Memorial of the Socialists, Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde

Selected gravestones

In 2004 and 2005, urgently needed security and restoration measures at the cemetery were carried out with funds from the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin with the financial participation of the Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Berlin State Office for the Preservation of Monuments) and the Lichtenberg district authority. Among other things, individual grave monuments were restored and saved from further decay. These included the tombs of the painter Paul Meyerheim, the Reich bannerman Willi Schneider, the trade union leader Paula Thiede, and the columbarium of the Vohsen/von den Steinen families.

Memorial of the socialists

The Socialist Memorial in the entrance area of the cemetery, inaugurated in 1951, was created on the initiative of the first president of the GDR Wilhelm Pieck, who also provided a sketch of the idea. The architects Richard Jenner and Hans Mucke, together with the garden and landscape architect Reinhold Lingner, implemented the commission. The result was a circular memorial enclosed by a clinker wall, in the centre of which rises a four-metre-high monolith made of red porphyry with the inscription "The dead admonish us". In connection with the construction of the memorial, the entrance to the cemetery was redesigned, a solution that adapted to the new spatial situation.

In the center of the Socialist Memorial lie ten gravestones commemorating the co-founders of the KPD Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring, the Social Democrats Rudolf Breitscheid and Franz Künstler, Ernst Thälmann and John Schehr of the KPD, as well as the SED officials Wilhelm Pieck, Otto Grotewohl and Walter Ulbricht.
Inserted into the circular wall of the memorial on the left side are 23 gravestones of Social Democrats who were buried there earlier. Among them are the gravestones for Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900), Paul Singer (1844-1911), Emma Ihrer (1857-1911), Ignaz Auer (1846-1907) and Hermann Müller-Franken (1876-1931).
In 1950, the Politburo of the SED decided to bury deserving personalities of the workers' movement in the memorial and reserved the right to decide who should receive an honorary grave in the ring wall. In 1951, Kurt Fischer's urn was the first to be buried. A total of 68 urns are buried in the Ring Wall, including six belonging to women.

Gravesite Pergola Way

In addition to state and party functionaries of the GDR/SED or their family members, numerous personalities from the fields of science and culture as well as participants in the resistance against the Nazi regime were also accommodated in the cemetery with its uniformly designed gravestones.

Of the large number of people buried here, only a few are mentioned. Members of the Liebknecht family are buried here: Karl Liebknecht's second wife Sophie (1884-1964) together with his sons Wilhelm (1901-1975) and Robert (1903-1994) from the marriage of Julia and Karl Liebknecht and his wife Hertha (1904-2000). Buried here are Anna (1899-1978) and Max Christiansen-Clausen (1899-1979), who sent the messages of the Soviet spy Richard Sorge from Japan into the ether. Greta Kuckhoff (1902-1981), President of the German Central Bank from 1950 to 1958, rests here; she and her husband, the poet Adam Kuckhoff, were members of the resistance organization "Red Chapel"; Adam Kuckhoff was executed in Berlin-Plötzensee on August 5, 1943, at the age of 55, along with fifteen other members of the resistance group; his wife had been sentenced to imprisonment by the Reich War Court and freed in 1945.
Furthermore, the gravesites of Herta (1894-1990) and Jacob Walcher (1887-1970), who as former members of the KPD opposition were resented until the end, of Adolph Hennecke (1905-1975), symbolic figure of the activist movement founded in 1948, and of Michael Kohl (1929-1981), State Secretary at the Council of Ministers of the GDR from 1965 to 1973, are located in Pergolenweg. In this position, he negotiated the Basic Treaty between the GDR and the FRG with State Secretary Egon Bahr in 1971/72.

