A Walking & Audio Guide to the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery
The Memorial to the Socialists, Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde
This is a special one. Below you’ll find a guide to some of the most important graves in the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery. It’s a walk you can take yourself on in about an hour, and you can either read the information below as you go, or tune into a special edition of History Flakes: The Berlin History Podcast.
In this episode Pip and I walk through the cemetery and talk about loads of different historical figures, most of whom (though not all) were huge figures on the German left, particularly in East Germany. We cover Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht, artist Käthe Kollwitz, famous spies and spymasters Klaus Fuchs, Markus Wolf, and Erich Mielke, and we finish our work at the glorious, monumental, beautiful Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten, the Memorial to the Socialists.
Ian Sanders from Cold War Conversations got me interested in the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery. Even though I live nearby, I knew I wouldn’t be able to guests on my tours here (before I ran my own tours), so I always put off checking it out. Then I started making those little videos, and I started to be able to show people so much more of Berlin! So, I came here in 2023 and made a clip about the place, which to be honest, isn’t that good. I knew there was unfinished business! In 2023 Pip and I started recording our podcast, and we were finally able to launch Season 1 this year. When we started planning season 2, I knew I wanted to include something special, so I picked a walk around this cemetery. We thought hey, we can try it, the worst that’ll happen is people don’t like it.
That said, whether you’re following the guide below, with photos of and links to all of the exact coordinates of the graves we mention, or just listening at home, we hope you have a fun & interesting time.
If you like what you hear and you’d like to buy Pip & I a drink to say thank you, you can use the buttons below.
How to use the guide
Just below here you’ll find a custom Google Map that highlights all of the locations and the suggested walking route, but that can be a bit finicky to use on mobile devices. So, under each heading I’ve also included a link to that specific grave for you, using the exact GPS coordinates. You’ve also got a photo of each grave to make them easier to find.
The Map
Here’s an overview of the whole route for you.
Remember though, you can find each location separately to make life easier.
The History of Friedrichsfelde Cemetery
The Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde was established in 1881 and has been in use ever since. Situated in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg, it became a cemetery deeply associated with Berlin’s working class. It was opened when Berlin was a city on the rise - just 10 years before it had become the capital of the German Empire. This was a time of rapid growth of both the economy, and the population. With this growth came many, many workers, particularly to the Eastern part of the city where the pollution was worse and the housing was dense. Here, workers lived, and died, in cramped and unhygienic conditions.
When their time came, many of them were buried in Friedrichsfelde. As a result of the cemetery’s association with the working class, many of the founders and leaders of Berlin & Germany’s workers’ movements were buried here. This includes father and son Wilhelm and Karl Liebknecht; Wilhelm was a founding member of the Social Democratic Party, or SPD and Liebknecht was the founder of the German Communist party, the KPD.
The Cemetery fell into East Berlin following WWII. Here, the ruling party of East Germany, a forced amalgam of both SPD & KPD, would take what had been a memorial for the victims of the 1919 Communist uprising that had been desecrated by the Nazis, and create a monument for both historical and contemporary figures right at the end of this tour.
#1 Hermann Mächtig (1837–1909)
Hermann Mächtig was a prominent German landscape architect and city planner in the late 19th century, known for his extensive work on parks, public gardens, and cemeteries. He was one of the leading figures in urban landscape design during a crucial time when Berlin was growing like crazy.
Mächtig is a fitting figure to start the tour with, he’s responsible for designing this very cemetery, Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. In 1877 he became the Stadtgartendirektor (City Garden Director) of Berlin. Mächtig believed in the integration of green spaces into rapidly urbanising areas. His goal was to improve both the aesthetic and health conditions of the working population. To this end he went on to design two of Berlin’s most magnificent parks: Treptower Park and Viktoriapark.
While both are popular to this day, more than 100 years after their creation, it’s perhaps Viktoriapark that’s considered Mächtig’s crowning glory, featuring a waterfall cascading down from the Kreuzberg monument, celebrating Prussia’s victories over Napoleon.
