The first bill, presented by the Minister of State Georg Ludwig von Winter on 13 February 1838, contained no information about the places to be connected.

Deputy Karl Georg Hoffmann (1796–1865) introduced a motion during the debate that provided, among other things, 500,000 South German gulden to avoid Freiburg being left off the route of the line.

[6] Although Freiburg was described as the main trading centre of upper Baden at the time, there was more political debate and more consideration of options by the railway planners than in relation to any other city of the Grand Duchy.

There were two major challenges to the integration of Freiburg with the, originally single-track, line between Offenburg and Basel:[7] The city of Freiburg is not only away from a relatively straight line between Mannheim and Basel, it is also higher than any other city on the Rhine Valley Railway[8] north of Haltingen[9] and in particular it was 308 Baden feet or 92.4 metres (303 ft 2 in) higher than Kenzingen, which is located 25 kilometres (16 mi) to the north.

[5][11] After a proposal to build a passenger station at a site in Lehen in the area of the current A 5 autobahn was excluded as being located too far from Freiburg,[12] it decided to build the line immediately west of the city through the "Vauban belt", the flat zone previously kept clear for firing cannon-shot from the fortifications (Festungsrayon) designed by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.

Apart from politicians, such as the Baden Foreign Minister, Alexander von Dusch, the Minister for the Interior, Karl Friedrich Nebenius and Frederick Rettig, officials, mayors and officers of the town guards (Bürgerwehr) of the local towns travelled on a train hauled by the locomotive, Zähringen, with musical accompaniment by the guards regiment, which had already travelled over the line.

[16] When the train arrived in Freiburg at 12.40, Mayor Friedrich Wagner[17] welcomed the guests at the still unfinished station building,[7][18] while cannons on the Schlossberg fired a salute.

[18] The rail link north to Rastatt and Karlsruhe played a decisive role in the Baden Revolution of 1848 and in its defeat in Breisgau by loyalists and Hessian troops and their heavy military equipment, which were quickly moved to Freiburg.

Hotels, restaurants and the central post office were built in the Vauban belt along Eisenbahnstraße and a landscaped area was established between the city and the station.

The city of Freiburg implemented a zoning plan called Hinterm Bahnhof ("behind the station"), leading to the development of the current Stühlinger quarter.

[41] The number of tickets sold in Freiburg plummeted before the war began as a result of the promotion of road transport during the Third Reich (for instance by building the autobahns).

In March 1942, the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda threatened persons who used the congested strategic railway "for fun" with heavy penalties and even dispatch to concentration camps.

This time, however, it felt the impact: the British air raid on the city on the evening of 27 November 1944, Operation Tigerfish, destroyed all the overhead line, the majority of the tracks and almost the entire main station building.

[52] Cleanup work on the station building did not begin until the autumn of 1947 and it was slow due to personnel shortages and poor materials until the currency reform of 1948.

Also, the Technisches Rathaus ("technical town hall"), which was later realised in Fehrenbachallee would be built above the tracks, along with 7- to 15-storey high-rise buildings with cinemas, department stores, cultural and convention centres and parking garages.

A plan put forward in 1965 by the chief architect of the Freiburg city council, Hans Geiges called for the sale and leasing of all the land and air space.

In the same year, the resignation of the Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, Hans Filbinger, who had long lived in Freiburg, reduced the prospects of national funding for the project.

Since Deutsche Bundesbahn did not want to finance any major projects as a result of increasing competition from air transport, it asked for the suspension of negotiations in 1980.

The number of tickets sold at the railway station stood at 1.35559 million (plus 29,491 in Zähringen and 11,745 in Herder), roughly the same level as at the turn of the century and in 1935.

[22] On 26 September 1971, the winter section of the 1971/1972 timetable came into force and Freiburg became part of the Intercity age: the station was on line 4 from Basel to Hamburg-Altona from the beginning to the former IC network of the Deutsche Bundesbahn.

[60] After the failed plans for the Bahnhofsplatte project and for the congress centre, the decision to build the Freiburg Concert Hall in 1988[61] restarted progress in the station area.

[65] The remaining columns were stored away by the city at the depot of the civil engineering office until the summer of 2010 when they were installed as a decoration in a beer garden near the station.

[66] The two-storey station building was built to the design of the architect Friedrich Eisenlohr in the historicist style of the time with many Romanesque Revival components.

[67] As with the other important stations in Baden, the building in Freiburg was implemented in the Rundbogenstil (round arch style), which explains the preference for round-arched openings in walls and arcades.

[68] The slate roof lay on a structure made of native wood, as Eisenlohr had avoided expensive cast iron for reasons of cost.

[69] The lack of financial resources, building materials and construction machinery meant that an architecturally complex solution could be ruled out from the beginning.

On this basis, a floor plan was created with a massive central block and two lower wings in lightweight construction, which could be later expanded on one level or replaced by multi-storey buildings.

[53] The main hall, built between 1947 and 1949 for DM 300,000 by the construction company Bilfinger Berger[4] was, according to the Badische Zeitung newspaper, recognised for its "extremely clever floor plan",[54] especially in view the fact that there was only 30 metres (98 ft 5 in) between the platform and the station forecourt.

[78] In long-distance traffic there are regular Intercity-Express connections from Freiburg station to the north in the direction of Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne from platform track 1.

Services run on the Höllentalbahn every half-hour towards Hinterzarten/Titisee in the Black Forest, with trains continuing towards Neustadt or via the Three Lakes Railway (DreiSeenBahn) to Schluchsee-Seebrugg.