Russian cemetery (Berlin-Tegel)

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Russian Orthodox grave crosses with the typical inclined beams

The Russian Cemetery at Wittestrasse 37 in Berlin-Tegel ( Reinickendorf district ) is the only civil Russian Orthodox burial place in Berlin . It was founded in 1893 and later became the final resting place for numerous Russian exiles in Germany, including many well-known aristocrats . It is owned by the Brotherhood of Saint Prince Vladimir .

history

In the 17th and early 18th centuries, especially after the opening of the Russian legation in 1706, the Russian community in Berlin was already so numerous that the question of an Orthodox chapel arose. For the time being, rooms in private properties were used for this purpose. In 1718, when Count Alexander Golowkin (different spelling: Aleksandr Gavrilovč Golovkin) became the Russian ambassador to Prussia , a permanent chapel was established in the embassy. This chapel moved when the embassy moved and it was evacuated during the Seven Years' War and in 1812 when Prussia formed a coalition with Napoleon. From 1837 to 1922, services were held in the embassy chapel on Straße Unter den Linden .

The initiative to build the cemetery was taken by the brotherhood of the holy Prince Vladimir , founded in 1890 by the head of the embassy chapel, Archpriest Alexei Malzew . This charitable brotherhood, based on the support of Emperor Alexander III. , from Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich and the respective ambassadors, and whose honorary members included influential people such as Nikolai of Japan , Theophan Goworow , Johannes von Kronstadt , Grand Duchess Jelisaweta Fyodorovna or Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich , acquired the 18,000 m² property for the Price of 28,000 marks. Until then, Orthodox Christians were mainly buried in existing, mostly Protestant, Berlin cemeteries. The community also wanted to build a new church on the acquired property .

St. Constantine and Helena Church, also cemetery chapel

The foundation stone for the church was laid on June 3, 1893, the day of the apostles Constantine the Great and Helena , who thus also gave the church its name. Less than a year later, the new church building could be consecrated. This was built according to plans by the German architect Albert Bohm and, with its five onion-tower-like domes , now painted blue, is architecturally based on other well-known Russian Orthodox church buildings, for example St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow . In addition to the church building, a porter's house and a few farm buildings were built on the cemetery property.

The construction of the cemetery around the church, which was also intended as a cemetery chapel, took place at the same time as its construction. For this were on the instruction of Emperor Alexander III. 4000 tons of earth were specially brought here from Russia and the cemetery area was covered with this earth 5 cm thick so that the Russian deceased could be buried in their native soil in accordance with Orthodox tradition. The official inauguration of the new burial site took place on June 2, 1894 .

Resting place of Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov
Mikhail Ossipowitsch Eisenstein

The needy found work in the brotherhood's farm buildings that were built on the same site. The flowers from the brotherhood's greenhouses raised up to 19,000 marks annually. The typesetting produced translations of Russian liturgical texts into German. In the brother house of Alexander III. a library with 3000 volumes and a history museum with icons , pictures, engravings, manuscripts etc. were built. The economic success allowed the brotherhood to found more Orthodox churches in other cities in Germany. After the First World War practically brought brotherhood life to a standstill, it was revived from 1919 to 1922 and the Brother House functioned as a center for Russian emigration, schools and dormitories were built for refugees, and graves were laid for the victims of the First World War and the Russian Civil War . From then on, the Russian cemetery in Tegel became the final resting place for members of the Russian nobility, for high-ranking officers, artists and intellectuals. Even today, some splendid hereditary burials - but also simple wooden crosses - with prominent noble family names such as Kropotkin, Golizyn or Daschkow remind of the heyday of both the Russian community in Berlin and its burial site. A large memorial on the northern wall of the cemetery commemorates the composer Michail Glinka , who died in Berlin , but who is not buried here, but in Saint Petersburg . Of course, ordinary Russians also found their final resting place in the cemetery: soldiers who died in captivity during the two world wars were buried here, as two memorials still remember today.

