Zwickau got its first railway station, still made of wood, as early as 1845. This was replaced just 13 years later by a historicist stone building with striking corner towers. In the early 20th century, an enormous growth dynamic set in; coal shipments from the Zwickau mining districts made the station the largest freight station in Saxony, and around 1914, 2.3 million passengers used the station annually. In the 1930s, plans were made to rebuild the station.
Today’s Zwickau main station was built between 1933 and 1936 according to the plans of the Reichsbahn’s Oberbaurat (senior civil engineer) Otto Falck. The functional domed building, clinkered with hard-fired glaze bricks, is visually reminiscent of the architectural style of industrial plants. At the same time, the ideas of the Bauhaus and the clear lines of the New Objectivity of the late 1920s are recognisable. It was opened on 17 December 1936.
With the end of mining and as a result of the fall of communism in 1990, the station lost its importance. Today, long-distance trains no longer travel via Zwickau, but there are plans to re-establish a long-distance connection from Munich via Regensburg and Zwickau to Dresden after the complete electrification of the line.
