München Hauptbahnhof or Munich Central Station is the main railway station in the city of Munich, Germany. It is one of the three stations with long-distance services in Munich, the others being Munich East station (München Ost) and Munich-Pasing station (München-Pasing). München Hauptbahnhof caters to about 450,000 passengers a day, which puts it on par with other large stations in Germany, such as Hamburg Hauptbahnhof and Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof. It is classified by Deutsche Bahn as a category 1 station, one of 21 in Germany and two in Munich, the other being München Ost. The mainline station is a terminal station with 32 platforms. The subterranean S-Bahn with 2 platforms and U-Bahn stations with 6 platforms are through stations.
The first Munich station was built about to the west in 1839. A station at the current site was opened in 1849 and it has been rebuilt numerous times, including to replace the main station building, which was badly damaged during World War II.
Location The station is located close to Munich's city centre in the north of the borough of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt. The main entrance to the east of the station is via the Prielmayerstraße or Bayerstraße to Karlsplatz (Stachus). In the station forecourt (Bahnhofsplatz) in front of the main entrance are tram stops on several lines.
The station is bordered to the north by Arnulfstraße and to the west by Paul-Heyse-Straße, which passes through a tunnel near the end of the platforms. The station is bordered to the south by Bayerstraße. The station precinct extends some distance to the west and ends at Donnersbergerbrücke.
History
During the industrialisation of the mid-19th century a new, more efficient system was needed to accelerate the transport of passengers and goods. Horse-drawn carts on the mostly poor roads were no longer sufficient. As a solution, the construction of a railway, as was being developed in England, was considered. However, the Bavarian King, Ludwig I preferred the extension of canals. Construction of railways was left to private companies and associations.
After the opening of the approximately railway from Nuremberg to Fürth on 28 November 1835, interested citizens founded railway committees in Munich and Augsburg. The two committees soon joined to facilitate the construction of a railway line from Augsburg to Munich. The two major cities would be connected by a faster service than could be provided by stagecoach over a distance that in 1835 was measured as 17 Poststunden (“post hours”, which were each half a Bavarian mile, that is about ), equivalent to about . Based on the travel speed of a locomotive, a railway could be expected to reduce travel time to one-third of a stage coach's time. The railway committee commissioned a state official to plan the approximate route of the line. The state was to build the railway. The government turned down the proposal, but indicated that Bavaria would financially support its construction.
Joseph Anton von Maffei founded the Munich–Augsburg Railway Company (München-Augsburger Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) as a private company on 23 July 1837. After further support from shareholders had been found, construction began in the spring of 1838.
The station in Marsfeld In 1838, the initial planning began for the station in Munich. The Planning Director of the Munich–Augsburg railway, Ulrich Himbsel, and his deputy, Joseph Pertsch, proposed a railway layout with an entrance building and a warehouse for freight. Behind the entrance building, a semicircular building was followed by four radially arranged halls. This was based on English models. Joseph Pertsch preferred a location on today's Sonnenstraße, while Ulrich Himbsel favoured a station at Spatzenstraße. This would have been at the location of the current station.
The Munich-Augsburg railway company could not afford the building and the land on either site. A temporary wooden building was put into operation with the opening of the first section of the line from Munich to Lochhausen on the Munich–Augsburg line on 1 September 1839. This station was built in Marsfeld at the present site of Hackerbrücke. It consisted of a simple wooden station building and two toll booths. In the entrance building there were two waiting rooms and several work spaces. Attached to this building there was a wide station hall with two tracks with a turntable at the end of each. There was also a locomotive workshop in the station area. A year later, on 4 October 1840, the entire line to Augsburg was opened. The line was used by about 400 passengers daily.
The first complaints were made about the location of the station in 1841. The station was too far from the city centre, so the trip to the station was too costly. The wooden building was considered to be too small for a city like Munich and not very impressive. King Ludwig commissioned the architect Friedrich von Gärtner to redesign the station in 1843. It would be closer to the city centre, as the old station was half an hour away from the city. When, in 1844, the Munich-Augsburg Railway Company was nationalised, the first steps for the realisation of a new station building were carried out. Three new plans were presented. The station under the first option would have been at the shooting range, under the second option it would have been on the Marsfeld plain, and under the third on Sonnenstraße. In the following years, the state and the city could not choose among the three proposals. On 4 April 1847, the station suffered a major fire, whose cause could not be determined. No one was injured but parts of the freight and operations facilities were destroyed. The decision on where to construct a new station had to be taken now. On 5 April 1847, the king of Bavaria decided to build the new station at the shooting range. The station at Marsfeld was to be restored in the autumn of 1847 to serve until the completion of the new station. Due to a delay in the construction, the tracks were extended to the buildings of the former shooting range. The building of the shooting range now served as an entrance building to the new station, which was opened on 15 November 1847.