During the "Third Reich" the brotherhood gave up its ecclesiastical neutrality and became part of the German Diocese of the Russian Church Abroad . In April 1945 the center of the brotherhood was badly affected by the fighting for Berlin. The archive was lost, the buildings were damaged and looted. At the end of the Second World War , just as many tombs were damaged and had to be painstakingly repaired after the war. The entrance gate on Wittestrasse is also a reminder of the Second World War: there are nine bells that were stolen by the German troops during the war against the Soviet Union and transported to Germany, but were later seized by the Soviet Army. The oldest of these bells was cast in 1899.

After the war, the cemetery was handed over to the new parish of the Moscow Patriarchate in Berlin, the managing director of the brotherhood, Nikolaj Ivanovich Globachev , was interned in the Soviet Union and died in a gulag in 1946. From Bad Kissingen , the brotherhood fought under Princess Vera of Russia for the return of their property, and in 1967 the court gave her the right of last resort. However, under pressure from the Soviet government, the French occupation forces prevented the execution of the sentence. The brotherhood, suffering from financial difficulties, sold the property in 1970 to the city of Berlin, which left the cemetery and church to the Moscow Patriarchate, but had the brothers' house demolished and converted into an industrial park.

In the second half of the 20th century, the cemetery increasingly lost its importance, quite a few tombs worth preserving were even threatened with decay and some of them still are today. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a certain “revival” of the Russian cemetery, as many of the post-Soviet wave emigrants living in Berlin are buried here. The long-neglected, listed cemetery church was restored in 2005 with the help of private donations. Only in 2006 did the cemetery and church return to the ownership of the brotherhood.

Graves of famous people

In the cemetery there are also graves for twelve Soviet forced laborers and their children as well as for six fallen Red Army soldiers.

See also

literature

  • Nikolaus Thon: The Russian Orthodox community in Berlin until the beginning of the First World War . In: The Christian East . Würzburg 1986.
  • Klaus Hammer: Historic cemeteries and tombs in Berlin . Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-922778-32-1 , pp. 321-324.
  • Rolf Richter: From the life of the Russian Orthodox Church in Berlin . Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-932180-69-0 , pp. 68-69
  • Wolf-Borwin Wendlandt, Volker Koop (Hrsg.): A piece of Russia in Berlin - The Russian Orthodox Community Reinickendorf . Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89488-072-4 , pp. 58-70
  • Ralf Schmiedecke: Reinickendorf. Berlin's green north . Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt 2003.
  • Dimitrij Rahr: Woswraschschenie Bratstwu chrama sww. rawnoapostol'nych Konstantina i Eleny i russkago kladbischscha w Berline-Tegele (return of the Church of St. Konstantin and Helena and the Russian cemetery in Berlin-Tegel to the brotherhood) (Russian). In: Bratskij Westnik , № 21, Bad Kissingen 2006.
  • Wolfgang Timmler: Under Moscow Patriarchate: Russian Cemetery Berlin . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 9, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 80-83 ( luise-berlin.de ).

Web links

Commons : Cemetery of the Russian Orthodox Community Berlin-Tegel  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Measured in OSM.
  2. ↑ a b А. Н. Попов (AN Popow): Русский Берлин (Russian Berlin) , Moscow 2010 ( ISBN 978-5-9533-4275-9 ), p. 358.
  3. ↑ А. Н. Попов (AN Popow): Русский Берлин (Russian Berlin) , Moscow 2010 ( ISBN 978-5-9533-4275-9 ), pp. 359-360.
  4. ↑ a b А. Н. Попов (AN Popow): Русский Берлин (Russian Berlin) , Moscow 2010 ( ISBN 978-5-9533-4275-9 ), p. 360.
  5. ↑ a b c d Brotherhood of the Holy Prince Vladimir e. V. Bratstwo: About Bratstvo ( Memento from May 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on May 10, 2013.
  6. ↑ А. Н. Попов (AN Popow): Русский Берлин (Russian Berlin) , Moscow 2010 ( ISBN 978-5-9533-4275-9 ), p. 361.
  7. ^ Russian Orthodox Cemetery Berlin-Tegel , accessed on May 25, 2015.
  8. ^ Russian Orthodox Cemetery Berlin-Tegel , accessed on May 22, 2015.
  9. ↑ Soviet war cemeteries in Germany

Coordinates: 52 ° 34 ′ 39.6 "  N , 13 ° 18 ′ 2.4"  E