Marzahn Park Cemetery
| Marzahn Park Cemetery | |
|---|---|
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| Basic data | |
| place | Berlin |
| District | Marzahn |
| Created | 1909 |
| Surrounding streets |
Wiesenburger way |
| Buildings | Mourning hall and memorials |
| use | |
| User groups | pedestrian |
| Technical specifications | |
| Parking area | 2,240,000 m² |
The Parkfriedhof Marzahn is a state-owned cemetery in the Berlin district of Marzahn , which originated at the beginning of the 20th century. Initially used as a regular burial site, memorials and cemeteries of honor have been added in the past few decades. There is a cemetery for the fallen warriors in World War I , graves of honor for two Red Sailors , cemeteries for the fallen in World War II , for deceased slave laborers , for murdered anti-fascists and a grove of honor for fighters of the Red Army .
location
In the 21st century, after two extensions, the park cemetery covers an area of 22.4 hectares and is located west of the Wriezener Bahn along Wiesenburger Weg , north of the Marzahn S-Bahn station . The main entrance is at Wiesenburger Weg 10, near the Knorr-Bremse company premises . It is the largest cemetery in the district . Another exit at the north end of the cemetery leads to the Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße S-Bahn station.
There are 4660 individual graves in the cemetery for victims of war and tyranny.
Park and cemetery
It has typical features of a park cemetery, in which the cemetery complexes mostly consist of rectangular grave complexes structured by tree-lined main paths. For this reason, the cemetery was included in the Berlin monument list as a garden monument. Near the entrance there is a summer linden tree from the 1920s, for which an application as a natural monument is pending.
Due to the structured vegetation (trees, bushes, hedges, graves and lawns) it forms a necessary biotope system of the city, a refuge for plants and animals , in addition to the large settlement area of Marzahn . In addition to red and white-flowering horse chestnuts , birches , red oaks , ash trees and conifers such as Serbian spruce and Norway spruce grow in the park cemetery . Crimean linden trees are planted near the Soviet Grove of Honor.
In the southeast, to the right of the entrance area, a foil pond was created, which is covered with swamp and water plants. This pond provides the basis for a wet biotope ( amphibian spawning waters ) with frogs, grass snakes and dragonflies . Other plants such as cattails , marsh marigolds and sweet flag settled in the bank area .
On the east side of the cemetery along the railway line there are natural areas that are especially reserved for species and biotope protection and should not be converted into burial areas. Birds of prey and brown hares are at home here, and nightingales can even be found in the undergrowth. Numerous nest boxes, which are looked after voluntarily, encourage the presence of the birds. Sand lizards find shelter on the meadows and tall forebears, some of the areas have the character of a forest. These park-like forest areas are located on five areas at the main entrance to the right of the main path. There is a second forest area opposite the grave areas of the Sinti and Roma as well as the Polish women up to section 27 and 29.
history
In addition to the burial area of the Friedrichsfelde cemetery on Marzahner Chaussee , another poor cemetery was laid out in 1909 near the village of Marzahn east of Berlin, benefiting from its location on the railway line. The cemetery was opened on November 29, 1909. The penniless deceased were buried in the poor cemetery, for which the public welfare organization covered the costs. The cemetery celebration hall to the left of the entrance was probably built in 1911. Fallen soldiers of the First World War were buried here. Between 1933 and 1945, numerous victims of the National Socialist regime and the Second World War were given their final resting place on the site. Accordingly, starting in the 1950s, various memorial stones were dedicated to individual groups of victims.
The memorials
The memorials in the cemetery are included in the district list of protected monuments.
Honor grove for fallen soldiers of the First World War
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At the main entrance to the cemetery is the facility for those killed in the First World War, which is surrounded by a hornbeam hedge . In the middle stands an old pedunculate oak with a wreath of stone oak leaves at the base. Gravestones with wreaths of oak leaves surround this oak.
Memorial stone Red Sailors 1918
Fritz and Albert Gast are two Red Sailors who were murdered by the Lüttwitz Freikorps on March 12, 1919 . Her grave of honor is three sections to the left behind the grove of honor for the fallen of the First World War, on the third crossing. In the park on Möllendorffstrasse in Lichtenberg there is a memorial plaque at the place where the sailors were shot.
"In memory of the sailors, brothers Fritz and Albert Gast, murdered on March 12, 1919."
Memorial stone to fallen Italian soldiers of World War II
On the initiative of the Italian Embassy in Berlin , a memorial was erected for the Italians who fell alongside the Allies . This memorial stone is located in Department 18, near the memorial stone of the Red Sailors.
Memorial stone for the victims of the Second World War
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The hand of the oath next to the celebration hall was created in 1952 by the sculptor Erwin Kobbert . It reminds of the 3330 bomb victims of the Second World War in several war cemetery. In the southern part of the cemetery there are several grave fields for victims of war and tyranny, which are provided with names, dates of birth and death and a categorizing inscription by inclined panels of majolica . Missing stones in the rows mark grave sites where relatives have reburied. The State of Berlin has taken over the maintenance and preservation of these graves through the War Graves Act.
Memorial stone for the victims of fascism
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To the right of the main path opposite the urn community facility behind juniper hedges is the OdF memorial stone with an honoring inscription. Active resistance fighters against fascism rest in 46 individual graves . There are four women and 42 men who were sentenced to death as political prisoners and murdered in Plötzensee prison . After being executed with a rope or guillotine, they were burned and their urns were buried in this section. The red triangle on the top symbolizes the mark for the politically persecuted, as it was used as a mark in the concentration camps .
