Cemetery of the victims of fascism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Statue fighters of the Red Army by Gerhard Thieme in the cemetery

The cemetery of the victims of fascism in Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is a memorial cemetery and a testimony to how the Nazi past was dealt with in the GDR. It is located in the Paulsstadt district across from the Old Cemetery on the southern Obotritenring , at the corner of Sandstrasse and the Place of Victims of Fascism (OdF).

history

In 1945, by order of the US Army , the Schwerin population attended the burial of the victims of the Wöbbelin concentration camp

The history of the square goes back to the 18th century. In 1755 the area was used as an urban sand pit. From 1854 garden plots had been created around the Sandberg and leased. In the decades that followed, the allotment gardens expanded and could be reached via the Katzensteg , today's Müllerstrasse. With the inauguration of the new, today old cemetery in 1863, the gardens were leveled. After that, the place was used for a short time as a tree nursery and until 1925 as a wood storage area for master carpenter Heiden. From 1930, a green area with lawns, a lawn and a sandpit for children was created. The foreign conifers planted in the complex were replaced by birch trees in 1935 by the Reich governor and later Gauleiter Friedrich Hildebrandt . The first burials of the dead on the square took place between 1943 and 1945. The unknown victims are said to have been Soviet forced laborers who were initially buried in the old cemetery and later reburied in today's OdF cemetery.

With the bombing raid on Schwerin on April 7th 1945, the old cemetery and today's square of the OdF were bombed and torn up by bomb craters. On May 2, 1945, American troops came to Schwerin and liberated the at Ludwigslust preferred concentration camp Wöbbelin . On May 8, 1945 the bodies of 74 prisoners from the Wöbbelin concentration camp were buried on the square. On July 1, 1945, the Red Army marched into Schwerin and from then on used the place as a military cemetery. The first rally on the Day of the Victims of Fascism took place on October 21, 1945 .

Cemetery of honor

Russian graves in the cemetery

At the turn of the year 1945/1946 the cemetery was officially named the cemetery of the victims of fascism . At first the site was in poor condition. The aviator cows grazed in the grave fields, and a Red Army news group used the cemetery as a training ground.

After these abuses, Major General Usow from the Soviet military command handed over the cemetery to the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg, Wilhelm Höcker , for further care on November 12, 1949 . The handover of the cemetery to the city of Schwerin took place on November 14, 1949 with the official name Victims of Fascism. At that time there were 485 graves and two mass graves, 95 marble plaques and 390 cement plaques. According to the Russian Federation and after the documents were handed over in 1990, there were actually four mass graves. With the redesign of the cemetery from 1950, the Schwerin sculptor Hans Matthies made an obelisk that had a hammer and sickle in the upper area and was intended to serve as a memorial to the victory over fascism. It was installed in the western cemetery area, but was removed during the further redesigns between 1976 and 1978. The burial of Soviet soldiers in this Soviet honorary cemetery ended in 1967, after which the dead were returned to their homeland. But at the request of the city commandant, the Berlin sculptor Gerhard Thieme made the bronze sculpture of a Soviet soldier mourning the dead on behalf of the Schwerin City Council . The monument to fighters of the Red Army was erected on June 6, 1978 in the northern area between the Soviet soldiers' graves. A gate with the inscription Glory of the Soviet Army was built.

From 1953 397 VdN members ( persecuted by the Nazi regime ) and their spouses were buried in the center of the cemetery. They were people from the ranks of the communist and social democratic labor movement, but also participants in the Spanish Civil War . The central point was the grave slab for Kurt Bürger , state chairman of the KPD and brief prime minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. After 1970, 71 grave slabs with the prisoner numbers of the prisoners from the Wöbbelin concentration camp buried on May 8, 1945 were set up in a semicircle within the VdN grave field.

With the dissolution of the memorial of deserved fighters for democracy and socialism in the Old Cemetery since 1991, the urns located there had to be reburied. The municipality of Schwerin passed this measure on December 11, 1991 with resolution no. 331. Kurt Bürger was buried in 1951 in the VdN cemetery, the cemetery of the OdF. His urn was later reburied in the old cemetery and buried in front of the memorial of deserving fighters for democracy and socialism . In 1994 his urn was again transferred from the old cemetery to the OdF cemetery.

The peculiarity of this cemetery of honor compared to others is that the most diverse groups of victims are buried here today: concentration camp prisoners, Soviet civilians, members of the Red Army, those persecuted by the Nazi regime who died after 1945 and their spouses, deserved socialists and the grave of Kurt Bürger . A total of 1,504 dead are buried in the cemetery, of which 755 are war dead. The 755 war dead are buried in 723 individual graves and four collective graves.

From 2011 to 2013, the entire cemetery complex was restored in accordance with the listed buildings.

As a result of vandalism, six Russian gravestones were knocked over again in July 2014, which were only erected after four months by the responsible cemetery administration in the SDS (City Economic Services Schwerin).

Sources and literature

Unprinted sources

  • SDS - City Economic Services Schwerin, archive.
    • Acts, cemetery of honor on the square of the victims of fascism. Inventory, inventory valuation 1999.
    • Act, Magistrate Order No. 331 of December 11, 1991.
    • File, documentation Takeover of Soviet graves.
    • File, registration card for the war graves in Schwerin. Annex to the Directive of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, 1990.
  • LAKD - State Office for Culture and Monument Preservation Schwerin.
    • File, Soviet Cemetery of Honor, Folder 1, 1989.

literature

  • Felix Bossow: Gravestones tell history. Ehrenfriedhof Victims of Fascism. Schwerin 2005.
  • Katja Pawlak: Military cemeteries and war cemeteries in the state capital Schwerin. Schwerin 2012 ISBN 978-3-9813709-1-1 pp. 40-45.

Web links

Commons : Cemetery of the Victims of Fascism (Schwerin)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Felix Bossow: Gravestones tell history. 2005 p. 15.
  2. ↑ SDS archive, file documentation takeover of Soviet graves.
  3. ^ Katja Pawlak: First burials on the Odf square until 1945. In: Military cemeteries and war graves in the state capital Schwerin. 2012 pp. 40–42.
  4. ↑ SDS archive, file documentation takeover of Soviet graves.
  5. ^ Katja Pawlak: The design of the cemetery in the 1950s and 1970s. In: Military cemeteries and war cemeteries in the state capital Schwerin. 2012 p. 44.
  6. ↑ SDS archive, death register files.
  7. ↑ SDS archive, file Ehrenfriedhof on the place of the victims of fascism, inventory 1999.

Coordinates: 53 ° 37 ′ 33.3 "  N , 11 ° 23 ′ 58.3"  E