#2 Axel Fintelmann (1848–1907)
A short stop here: Fintelmann was one of Mächtig’s closest collaborators. They worked together on the park-like layout of this cemetery, and were inspired by the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. Fintelmann’s grave features a copper-relief portrait created by sculptor Albert Manthe, and is a protected monument today (albeit an overgrown one).
#3 Walter Womacka
Walter Womacka (1925–2010) was a prominent East German painter, graphic artist, and art educator. He’s one of those people that, if you live in Berlin, you’ve heard of, even if you don’t think you have. He created some of East Germany’s most famous public artworks.
In fact, Womacka was a defining figure of the visual culture of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). His works were highly regarded by East Germany’s leaders, including the big two, Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, who between them would lead East Germany for the vast majority of its 41-year history.
The House of Teachers featuring Womacka’s ‘Unser Leben’ mosaic
Womacka became an iconic figure in socialist realist art, a style that was encouraged and promoted by the state. The idea with this style was, as my tour guide pal Ryan Balmer says, to raise the working class to the status of heroes.
Womacka was born in Horní Jiřetín, then Czechoslovakia, in 1925. He studied art after WWII with a focus on painting and graphic design. As socialist realism became popular in communist-controlled post-war Eastern Europe, Womacka started to use that style.
The 800,000-piece mosaic on the House of Teachers near Alexanderplatz
Perhaps the greatest example of which is well known to all Berliners. You’ll find it on the side of Haus des Lehrers (House of Teachers) just by Alexanderplatz. A huge mural made up of supposedly 800,000 pieces adorns the building. It’s named Unser Leben (Our Life) from 1964. The huge image covers over 100 square metres, and depicts idealised scenes of life in the GDR, focusing on teachers and intellectuals.
Walter Womacka’s Aus der Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (“From the History of the German Workers’ Movement”)
One of his most stunning pieces in the former Staatsratsgebäude (State council building) in former East Berlin, now the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT). This was the head office of East German executive power, or, to put it another way, the boss’ office. Also finished in 1964, the building features a huge stained glass window, several stories tall (ok technically it’s painted glass, but still).
Images of young couples and children were common in East German imagery: the destructive prices are gone, the peaceful future is here
Named Aus der Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (“From the History of the German Workers’ Movement”), it tells the story of the rise of the workers in Germany, starting with the November 1918 revolution, prominently featuring Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in the centre, before shooting up to the top to show East Germany’s modern industrial achievements, prominently displaying a young family in the centre - children were often used in East German art to represent the future, which is particularly prominent in the next piece that many people may be familiar with…
Walter Womacka’s stained glass window at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial
…the stained glass window at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial. The former Nazi concentration camp, Sachsenhausen, was the closest permanent camp to Berlin, not far away in the town of Oranienburg. It was opened as a memorial by East German leader Walter Ulbricht in the style of a victorious ceremony in the Spring of 1961. The memorial honoured communist victims, and made no mention of the Soviets’ use of the site between 1945 and 1950 as “Special Camp 7”, during which an estimated 12,000 perished.
Visitors to the memorial in the 60s would first arrive at the brand new Museum of the Fight for Freedom of the European People. Once inside, they would see a huge, 3-panel stained glass window designed by Walter Womacka. It depicts various scenes from the war and the camps, but front and centre we see a depiction of Red Army soldier Nikolai Masalov. Masalov risked his life crawling between the Soviet and German lines on the Potsdamer Brücke on the 30th of April, 1945 during the Battle of Berlin to rescue a young German girl.
The image of Masalov therefore became the perfect symbol of the liberation of the East German people from Nazism at the hands of the glorious Red Army.
Womacka went on to become the Rector of the Weissensee Art School, a position he held for 20 years up to 1988. He received multiple awards for his works, which in my opinion are very impressive to this day. He continued to work as an artist in reunified Germany, and was able to distance himself from his association with the East German regime.
