When the East German government erected the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, it also severed the U-Bahn, S-Bahn and long distance train connections that criss-crossed through Berlin. The district of Berlin Mitte, where the Friedrichstrasse station is located, was surrounded in the northerly, westerly, and southerly directions by Western Sectors: For the S-Bahn at the Friedrichstrasse station, the next station to the west was across the wall in West Berlin, to the north were three more stops in the Soviet sector and only two to the south. The situation was similar for the U6 metro underneath the Friedrichstrasse, which had three stations to the north and two stations to the south before crossing the wall.