Submitted by procrastinator-penguin, who says:

Love your blog and it would be an honour to be featured! I found this map of Berlin by accident, and have no idea of the date, but I note The Wall is still marked on it. Personally, I think it’s quite beautiful in a way, if a little messy – I really don’t understand the red line well. I like the bold line colours, though.

Transit Maps says:

Thanks for this great submission! The history of transit in Berlin is fascinating, and has been the subject of many previous posts on this blog. Fortunately, thanks to the comprehensive database of Berlin transit maps at the berliner-verkehr.de website, it’s pretty easy to date this map to 1961 – the very year that the Berlin Wall was erected.

The presence of the orange line shown between Leopoldplatz and Spichernstrasse (known as Line “G” at the time, now part of the U9) dates the map a little more precisely to around late August 1961. By this time, the Wall had been constructed, but the map still makes no differentiation between stations on opposite sides of it. The 1963 version draws U-Bahn lines in East Berlin with thinner strokes, and by 1966 the now infamous Geisterbahnhöfe have appeared, with stations on the eastern side of the boundary being crossed out.

The red lines aren’t actually that hard to understand with a little research: this was known as “Line A” at the time and had two main branches – from Krumme Lanke to Pankow (in East Berlin) and from Reichskanzlerplatz to Pankow as well. The short stub between Richard-Wagner-Platz and Deutsche Oper stations operated as a shuttle train only.

As for the look – it’s perhaps a little chaotic in its layout, but still hangs together pretty well, helped by some lovely hand lettering.