In the kissels

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Mourning hall

In the Kisseln is a state-owned cemetery in the Berlin district of Spandau . It is located in the Falkenhagener Feld district on an almost rectangular area between Pionierstrasse, Radelandstrasse, Kisselnallee and the Bötzowbahn . With a total area of ​​almost 62 hectares, this burial site is the largest in the urban area of ​​Berlin.

history

The cemetery was opened on November 17, 1886. The then independent town of Spandau needed a new place for burials. These had previously been carried out exclusively in several small churchyards in the city. In addition, the funeral procession had to pull through the main streets of Spandau. In 1886 the local police had decided that the shortest route through the city was to be taken. Therefore, a cemetery was desired far from the city gates.

Outside the city limits of Spandau there was a church, a communal and a Jewish cemetery. The municipal cemetery, which the city had laid out about 20 years earlier, was increasingly overcrowded. The city initially acquired 5.2 hectares of land in the area north of the Falkenhagener Weg (since 1896 Pionierstrasse) for a large municipal cemetery.

The new cemetery grounds was a predominantly with pine trees - in Spandau Messtischblatt that time as Kisseln referred (Küsseln) - wooded hilly dunes , the sand, groundwater-free soils lend themselves very well for use as a burial ground. The hilly landscape overgrown with pine trees characterizes this cemetery to this day and makes it one of the most beautiful burial places in the German capital. Despite the abundance of forests, the facility was not explicitly designed as a forest cemetery at the time; The then financially weak city administration of Spandau limited itself when planning the facility to the fulfillment of its primary purpose as a relief cemetery ; however, landscaping was largely disregarded. Some of the pines had to be cut down to open up areas for the burial grounds.

Hereditary funerals

The new necropolis laid out in the Kisseln was opened on November 17, 1886; the first funeral took place on the same day. In the following years, the old Spandau church yards were all closed for burials. After that, however, they have mostly been preserved as green spaces, such as the former Nikolaikirchhof (for several years: Koeltzepark ), which is reminiscent of the name of the adjacent Kirchhofstrasse . Since the new cemetery was a communal cemetery, anyone could be buried there regardless of their denomination. The new burial site has already taken in around 29,000 deceased in the course of its first 25 years of operation. The upper bourgeoisie in Spandau were also buried there, as can be seen in the numerous splendid hereditary burials in the old part of the cemetery, for example on the Erbstellenweg . However, despite the lively activity, there were initially difficulties in developing the cemetery: the access roads were not even paved for a long time, and regular bus connections between the center of Spandau and the cemetery only existed since 1928.

When the central cemeteries were established at the beginning of the 20th century ( Friedrichsfelde in the east, Stahnsdorf in the south ), a large cemetery in the Karow / Buch area was planned in the north, and the local cemetery was to be converted into the western central cemetery. These plans could not be carried out because of the First World War, the formation of Greater Berlin and inflation.

Memorial to victims of the First World War

In the 20th century, the In den Kisseln cemetery was expanded several times. The first enlargement took place in the years 1913 to 1915; the existing area was almost doubled to the west. In 1920 the cemetery grew to an area of ​​almost 45 hectares; The design was carried out by the architect Karl Elkart , who was also the town planning officer, who had drawn up a comprehensive program for the expansion and redesign of the burial site. For the first time there was talk of a forest cemetery, as it was known from the Hamburg cemetery Ohlsdorf . During the redesign in 1919, a cemetery of honor with a memorial for Spandau who fell in the First World War was built in the extension part . After Spandau was incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920, there were plans to enlarge the cemetery to around 90 hectares and use it as one of Berlin's large collective cemeteries, but this could not be realized because large parts of the potential expansion areas were used for other purposes at that time were. The next cemetery expansion did not take place until the years after the Second World War , when there was already a lack of space in the existing areas, not least due to the large number of dead from the last days of this war and the first post-war months, some of whom were buried there in anonymous mass graves . The site was enlarged from 1957 to 1961 and for the last time from 1964 to 1972, when areas adjacent to Kisselnallee were incorporated into the cemetery.

The cemetery is important for the history of the city, so there are several bars, the cemetery wall with hereditary burial sites and two mausoleums. The grid points were once mandatory for the election grave sites. According to this regulation from 1920, the iron bound with it was then needed for military detention in 1938 and the grid points lost their view. The stone foundations remain. In the 1950s and 1960s, further dismantling was carried out, so that only a few parts of the grid remained.