"46 people died so that we could live"
Memorial stone for Sinti and Roma
To the right of the extended main path in the rear part of the cemetery to the Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße exit, a memorial for Sinti and Roma was erected in 1986 . It consists of a machined boulder and was created by the sculptor Jürgen Raue . He stands in the middle of the extensive grave field. In 2006 a stone text plaque was added before that. The different inscriptions read:
“From May 1936 until the liberation of our people by the glorious Soviet Army , hundreds of Sinti people suffered in a forced camp not far from this site. Honor the victims. "
“In the run-up to the 1936 Olympic Games , the Nazis set up a“ Gypsy resting place ”on a former sewage field north of this cemetery , on which hundreds of Sinti and Roma were forced to live. Cramped together in gloomy barracks, the camp residents eke out a miserable existence. Hard work, illness and starvation claimed their victims. People were arbitrarily abducted and arrested. Humiliating racial health examinations spread fear and horror. In the spring of 1943, most of those "arrested" were deported to Auschwitz . Men and women, old people and children. Only a few survived. "
Memorial in memory of the victims of forced labor 1939–1945
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This memorial was consecrated on January 27, 2004 and commemorates the deceased of several thousand slave laborers . It has the shape of a stele with a base, on the column a bronze figure kneels in a mourning posture. The sculptor Michael Klein designed the monument. In Marzahn alone there were 27 camps with people from the Soviet Union , Poland and Czechoslovakia who were referred to as Eastern workers , plus forced laborers from Italy , Belgium , the Netherlands and other European countries. The Deutsche Reichsbahn employed most of the forced laborers; it had seven camps in Marzahn-Hellersdorf. For the Generalbauinspektor Albert Speer construction workers were employed in all of Berlin. The memorial column is located in the rear part of the cemetery directly to the right of the main path in Department 23. The following inscription warns on its prismatic base:
"In memory of the forced laborers and their children from many European countries from 1939 to 1945"
A memorial for the victims of the United Nations has existed since the early 1950s, and was demolished in the second half of the 1990s due to its poor condition. Many thousands of slave laborers are buried on a large lawn in front of the new memorial, both in individual graves and in mass graves. As far as is known, all grave slabs are marked with the names and dates of life. It can be seen that in autumn 1945 people died as a result of the hard work.
Memorial stone for 20 Polish female forced laborers
In an Allied air raid in Wedding in 1943 , 100 children and 20 Polish women between the ages of 14 and 21 were killed. The stone was erected for these young women in 2004 on the initiative of former colleagues from Łódź who were also forced laborers in Berlin. This grave area in Department 19 is not far from the rear entrance of the Raoul-Wallenberg-Straße S-Bahn station.
Soviet cemetery of honor
At the northwestern end is the Soviet Grove of Honor, which was designed according to plans by the garden architect Johannes Mielenz and the sculptor Erwin Kobbert . A roundabout in the center is surrounded by a square green area, to which there are two entrances, flanked by symbolic flags made of red granite, lowered in mourning. In front of the southern entrance there are two granite stones with the inscription “Eternal glory to the heroes who fell for the freedom and independence of the socialist homeland” (on the second stone there is the same text in Russian ).
Coordinated with the Soviet city command, the cemetery of honor was inaugurated on November 7, 1958. In the center is a ten meter high obelisk made of red granite. A symbolic urn made of shell limestone in a pergola contains the ashes of 125 fallen Soviet soldiers who fell in the battle for Berlin. The officer's graves are on the central path between roses and medlars, surrounded by a thuja hedge. Graves of other Soviet citizens are to the left of the path on a hornbeam hedge. In contrast to the rest of the cemetery, the large lawns and the birches on the edge create the impression of spaciousness and Russian expanse. The geometry of the system is supported by hawthorn and rhododendron. On the obelisk with the Soviet star in the raised center of the cemetery of honor, the following words are used to commemorate the victims from the ranks of the Red Army :
"Your great exploits are immortal, your fame will survive centuries, your homeland will always be remembered."
Memorial to the victims of Stalinism
The memorial stone for the expelled Russian Germans is opposite the hand of the oath at the southern end of the cemetery to the right of the main path. The foundation stone for this was laid on October 11, 2001, and the monument was finished in 2002. It commemorates the expulsion of the Germans from Russia from their original settlement areas by Stalin .
Gravesites
As the cemetery was laid out as a poor cemetery, historical graves are missing, as expected. However, among the 12,000 graves there are interesting tombs from recent years. The annual number of burials was 650 at the beginning of the 21st century. The cemetery derives its specialty from the botanical complex. The large number of memorials preserves the memory of victims of various wars and atrocities.
Behind the anonymous urn community facility there are two grave areas for semi-anonymous community burials. A burial is possible in grave fields that are carefree for the relatives. The names of the deceased buried in the field are affixed to the grave stelae close by.
literature
- Klaus Hammer: Berlin cemetery guide . Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89773-081-2 .
- Dietmar Winkler: Here rest in peace… . BoD, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-8334-0904-5 .
- Heinz Knobloch : Berlin gravestones . Berlin 1987.
Web links
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
- Parkfriedhof Marzahn on the website of the Marzahn-Hellersdorf District Office with an overview map ( Memento from April 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- Walk through the Parkfriedhof Marzahn, May 6, 2020 on Youtube
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of war graves (PDF; 176 kB)
- ↑ Monuments
- ↑ cemetery list at the Senate
- ↑ War grave plan (PDF; 4.5 MB)
- ↑ Graves Act (PDF; 118 kB)
- ↑ Tour of the park cemetery
Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 54.6 " N , 13 ° 32 ′ 29.4" E