​​Museum History Station Seelow (Mark)​

​​In 1877, the railway line Angermünde – Frankfurt (Oder) was put into operation and the Seelow (Mark) train station building was opened. The new north-south train connections along the Oder were of great importance for regional passenger and freight transport.

​When the Soviet Army reached the Oder in 1945, the railway line became part of the frontline. Its main task now was to transport fleeing civilians, German troops and war material. Wounded soldiers were also evacuated by rail to treatment centres further inland.

​The armoured train ‘Berlin’ and the railway gun K 5 were deployed on the railway line to defend the western bank of the Oder and to keep Soviet troops under fire.

​With the beginning of the Battle of the Seelow Heights on 16 April 1945, the Seelow (Mark) station building was also directly in the German line of defence and was consequently fiercely contested.

​The fighting left the entire railway line in a catastrophic state. By the end of the war, many bridges and tracks had been destroyed. The second track was dismantled and taken to the Soviet Union as reparations. It took a few years before rail traffic could be provisionally resumed, and in March 1947, the Oder flood destroyed large sections of the line again.

​Miraculously, the historic station building survived the heavy fighting of the Second World War in 1945 and the Oder flood in 1947 but was already taken out of service in the 1980s. In 2012, the town of Seelow acquired the building and from 2018, conversion and renovation work was carried out.

​Today, the ground floor houses the Seelow (Mark) History Station Museum. The exhibition shows the transformation of an entire region over the span of a generation between 1930 and 1961. Fascinating exhibits from this period, supplemented by biographical details, symbolise the profound change from the beginning of National Socialism, through the war and its grave consequences, to socialism in the former Soviet occupation zone.

​The exhibition is complemented by thematic special exhibitions and events. Guided tours and various educational formats enrich this extraordinary place of remembrance in the European multi-perspective landscape of remembrance at the rivers Oder and Warta.