He passed away on the 18th of September 2010, and was laid to rest here in the artists’ section of the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery. There’s a memorial plaque for him outside of his studio at Wallstraße 90 in former East Berlin.
#4 Käthe Kollwitz
Kollwitz is buried with her husband, Karl
Käthe Kollwitz, one of Germany’s most important artists, is deeply associated with the themes of war, loss, and the working-class struggle. Born in 1867, she trained as a painter but found her true strength in drawing and sculpture. Her work focused on the suffering and resilience of the poor, particularly women and children.
Kollwitz’s original statue was only 15 cm (6 inches) tall
Kollwitz’s son, Peter, was killed during World War I. Her sculpture “The Grieving Parents” in the Vladslo German War Cemetery in Belgium reflects this displaying outright sadness and emotion, turning the deaths of many millions of people in that conflict into something deeply personal and confronting.
Similarly, the sculpture of the mother holding her dying son in the Memorial for the Victims of War & Tyranny on the Unter den Linden in central Berlin, is a work of brutal honesty and vulnerability; a warning that nothing but utter pain comes from armed conflict.
Kollwitz pieta in the Memorial to the Victims of War & Tyranny in central Berlin
Kollwitz’s anti-war stance was fairly common in German society following the First World War, but was nevertheless seen as controversial. Of course, there were those that wanted not to focus on Germany’s loss and perceived failure, but to glorify warfare and Germany. Those people, including but not limited to the Nazis, saw the works of artists like Kollwitz as shameful. People like her would be labelled “degenerate artists” during the Hitler years. Discredited and unable to work, much of their artwork ended up destroyed.
Kollwitz was the first woman to be appointed to the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1919. She was forced to resign by the Nazi regime in 1933 due to her opposition to the war and her support for pacifist causes. She passed away in Dresden in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II.
#5 Revolutionsdenkmal & Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Mies van der Rohe’s original Revolutionsdenkmal was destroyed by the Nazis in 1935
The Revolutionsdenkmal (Revolution Memorial) was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1926 when he was a relatively unknown architect. He would go on to become one of the most important and celebrated figures in modernist architecture.
Commissioned by the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) in the 1920s, the monument was built to honour Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and other victims of the 1919 January Uprising, making it a heavily politicised symbol of social struggle even for the time.
The original design was bold and modern, even by the standards of the Weimar era, breaking from traditional monument styles, with a rectangular block of about 12 metres in length and 6 metres in height, made of red brick, and featuring a giant Soviet star. The design was highly unconventional especially for a cemetery, but foreshadows the straight lines and simple, minimalist structures van der Rohe would become famous for.
Rosa Luxemburg’s memorial is always filled with tributes despite its out of the way location
In 1935, the Nazis demolished the monument as part of their crackdown on communist symbols - the communist party had already been shut down at the beginning of 1933. The structure was never rebuilt, but the site became a place of continued remembrance in East Germany. A memorial plaque was placed here in 1983 to honour the lost monument.
Mies van der Rohe’s iconic works include the minimalist 1929 Barcelona Pavilion, a series of celebrated skyscrapers in the United States like the Seagram Building in New York, and, later, the Neue Nationalgalerie in West Berlin. Completed in 1968, the Neue Nationalgalerie’s open-plan design with vast glass walls and a floating steel roof became an architectural marvel - yet it was famously critiqued as ‘an art gallery with nowhere to hang the art,’. It was his final completed building.
If you want to visit one of van der Rohe’s buildings in Berlin today, you can head to the Villa Lemke, built here in Berlin in 1932-33.
Van der Rohe himself is buried in the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, the city home to many of his most important works.
#6 Graves for WWII Victims
One of many monuments for Berlin civilians killed during WWII in the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery
‘Here lie 570 women, men and children that died as a result of WWII in the Oskar Ziethen Hospital’. There are quite a few different graves for WWII victims in this cemetery. Many of whom will have been killed in the huge air raids such as November 1943 (RAF) and February 1945. In this case, it would seem that the majority of these deaths took place after fighting had ceased. This isn’t surprising of course, but I think it’s important to confront yourself with these mass graves and get a sense of understanding for what it must have been like for regular people in WWII Berlin who were caught up in the madness and terror of those huge air raids, let alone the Soviet invasion of the city in 1945 and the ensuing Battle of Berlin.
