Something’s Not Quite Right With This East German Public Transit Map

Map published by Mark Ovenden via Big ThinkThe map above is an East German transit map from 1986 showing U-Bahn (Underground) and S-Bahn (Suburban) train lines in Berlin.

However, if you look closely, you might notice something’s missing.

And that something is of course West Berlin, which had it’s own U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines (although you wouldn’t know from this map). The reason of course is rather simple, East Germans could not travel on the West Berlin lines so why show them?

Instead the map (nearly) erases West Berlin by showing an insert of the Potsdam area (which was in East Germany) instead. Of course prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 both networks had been integrated.

However, after the Wall each one was almost entirely cutoff from the other, creating a series of ghost stations.

The one interesting exception was Berlin-Friedrichstraße station, which while in the East, also allowed West German travellers to transfer between lines. However, East German citizens were cutoff from the sections of the station that allowed travel to the West by a metal-glass barrier.

In effect, Friedrichstraße was a microcosm of the situation in Berlin.

It’s also interesting to see how West Germany dealt with this issue as the map below illustrates.

Map found via Here 360Published in 1963 (2 years after the wall went up), it goes to the opposite extreme and shows one unified network. Although the lines in the East are shown more faintly and the Wall is clearly visible in grey.

If you like this map you’ll probably also enjoy: 1988 East German Map of West Berlin

And here are a few other maps from when  the City was divided.

1987 Map Of The East German View of the Berlin U & S-Bahn Network

Map created by VEB Tourist Verlag, accessed from Cornell’s P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartographyAgain West Berlin is shown, but with no information about transit options on that side of the city. From Cornell:

On these maps, the wall is shown quite distinctly, and West Berlin is essentially eliminated from view. The area immediately west of the wall is obliterated by an overlaid “Nebenkarte” (inset map) of Potsdam, a city just west of West Berlin controlled by the DDR.

This cartographic approach “takes the prize for sheer barefaced nerve by crafty design, the whole of West Berlin and all its train services are squished up so that it virtually disappears, and even the trains around the left edge . . . appear, at first glance, seamlessly stitched into a continuous East Berlin network.” Ovenden 2011, 39.

The tiny remaining areas between the wall and the Nebenskarte are labeled “West Berlin” – in contrast to, and smaller type than, the label of the central map, “Berlin.”

Transit lines are shown terminating to the east of the wall, and there is no indication of West Berlin U-Bahn trains running through East Berlin stations – “ghost” stations, where they were not permitted to stop – between two points on the western side of the wall.

1967 West German Map Of The Berlin U-Bahn Network

Map created by BVG, accessed from Cornell’s P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartographyThis map in contrast shows all the lines running through East Berlin and shows the closed ghost stations with a X. From Cornerll:

[The map] shows the entire subway system, East and West, and the wall is extremely faint. The legend indicates markings for “Stations where the trains do not stop” and “Stations that can be reached only using the trains of the BVG East.”

1984 West German Map Of The Berlin U & S Bahn Network

Map created by BVG, accessed from Cornell’s P.J. Mode collection of persuasive cartographyFinally, the map above includes the S Bahn network and the U Bahn network. And while it does indicate that some stations are inaccessible it’s less obvious than the 1967 version.

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