Offenbach (Main) Hauptbahnhof
railway station in Offenbach am Main, Germany
Offenbach am Main Hauptbahnhof is a railway station serving the German city of Offenbach am Main. It is located on the Frankfurt–Göttingen railway between Frankfurt and Hanau on the south bank of the Main. It is also the starting point of the Rodgau Railway, via Obertshausen, Rodgau and Ober-Roden to Dieburg (originally to Reinheim).
History
The station was built from 1872 to 1873 during the construction of the Frankfurt–Bebra railway and was given an entrance building in Renaissance Revival style. It was commissioned by the Königliche Eisenbahndirektion (Royal Railway Division) of Frankfurt. Because of the development of the city around the line which was originally laid on the same level as the roads, the railway was put on an embankment between 1912 and 1926 so that the increasing road traffic could run under it. This forced the rail track field to be elevated. A new station building was out of the question because of the depressed economic conditions. The entrance building was radically restructured in the 1920s with a "conservative-traditionalist” appearance. The entrance building is listed as a monument under the Hessian Monument Protection Act.
“Offenbach (Main) Hauptbahnhof” enters the record as railway station in Offenbach am Main, Germany. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Offenbach, Main and Hauptbahnhof can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Offenbach (Main) Hauptbahnhof” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Offenbach, Main and Hauptbahnhof provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q464024. VIAF identifies the subject as 243873245. Authority coordinates are 50.099, 8.761. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1872, 1873, 1912 and 1926.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Offenbach (Main) Hauptbahnhof” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.