The S-Bahn station opened on 1 January 1872 as part of the opening of the
Ringbahn. It was originally located somewhat further west, but was relocated in 1895 to Tempelhofer Damm (then called Berliner Straße) in order to provide better integration into the rail network for a base of the
Train Battalion of the
Prussian Guard which was then located there. A
goods station remained to the west. Until 1966 it was the southern terminus of the CII line, now the U6; the tunnel to
Alt-Tempelhof was almost completely excavated when work was suspended in 1941 because of World War II. On 7 May 1944, the ceiling broke through at this station. Three bomb blasts were accumulated on 21 June 1944. The tunnel wall was attacked on the
Battle of Berlin. In July 1945 a fire broke out in the turnaround and train storage area at the Tempelhof station and caused so much damage that trains terminated at
Mehringdamm until February 1946. After the erection of the
Berlin Wall in 1961, West Berliners
boycotted the S-Bahn to put pressure on the
GDR government, which controlled the parent
Deutsche Reichsbahn. The boycott led to extremely reduced S-Bahn passenger numbers, and after a strike by West Berlin S-Bahn employees to the ending of service over large stretches of the system in the West. The West Berlin portion of the Ringbahn, including the Tempelhof station, was taken out of service in September 1980. The U-Bahn station, named simply
Tempelhof since 1962, remained in service. It was renovated in 1985; the ceiling had sustained bad water damage and was plastered over. The brightly coloured rectangular patterns on the ceiling date to this time. Service was only restored on the Ringbahn after
German reunification, although the
Berlin Senate had been working on plans to reopen it even before the Wall fell, since the S-Bahn had been transferred in January 1984 to the
BVG (Berlin Transport).
Südring was again appended to the name of the Tempelhof U-Bahn station on 31 May 1992, and the S-Bahn station reopened on 17 December 1993 when the segment of the South Ring between
Baumschulenweg and
Westend was placed back in service, and thus the station is once more a transfer point between the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn. ==References==