There’s another memorial, similar to this one, that you might notice further along the walk, as well as small, brown graves for individual victims of WWII that you will find in many cemeteries throughout Berlin.
#7 Paula Thiede
Paula Thiede (1870–1919) was a prominent figure in the German labour movement and the first woman to hold a leadership position in a German trade union in Germany. She was born in Berlin and began working as a bookbinder at a young age. Thiede became active in labour organising during the late 19th century, a time when workers’ rights were a hotly contested issue in Germany, and the Social Democrats (SPD) were well on their way to becoming one if Germany’s major political parties.
Thiede joined the German Bookbinders’ Union (Deutscher Buchbinderverband) in 1890. She quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming the first female leader of a major German trudeau union in 1898. She fought fiercely for workers’ rights, improved working conditions, and equal pay for women.
Unfortunately, Paula Thiede’s life was cut short when she passed away at the age of 49 in 1919 due to Tuberculosis. That said, she did live long enough to see the revolution, and therefore the introduction of the 8-hour work days and women’s right to vote.
There’s a street named after her in Berlin today, Paula-Thiede-Ufer. It’s just off the Schillingbrücke near Ostbahnhof. It’s home to the head offices of Verdi, one of the largest unions in Germany today.
#8 Eduard von Winterstein
Eduard von Winterstein, real name Eduard Freiherr von Wangenheim, was a theatre and film actor in the early days of German film. While not one of the big names of his day, he worked with some of the biggest and most important people of his time. This includes legendary theatre director Max Reinhardt, and an appearance in Blue Angel, billed at the time as starring the most popular actor of the day, Emil Jannings. Looking back, Blue Angel is of course the movie that brought one of Germany’s most famous actresses to public attention: Marlene Dietrich.
Winterstein continued to work as an actor during the Third Reich, appearing in a Sherlock Holmes pastiche in 1937 - typical, non-intellectually challenging fodder for the time (a Nazi-era Sherlock Holmes comedy pastiche!? I have to watch this one day. It sounds like a Monty Python joke).
Following WWII he was cleared of any involvement with the regime, and publicly made the decision to settle in East Germany. He praised the regime as the antidote to the failures of the Kaisers, the failed democracy of the Weimar years, and the horrors of Nazi Germany.
He died in Berlin aged 89, having spent most of his life on stage.
#9 Friedrich Simon Archenold
Friedrich Simon Archenhold was a German astronomer born in 1861. He dedicated his life to making astronomy accessible to the public. He founded the Archenhold Observatory initially for the Grand Industrial Exposition of 1896 in Berlin, though it took far longer to build than anticipated and nearly completely ran him out of money, it proved hugely popular. He managed to lobby the city to make it permanent, which was lucky, because he couldn’t afford to move it to Grunewald, as he was supposed to have done.
Fortunately for us it still exists today, and you can visit it! The observatory’s centrepiece is the “Great Refractor” telescope, also known as the Himmelskanone, or Celestial Cannon. At 21 metres long, it is still the world’s longest moveable refractor telescope to this day, and it still works - you can even look through it on special visits!
The Celestial Cannon, built in 1896 and still the largest telescope of its kind today
The observatory holds a huge claim to fame: on June 2, 1915, none other than Albert Einstein gave his first public lecture on the theory of relativity at the Archenhold Observatory.
While the observatory was a huge success, Archenhold and his family’s lives would take a dark turn in 1933. He was ousted from the observatory, due to Jewish heritage. Friedrich died in 1939, his sons were persecuted by the Nazis but managed to flee to England. His wife Alice and their daughter Hilde were both sent to Theresienstadt, a camp near Prague, where they died in 1943 and 1944 respectively. The three of them are buried together here.
