The station building marks the southeastern border of the Lichtenberg quarter and is primarily accessible from the Weitlingstraße neighbourhood in the adjacent Rummelsburg locality.

Until 2006, international trains to Kaliningrad, Warsaw, Kyiv, Minsk, Moscow and Siberia (among others Omsk, Novosibirsk and Kazakhstan) used to stop at Berlin-Lichtenberg.

Following the opening of the Prussian Eastern Railway line to Strausberg and Küstrin in 1867 and the first sections of the Berlin Ringbahn at nearby Ostkreuz station in 1871, the first marshalling yard at the site was laid out in the 1870s.

An additional platform for suburban trains was opened in 1952, accessible via a passenger tunnel above the U-Bahn tracks which has only a ceiling height of 2.25 m (7 ft 5 in).

Since German reunification, Lichtenberg station has declined in importance, mainly with the opening of the Berlin North-South mainline in 2006.