Artists' graves

Buried on the north side of the row are:
The editor Konrad Schmidt (brother of Käthe Kollwitz) and his wife Anna, the AEG director and composer Georg Stern, and the doctor Karl Kollwitz and his wife, the painter, graphic artist and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz, née Schmidt. The bronze relief for the family tomb was created by Käthe Kollwitz in 1936, inspired by Goethe's words "Rest in the peace of his hands". The painter Otto Nagel and his wife Walli Nagel, on the tombstone each their own name in bronze, designed by the sculptor Gerhard Thieme. The sculptor Jenny Mucchi-Wiegmann and her husband, the architect, engineer, designer and painter Gabriele Mucchi. The writer Paul Wiens, the tomb designed by Wieland Förster. The actor Norbert Christian, member of the Berliner Ensemble. The writer and court reporter Rudolf Hirsch. The caricaturist Louis Rauwolf. The writer Ludwig Renn and his friends Max Hunger and Hans Pierschel.
Inhumed on the south side of the row are:
The landscape architect Reinhold Lingner, who was one of the great figures of garden architecture in the GDR and helped design the Memorial to the Socialists, inaugurated in 1951, and his wife Alice Lingner. The painter and graphic artist Leo Haas, the director Paul H. Freyer, the children's book author Gerhard Hardel, the TV dramaturge Eva Görsch, the writer Hansgeorg Stengel, the writer Eduard Klein, the director Janos Veiczi, the deputy artistic director of the Deutsches Theater Walter Kohls, the writer Herbert Nachbar, the author of books for young people Hans Weber, the long-time artistic director of the Friedrichstadtpalast Wolfgang E. Struck, and the writer Irmtraud Morgner rest here.

Celebration Hall

One of the few buildings of the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde is the celebration hall, built in the years 1890-1893. The design for the chapel with mourning and mortuary hall came from the architect Hermann Blankenstein (1829-1910). The building was erected as a central cross-shaped structure in the style of the Romanesque. The simple brick façade, structured by round arches and windows, was crowned by the mighty round dome of the central building.

Hermann Blankenstein was a city architect and head of Berlin's structural engineering administration from 1872-1896. Berlin owes him an almost unmanageable oeuvre of public buildings. Schools, hospitals (Griesinger Hospital, Urban Hospital), sanatoriums, market halls (e.g. in Ackerstrasse), fire stations, street cleaning depots and the former central cattle and slaughterhouse on Landsberger Allee were built according to his designs. Each of these buildings unmistakably showed the architect's signature: the unrendered facades were executed in brick and were usually given prefabricated terracotta ornaments as decoration.

The former urn hall

The domed building of the urn hall stretched about 13.5 metres above a circular ground plan. The building was divided into two levels: the basement was designed as a basement and could be reached at ground level, while the upper floor was 1.50 metres above ground and was accessed via a wide granite staircase. The two floors together could accommodate about 800 urns. The temple-like character of the building was supported on the upper floor by the three-quarter columns of the façade. During the air raids on Berlin in 1945, the urn hall was severely damaged and then demolished in the 1950s.

The Revolution Monument

The decision to erect a monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and the other victims of the January struggles of 1919 in the cemetery in Friedrichsfelde had matured in the KPD in 1923/24. Initially, a traditional memorial was planned.

However, the historian and art collector Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940), who belonged to the KPD, ensured that the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), who was still quite unknown at the time, was able to implement his unconventional design. The monument, financed by donations, was ceremoniously unveiled in the summer of 1926.
Mies van der Rohe had designed a rectangular block approximately twelve meters long, four meters wide and six meters high. The architectural monumentality of the block was enhanced by the projecting and receding cubes, some of them wide, which gave the surface structure a sense of movement and stability at the same time. The monument was erected as a ferroconcrete or reinforced concrete structure and faced with clinker bricks in the Oldenburg format (220 x 105 x 52 mm). Sculptural elements on the right front of the monument were a Soviet star with a hammer and sickle and an attachment for the flagpole.
In January 1935, the Nazis destroyed the Revolutionary Monument along with most of the surrounding gravestones. The graves at the monument, which had been stripped down to its foundation, were leveled in 1941 and the area was opened for re-interment. This was to eliminate the last evidence of this memorial.
After World War II, the traditional rallies at temporary memorials at the site of the former Revolutionary Monument were again held. However, after the newly created Socialist Memorial was dedicated in 1951, the former site was forgotten.

The grove of honour

On 29 January 1978, the grove of honour for those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VdN grove of honour) was inaugurated. This was intended to create a dignified burial place for the survivors of the resistance against National Socialism. With this cemetery, the Central Cemetery has since become Berlin's largest burial place for persecutees and resistance fighters.

The urn graves are marked with standing or lying granite stones, which - similar to the Socialist Memorial and the Pergola Way - only contain the name as well as the year of birth and death of the person buried here. The cemetery for victims of fascism and persecutees of the Nazi regime now contains approximately 900 urn graves, each of which is intended for two urns. Even today, recognized victims of National Socialism are buried here.

back to overview

1. Selected gravestones
2. Memorial of the socialists
3. Gravesite Pergola Way
4. Artists' graves
5. Celebration Hall
6. The former urn hall
7. The Revolution Monument
8. The grove of honour