#10 Erich Mielke
Erich Mielke was buried here in a secret ceremony in 2000
Erich Mielke was one of East Germany’s most powerful and feared figures, serving as the Minister for State Security from 1957 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As head of the notorious Stasi, Mielke oversaw a vast network of spies and informers, creating one of the most oppressive surveillance states in modern history.
Born in Berlin in 1907, Mielke became politically active at a young age, joining the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the 1920s. In 1931, he was involved in the assassination of two Berlin police officers, forcing him to flee to Belgium, France, and eventually the Soviet Union with the help of the Soviet secret police.
During WWII, Mielke was trained by Soviet intelligence. When he returned to (East) Germany following WWII he rose rapidly through the ranks of the GDR’s security apparatus. By 1957 he became the head of the Stasi. Mielke’s influence on East German society was immense. Over the years the Stasi grew and grew in both size and budget. His agency spied on millions of East Germans, rooting out dissent and enforcing loyalty to the regime, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtley. Under his leadership, the Stasi not only monitored ordinary citizens but also infiltrated every aspect of public and private life, from workplaces to personal relationships.
Despite his unwavering service to the GDR, Mielke’s downfall came swiftly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He was arrested in 1991 and later convicted of the 1931 murders he had fled from. He spent the final years of his life in prison, suffering from dementia, before dying in 2000.
Mielke’s funeral, held in secret at the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery, was attended by a small group of former Stasi colleagues. The event was kept under wraps, with only a select few invited to pay their respects, while former Stasi General Willi Opitz gave the eulogy. The secrecy reflects the controversial legacy Mielke left behind, a figure both revered by his old comrades and reviled by many others.
The gravestone bears an inscription that reads: “Was vergangen, kehrt nicht wieder, aber ging es leuchtend nieder, leuchtet’s lange noch zurück.” The phrase is taken from a poem by Karl August Förster, and translates to: “What has passed will not return, but if it set in brightness, its glow will continue to shine back for a long time.” (rough AI translation).
#11 Helmut Just
The grave of 19-year old East German policeman Helmut Just
Helmut Just was a 19 year old East Berlin Volkspolizei (People’s Police) officer. On the 30th of December 1952 he was shot dead while on duty near the sector border between East and West Berlin. His body was found by the Behmbrücke, which connected the East Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg with the West Berlin district of Wedding in the French sector.
No witnesses came forward. His gun was missing. East German forces had no idea what happened.
Despite this, the East Germans quickly framed his death as an assassination by “fascist bandits” from West Berlin. His death became fodder for anti-Western propaganda. Just became a martyr for the East German cause, despite them having no clue what actually happened to him. In fact, later investigations conducted by the Stasi suggested that Just had ties to Berlin’s criminal underworld, and his death may have been related to some shady goings on.
We’ll never know for sure, but what we do know is that the East German government continually honoured Just as a hero. Streets, schools, and sports facilities in East Germany were named after him. His memorial here proclaims that he “gave his life for the just cause of peace.”
His killer has never been found.
#12 The Pergolenweg
The Pergolenweg is a memorial pathway established in the 1950s in East Germany to honour political figures and resistance fighters who opposed the Nazi regime. The name “Pergolenweg” comes from the pergolas (a type of arched structure) that line parts of the pathway (or used to, as it looks to me).
This is where the great and (sometimes not so) good of East German society were buried. The tradition didn’t stop in 1990 with the abolition of the East German state though. Check, and you’ll see more recent dates on the graves, too. Especially those that are shared by spouses and siblings.
We’re going to take a look at two of the most famous of the 529 graves, the fox and the wolf; Klaus Fuchs and Markus Wolf.
#13 Klaus Fuchs
The Atomic Spy! Klaus Fuchs passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project in the USA during WWII
Klaus Fuchs was one of the most dangerous spies in history. A brilliant physicist and mathematician, Fuchs studied in Germany and became politically active in the 1930s, joining the Communist Party in 1932. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, Fuchs fled to England, where his charm and intelligence concealed his espionage activities.
