>>1054436Eh, it's a little more complicated than that. In the era when the first railway lines were built in Germany, several individual railways were built radiating outwards from Berlin. There was no central train station to which they all connected. Instead, there were several train stations named after the destinations of the trains that started from there. For example, there was the Dresdner Bahnhof with trains going to Dresden; the Hamburger Bahnhof with trains to Hamburg; and the Lehrter Bahnhof with trains to Lehrte and Hannover. Over time, the railway network of Berlin became more connected and there were trains coming through from all directions. The former terminus stations turned into through stations and their names became irrelevant. Lehrter Bahnhof was replaced by the S-Bahn station Lehrter Stadtbahnhof after WWII.
Then the city was split between GDR and FRG for a few decades; Ostbahnhof was called Hauptbahnhof for 11 years, including the reunification and then they finally decided to build a central station for the whole city.
It was supposed to be built at the site of Lehrter Bahnhof/Lehrter Stadtbahnhof and they had a public vote in which over 70% of citizens voted to call it Lehrter Bahnhof. Deutsche Bahn still named it Berlin Hauptbahnhof - Lehrter Bahnhof and later on, just Berlin Hauptbahnhof to eliminate confusion (which was moot at this point anyway).
To this day, a few of the S-Bahn platforms carry the name Lehrter Bahnhof in small print, but the official name of the station is Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Which is depressing to many Berliners and to people like me, who like the idea of having some meaning attached to the name Lehrte in the general population.