Graves of known people

Honorary grave of Friedrich Koeltze
Grave of Hanna-Renate Lauriens and her parents
Thomas Dörflein tomb with Knut monument

Several well-known Berliners have also found their final resting place at the In den Kisseln cemetery, including:

In total there are 18 honorary graves of the State of Berlin in this cemetery .

The graves for victims of war and tyranny occupy 15 sections in this cemetery. With 5,901 victims, this honor grove is the largest war cemetery in Berlin. The State of Berlin has taken care of these graves and granted the grave sites permanent rest.

As early as 1919, two sections for 600 war dead of the First World War were laid out in the western cemetery. This area, known as the Stahlhelmfeld , was designed by city architect Karl Elkart and the architect Wolff. Victims of the November Revolution in 1918 and the Kapp Putsch in 1920 were also embedded here. In 1952 these facilities were redesigned and marked with the name pillow stones that are standard for the State of Berlin. In addition to the German soldiers, 103 Soviet soldiers rest in this field, who died in prison camps and hospitals.

Not far is the Siemens burial ground , where 46 war dead from a labor camp during the First World War rest. The remains were reburied here from Haselhorst cemetery in 1961.

In the northern part of the cemetery there are also several honorary graves in the mayor's honor grove (Bürgermeisterfeld) for some of Berlin's city elders, including the aforementioned Friedrich Koeltze, after whom the Koeltzepark was named on the site of the former Nikolaikirchhof in Spandau.

Commemorative plaque for the 82 fire victims from February 8, 1947 in the Karlslust restaurant

In this context, the Loebelfeld should also be mentioned , on which 82 victims of the fire in the Karlslust restaurant were buried in February 1947.

Two special features of this cemetery are the French cross and the Nike angel . On the first there is a marble cross on a sandstone plinth, surrounded by four pillars connected by chains. This memorial commemorates 400 French prisoners of war from the war of 1870/71 who died of black leaves . The other monument is a kneeling angel on a three-meter-high pedestal, who hands the dead a laurel wreath. This commemorates the 28 Spandau war dead from the Danish-Prussian War of 1864 and the German-Prussian War of 1866.

Memorial stone in memory of the Danish prisoner of war Peter Petersen

Most of the departments for war victims are east of the main entrance and are occupied by victims of World War II. The oldest departments created in 1940 are I – V. German soldiers, civilian bomb victims, unknown dead and other war dead lie here. The victims were also transferred from Berlin-Charlottenburg since November 1943 and from Berlin-Tiergarten since January 1944 . The human losses from the Allied attacks reached such proportions that they could no longer be captured by the small inner-city cemeteries. The central memorial square is marked with a 6.70 meter high cross made of Weser sandstone. Further departments with Belgian, Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Soviet, Polish, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian and Yugoslav slave labor were created around these departments. German returnees who died within the legally defined period of exhaustion or other consequences of the war were also buried here. These include the graves of police officers, members of the Volkssturm and SS members.

Next to the administration building there is a burial ground for 117 soldiers who were shot dead between August 21, 1944 and February 13, 1945 in the Murellenberg Mountains and who were accused of "decomposing military strength". To commemorate these and other people murdered there by the Nazi military justice system, the artist Patricia Pisani installed the memorials in memory of those murdered by the Nazi military justice system on Murellenberg in 2002 . Adjacent to these graves are 28 sacrificial graves of prisoners murdered in the Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Ravensbrück concentration camps.

Memorial plaque victims of fascism

Then there is a section with graves of German refugees and Soviet and Polish forced laborers , as well as victims of fascism.

Since the cemetery itself was the site of fighting, according to the cemetery documents there should be further mass graves from the last days of the war in 1945. Many of the existing graves were also concentrated here from other parts of the city and scattered areas. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge started the exact documentation of the individual groups of victims and burial sites in 2008. The aim is to make the individual fates available in an information system in the cemetery.

See also

literature

  • Arne Hengsbach: One hundred years of the “In den Kisseln” cemetery . In: Association for the history of Berlin (ed.): The bear from Berlin. Yearbook of the Association for the History of Berlin . tape 36 . Westkreuz-Verlag, 1987, ISSN  0522-0033 , p. 261-271 .
  • Klaus Hammer, Jürgen Nagel (photos): Historic cemeteries and tombs in Berlin . Stattbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-922778-32-1 , p. 315-316 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude and Spener, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-7759-0476-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berlin honorary graves and ordinance
  2. ↑ Murellenschlucht (place the cursor on the 7th circle from the top on the left)

Web links

Commons : In the Kisseln  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 52 ° 33 '24 "  N , 13 ° 10' 46.2"  E