Despite warnings from the Gestapo that he was a communist, the Brits trusted Fuchs - basically the thinking was that he was so smart that his potential to help Britain make a nuclear bomb outweighed the risk that he may at one point have been a member of the communist party of Germany.
He started work on “Tube Alloys” Britain’s top secret nuclear weapons program. He would regularly take trips down to Oxfordfordshire, and while walking country lanes would hand information over to Ursula Kuczynski, aka Agent Sonya, who would pass the information to the Soviet Union. Fuchs’ thinking was that if the weapon they were working on was as powerful as he expected it to be, no one nation could hold on to it.
As it became clear that safer, larger, and more secret facilities would be needed to work on the new wonder weapon, Fuchs was transferred along with other scientists from Tube Alloys to the United States, where they would collaborate with American researchers on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. There, alongside Robert Oppenheimer, Fuchs played a key role in the development of the atomic bomb and was present at the first successful nuclear test in July 1945. He managed to smuggle critical details of the bomb’s design to the Soviets, significantly advancing their nuclear capabilities, helping them to become the world’s second nuclear-armed state by 1949.
Fuchs returned to Britain after WWII, and continued to send information to the Soviet Union. Eventually, in 1950, the authorities caught up with him. He admitted to the charges of espionage, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was released in 1959 for good behaviour and subsequently emigrated to East Germany, where he was given a hero’s welcome. He became a party member and worked in nuclear physics for the rest of his career.
Much as he had a hero’s welcome, he had a hero’s sendoff in 1988 following his death from cancer. Various East German state officials attended his funeral. Of the 115 guests that were invited, a 35-year old Vladimir Putin was among them.
#14 Markus Wolf
Brothers Markus & Konrad Wolf were two of East Germany’s most influential figures
Markus Wolf was one of the most infamous intelligence chiefs of the Cold War, known for his extraordinary success in espionage, “The Man Without a Face”, a spy master whose very appearance remained unknown to Western intelligence agencies for over two decades.
Born in 1923, Wolf grew up in a politically active, leftist family. His father, Friedrich Wolf, was a Jewish doctor, playwright, and committed communist who fled Nazi Germany in 1933, taking Markus and his younger brother Konrad, also buried here, to the Soviet Union.
Wolf became a Soviet radio propagandist during World War II, broadcasting communist messages to German soldiers. After the war Wolf returned to Germany, where he became a key figure in the creation of East Germany’s foreign intelligence service under the Stasi.
Wolf headed the HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), East Germany’s foreign intelligence branch, from 1951 until 1986. His particular skill lay in recruitthe recruitment and use of “Romeo agents” - handsome East German spies who seduced Western women working in high placed secretarial positions, gaining access to classified information. This technique allowed him to infiltrate the West Germany government, and NATO especially during the 60s and 70s.
One of his most famous operations involved Günter Guillaume, a spy who became a close aide to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. When Guillaume was exposed in 1974, Brandt was forced to resign, marking one of the greatest espionage victories of the Cold War.
Wolf presented himself as more cultured and less brutal than his counterpart, Erich Mielke. He always tried to distance himself from the harshest acts of the Stasi, though his service to the regime spanned over three decades. Heretired in 1986, just three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
If you want to find out more about Markus Wolf, we did a 2-parter on him in season one. Here’s part one, and here’s part two.
#15 Konrad Wolf
Konrad Wolf, Markus’ beloved younger brother, joined the Red Army in WWII. He fought in the battle of Berlin, and would have invaded the Spandau Citadel, had his commanding officers not negotiated its surrender. He went on to become one of the most respected film directors in East Germany, one of his most famous films, 1968’s Ich war Neunzehn (I Was Nineteen), is about his experience invading Berlin.
