[4] Due to its central location in Berlin and its proximity to attractions such as the Unter den Linden boulevard, the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, the station is a favorite destination for tourists.

[6] In 1878, the first station was built after plans by Johannes Vollmer between the Friedrichstraße and the river Spree as part of the Berlin Stadtbahn construction.

The station was bombed by the Polish sabotage and diversionary squad "Zagra-Lin" in early 1943, with 14 people dead and 27 wounded.

On 12 July 1945, the underground reopened at Friedrichstraße station for two one-track shuttle operations, one from the north and one from the south meeting there, and regular two-track traffic restarted on 5 December 1945.

However, Berlin, and in particular the public transport system that criss-crossed between the western Allied and Soviet sectors, was still a hole in that Iron Curtain.

The facilities above ground, on the arches of the Stadtbahn, were separated along the platforms:[13] Between platforms B and C was a metal-glass barrier that practically fulfilled the same function as the Berlin Wall: East German border troops separated the station into two completely isolated areas, both fully under armed control, one for people within East Berlin and the other for transit travellers, persons switching between the different westbound train lines, and the few Easterners with a hard-to-obtain exit visa, all within one station building with a maze of connecting hallways, barriers, numerous cameras, armed guards with sniffer dogs, plain-clothes agents, and a loggia under the roof for surveillance by armed border patrol and Stasi officers.

This included three individual passport checks, a customs control, waiting rooms (since the crossing could take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours), interrogation rooms, holding cells, offices to register and record people crossing the border, and a counter for visa fees and the (mandatory) currency exchange.

On the door was a guard station to separate people permitted to cross the border from those who were ineligible, leading to many tearful goodbyes in front of the building.

[9][13][14] On the southern side of the station building was the so-called "service entrance" (Diensteingang) for personnel of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (the East German national railways).

This entry led through its own control room and then, via several corridors, to a door on the ground floor of the "western" side.

[16][17] In the opposite direction, on 18 January 1979, the East German double agent Werner Stiller used this route to escape to the West.

The ground level and the underground platforms on the "western" side of the station had so-called Intershops, created specifically for travelers from West Berlin who did not want to pass through the East German border controls.

The merchandise was offered duty-free, which made especially the alcohol and tobacco products particularly attractive to passengers from West Berlin.

[9][19] At first, to immediately ease travel between East and West Berlin, the walls and barriers that were built to separate the station were removed.

Very little maintenance had been done to the station during the East German years, and especially the underground section resembled a relic from a bygone age.

Between August 1991 and February 1992, the North-South S-Bahn tunnel, including the underground section of the Friedrichstraße station, was closed for renovation.

Beginning in 2002, the North-South S-Bahn tunnel was again renovated, which removed the last traces of East Germany from Friedrichstraße station - the green tiles covering the walls.

[21] S-Bahn and regional trains stop at the upper platforms A - C on the Berlin Stadtbahn viaduct, elevated above the city streets.

Platform D is a station on the North-South tunnel of the S-Bahn, located underground, approximately aligned with the eastern bank of the Spree river.

In Call of Duty: World at War, the station is used as a means of escape for the Red Army during the Battle of Berlin.

In the novel No Man's Land by Michael Califra, the story's narrator, a U.S. expatriate named Richard who lives in West Berlin, is detained in the station after spending the night with his East German girlfriend, Traudi Franzke.