantic Monthly Press. It recounts the author's experiences in 1980s Berlin, his encounters with the young people on both sides of the wall, and their separation and occasional commingling.
The book "Zoo Station" by David Downing published by Soho Press in 2007. It is the first in a series of World War II spy thrillers set in Berlin.
