With 224 graveyards, Berlin is one of the world's leaders in terms of final resting places. As a new guidebook shows, a stroll through a few of the capital's cemeteries is a great way to take in some urban history.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
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Tour Berlin's fascinating cemeteries
Berlin's 224 cemeteries have lots of stories to tell about the city's past - both the highlights and the shadows. They're great places to take a walk - and learn about the city's fascinating past.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
Angels, angels everywhere
According to art historian Boris von Brauchitsch, the author of a recently published guide to Berlin's graveyards, no big city has more cemeteries than Berlin. And where there are dead people, you'll find angels. These two reside in a cemetery in the Mitte district - along with VIPs like philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, playwright Bertolt Brecht and artist John Heartfield.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
Pockmarks from the past
Berlin' cemeteries not only reflect the city's history. They also bear scars from historical events. This mausoleum in the Dorotheenstädtischer-Friedrichswerderscher Cemetery in Mitte was hit by artillery fire. The damage is still amply visible.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
Blood ties beyond the grave
Family plots are a common sight in Berlin graveyards. This unusual example of the genre can be admired in Georgen-Parochial Cemetery I in Prenzlauer Berg. But for how long? Parts of the cemetery have already closed, and the graveyard occupies prime real estate in this affluent and child-happy district.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
A romantic resting place in Prenzlauer Berg
Berlin's most famous Jewish cemetery is located in the Weißensee district, but the oldest surviving (1827) and most romantic one sits on Schönhauser Allee in Prenzlauer Berg. Hard to be believe a place like this exists in a downtown big city. Among those buried here are artist Max Liebermann, composer Giacomo Meyerbeer and Moritz Manheimer, supplier of uniforms to the prussian Army.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
The threat of extinction
Graveyards have a lot of natural enemies. Falling mortality rates, for instance, or the dwindling importance of religion in society. As a result, some of Berlin's historic cemeteries could be facing closure. That would in effect destroy parts of Berlin's history - real estate developers are rubbing their hands nonetheless.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
Eternal sleep in wrought iron
In the latter stages of World War II, the intricate wrought-iron fences in many Berlin graveyards were melted down for badly needed ore. The ironwork that is still there, however, includes many lovely examples of traditional craftsmanship. It's also symbolic. Poppies, from which numerous opiates are derived, symbolize eternal sleep.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
A resting place for the terminally unhappy
The Grunewald-Forst graveyard is nicknamed the "Suicides' Cemetery." Normally people who died by their own hand were excluded from hallowed ground, but in this case the guardians of the faith turned a blind eye. The crosses mark the graves of horrified tsarists after the Russian revolution. Velvet Underground collaborator Nico is also buried here.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
Russians, Turks, Berliners
Berlin's graveyards are diverse places in a number of respects. One colorful example of that is if the Russian-Orthodox Cemetary in the district of Reinickendorf. A similar exotic flair permeates Germany's oldest Turkish cemetary on Columbiadamm in the Neukölln neighborhood. Both recall Berlin's long multi-cultural tradition.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
Death in divided Berlin
Charlottenburg's Catholic Cemetery is located on the outskirts of town - so far on the outskirts that it proved the graveyard's undoing. With the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, it was cut off from the rest of West Berlin. East German officials let the cemetery, which was located in a security zone and had an unsavory Nazi past, simply go to ruin.
Image: B. von Brauchitsch
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A mild autumn day in Berlin's Neukölln district - a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with a couple of historical graveyards. I've met up with Boris von Brauchitsch, art historian and author of a new and very amusing guide book on the capital city's graveyards.
Our miniature tour starts on Berlin's "cemetery mile" - a 2.6-kilometer (1.6-mile) stretch of road from Hermannplatz square all the way to the autobahn. There are no fewer than eight graveyards here. The reason, Brauchitsch informs me, is that in the 19th century Berliners started burying their dead outside the city, and this was where the city wall used to stand.
Our first stop is the Alter-und-Neuer-Sankt-Jakobi-Friedhof, established in 1852. It's one of those classic, romantic, slightly dilapidated graveyards with lots of cracked headstones and mossy mausoleums.
"Look at the exquisite ironwork on this fence," Brauchitsch says. "Decorations like this were very popular around that time, but in the late stages of World War II, people carted off a lot of the iron and melted it down."
It becomes clear to me that cemeteries not only reflect history, they are also shaped by it themselves.
Picnic in the graveyard
The further we proceed away from the old city limits, the newer and more expansive the graveyards become. The St. Michael's and St. Thomas's Cemeteries, for instance, are essentially parks laid out at right angles along long tree-lined walkways.
In the late 19th century, this was where the nouveau-riche upper middle classes interred their deceased, Brauchitsch tells me. Such cemeteries were also popular spots for rest and relaxation. Families would come out and pay their respects to dear departed Auntie X and then plop down on the well-kept grass for a picnic.
That may seem impious, but Berliners have never treated their dead with kid gloves. The phrase eternal resting place is a misnomer in the German capital.
"The current standard lease for a grave is 20 years," Brauchitsch says. "After that either your relatives pony up some more cash, or you get chucked out."
Even fame is no guarantee that one's remains will be left in peace. Cabaret star Anita Berber, the subject of the famous portrait by painter Otto Dix, was unceremoniously disinterred from St. Michael's Cemetery. An unplesant fate. But there are far worse ones on display at our next stop.
Pious inhumanity
Across the street, to the rear of the Jerusalems- und Neue Kirche Cemetery V are the remains of a barracks that used to house forced laborers from Eastern Europe, who tended Berlin's graveyards toward the end of World War II.
It was often fatal work. These hallowed grounds are located directly next to Tempelhof Airport, where the slave workers were directly exposed to Allied air-raids. Hardly very Christian of the religious communities that exploited the laborers.
Ironically, it's now the existence of the cemetery that's under threat. As mortality rates decline and more and more Berliners decide to be cremated, the need for cemeteries has dramatically decreased.
"Real-estate developers are lining up to get their hands on deconsecrated former graveyards," Brauchitsch tells me.
Perhaps that development is unavoidable, but I still find it a shame. As I've learned this afternoon, Berlin's past comes vividly alive in its many historical cemeteries.