After reunification, Markus Wolf was prosecuted by the Federal Republic of Germany but avoided long-term imprisonment. He passed away in 2006 and was buried alongside his brother, Konrad
Konrad Wolf died from complications relating to cancer on the 7th of March, 1982. He had been working on a film named Die Troika that was left unfinished. Troika was then picked up by his brother Markus and published as a book in 1989. The story centres on three childhood friends, Konrad, Viktor, and Lothar whose paths diverge dramatically due to political shifts and personal tragedies. Each represents a different trajectory shaped by the Soviet Union’s complex political landscape: one remains loyal to the USSR, another returns to Germany disillusioned, and the third relocates to the United States.
#16 The Memorial for the Victims of Stalinism
Before we go and look at that great big rock that I’m sure stole your attention, I just wanted to bring attention to this little stone. The big, main memorial is a mixed bag of resting places, from those that earnestly fought for the representation of the workers, those who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by the Nazis, to those that created, and maintained East Germany’s oppressive regime.
This tiny stone is for the millions of victims of Stalinism. Even though the East German regime under the influence of Soviet leader Kruschev in the 1950s tried to distance itself from Stalin and his legacy, the victims of Stalinism were not mentioned here until 2006. One of the figures buried in the main memorial, Walter Ulbricht, was very much Stalin’s man.
#17 The Memorial for the Socialists
The most powerful political of East Germany’s early years are buried here surrounded by past leaders of the Social Democratic and Communist movements
The Memorial to the Socialists at Friedrichsfelde Cemetery was inaugurated in 1951, very early on in East Germany’s history. Designed by architects Reinhold Lingner, Richard Jenner, and Hans Mucke under the leadership of the first and only East German president, Wilhelm Pieck, the memorial was built as a place to honour key figures of the German Communist Party (KPD) and Social Democratic Party (SPD).
The SPD split over the issue of WWI, between the majority who supported it, and the minority, led by Hugo Haase, who didn’t. This rift would widen during the November Revolution of 1918, when those on the far left of the movement felt that the revolution had become compromised by a deal between the new Chancellor, Friedrich Ebert (SPD) and Wilhelm Groener, head of the German military at the end of the war.
This led to the KPD being founded at the end of 1918, and the communists attempting to further the revolution and introduce a Soviet-style government in January 1919. Working with the military and a group known as the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmets), who would later be very close with the fascists, the leaders of the 1919 uprising, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered. Luxemburg’s body was thrown in the canal in the Tiergarten, and wouldn’t be found for months. In fact, there’s debate as to whether or not it was found at all.
The divide between the KPD and SPD was never healed in the Weimar years. After WWII the communists in East Germany & East Berlin had backing from the Soviet Union, but lacked a majority. In order to legitimise what was a de facto communist government, the KPD and SPD were merged in East Germany on the 21st of April 1946, sealed with a famous handshake by the future president and prime minister of East Germany, Wilhelm Pieck and Otto Grotewohl. The new party was called the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), abbreviated to SED.
This huge monument is a physical representation of the coming together of the SPD and KPD under the leadership of the SED. The central obelisk is inscribed with the text “Die Toten mahnen uns” (“The dead remind us”, or “the dead warn us”). Buried around it are Liebknecht and Luxemburg, Grotewohl and Pieck, and the man responsible for having the Berlin Wall built, Walter Ulbricht, who led East Germany until 1970. Key Weimar-era politicians including Rudolf Breitscheid (SPD) and Ernst Thälmann (KPD) who both died in the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald. Their bodies are not really here, their graves are simply symbolic.
The semi-circular brick wall surrounding the obelisk contains the graves and urns of prominent figures from both the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), some of whom go back to the 19th century, including Karl Liebknecht’s father, Wilhelm, who was one of the founding members of the SPD.
If you want to see this place really come to life, come here on the second sunday of January. Each year, for around 100 years now, the Liebknecht-Luxemburg Memorial March sees hundreds of people march here from Frankfurter Tor in memory of those who died during the 1919 Communist uprising. In the East German days, high-ranking members of the government would even take part in the festivities.
The End
Thank you so much for listening and reading. I hope you enjoyed yourself, learned something, and discovered something new. If you think this was a valuable experience, then there are a few ways you can say thank you:
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