The new central station (Centralbahnhof) of Friedrich Bürklein
Direction of the construction was transferred to the architect Friedrich Bürklein, a disciple of Friedrich von Gärtner. The new station hall was opened in 1848. It was long, wide and high and had room for five tracks. The station building was opened a year later, on 1 October 1849. The station was used daily by around 1,500 passengers. The building was built of red and yellow brick in the Rundbogenstil with Romanesque revival and Italian Renaissance forms; sand and limestone were also used for individual components. The station's was a basilica-like building, which was extended with a pavilion on the east side. It was equipped with the latest technology, a central hot water heater and a mechanical clock with a central drive, with dials that were up to from the central mechanism. The station was illuminated from 1851 by coal gas.
The new building proved again to be too small with the opening of the railway to Landshut in 1858. This meant that the Royal Bavarian Eastern Railway Company (Königlich privilegirte Actiengesellschaft der bayerischen Ostbahnen) built a station north of the actual station. The new station, also called the Ostbahnhof, consisted of a and platform hall with four tracks. This became a carriage house with three tracks, a goods shed and other outbuildings. In 1859, the Bavarian Eastern Railway's line to Nuremberg was commissioned. On 12 August 1860, the Rosenheim–Salzburg railway was opened, adding extra importance to the station. As no more platforms were available in the main hall, trains had to use the Ostbahnhof. The station was also used by international passengers and, in 1860, it was already used by 3,500 passengers daily. To the south a station was also built for postal services in the same style as the other buildings.
New construction in the 1880s
+ Operations of the platform tracks in 1879 Tracks Operations 1, 2 From Simbach and Rosenheim 3, 4 To Simbach and Rosenheim 5, 6 From and to Holzkirchen 7, 8 from Tutzing and Lindau 9, 10 To Tutzing and Lindau 11, 12 From and to Ulm 13, 14 From and to Ingolstadt 15, 16 From and to Landshut
The opening of the line from Munich to Ingolstadt in 1867, the Munich–Mühldorf–Simbach and the Munich–Grafing–Rosenheim lines in 1871 and the Munich–Buchloe in 1873 created further capacity problems. Thus, two projects were developed: Friedrich Bürklein planned another wing station. The other option was a new building, requiring the demolition of the Ostbahnhof. They chose the second option. So from 1877 to 1883 under the leadership of Carl Schnorr von Carlsfeld, Jacob Graff and Heinrich Gerber, a new concourse was built with 16 tracks. Carl Schnorr von Carlsfeld was responsible for the redesign of the tracks, Jacob Graff was the site manager of the building and Heinrich Gerber was in charge of the construction. The old hall was twice the size of the new one, so that the front part of it remained as the main hall. The other premises were extended. The project was completed at the end of 1883.
The Munich Centralbahnhof precinct was divided into three station sections. The first section, which was also called the inner section, took over passenger, express freight, and small freight operations. The middle section at Arbeitersteg ("workers' bridge", now called Donnersberger Bridge) contained wagonload operations and the marshalling yard. The outer section ended at the Friedenheimer Bridge and included locomotive and carriage sheds and the central workshop. The station was long up to its last crossover and wide at its widest point. There were 226 sets of points, 42 turntables and of tracks.
Remodelling of the station and construction of the wing stations
A few years later, the station again proved to be too small. The architect Friedrich Graf suggested the station be relocated to Landsbergerstraße to create a circle line from South station via Schwabing station to a planned North station. The plans were not realised, instead, freight was separated from passenger operations so that the Hauptbahnhof became a passenger-only station. Now freight was handled at the Laim marshalling yard. Construction began in 1891.
In 1893, the Royal Bavarian State Railways opened the Starnberg wing station (Starnberger Flügelbahnhof), partly serving traffic on the line to Starnberg. It had six tracks and only had a temporary wooden building. Long-distance traffic was now concentrated in the main hall and local traffic towards Pasing was moved to the wing station. In 1897, the wing station received Bavaria's first electro-mechanical interlocking. In 1896, the Laim marshalling yard was opened; only the handling of small goods could not be moved to Laim. In addition, the line to Landshut was moved to a new course running to the west of Nymphenburg Park to allow a connection to the Laim yard. Next new flyovers were built on the line towards Pasing.