Altglienicke municipal cemetery
The Altglienicke municipal cemetery is located at Schönefelder Chaussee 100 in the Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick , Altglienicke district . It was originally created as an (extra-territorial) municipal cemetery for the municipality of Niederschöneweide . With the incorporation of Niederschöneweides in 1920 in Greater Berlin , it was renamed. The cemetery now covers an area of 23,500 m² and is part of the Berlin list of monuments .
history
In 1878 the community of Niederschöneweide was established in the largely wooded area on the Oberspree . The settlement of industry in the 19th century was followed by increasing residential development. In 1908 Niederschöneweide was given an independent parish, independent of the city of Köpenick . With the separation from the city church of Köpenick, the question arose in Niederschöneweide, where the deceased of the Protestant community are buried. The land in question with the corresponding extension options was too expensive in Niederschöneweide or was ruled out due to the high water table. In 1910, the Protestant community of Niederschöneweide acquired an area previously used for agriculture in today's Schönefelder Chaussee 100 in order to create a new cemetery. In addition, the municipality requested the extension of the tram to improve accessibility , but this plan never came to fruition. The first burials took place on the complex from 1911. In 1920, both Niederschöneweide and Altglienicke were incorporated into Greater Berlin. The Niederschöneweide cemetery became municipal property. Now Altglienicker could also be buried there. The facility was renamed "Städtischer Friedhof Altglienicke".
Design of the facility
The central point of the spacious cemetery complex is the listed "funeral chapel" with 120 seats, which was designed in the style of Italian architecture by the architect KA Hermann. This consists of a temple-like hall with a round dome and a column-adorned gable in front. To the left and right of the hall there are round arches with two smaller pavilions, also in the temple style. There are some family graves on the walls of the colonnades . The majority of these ornate, column-flanked areas are currently unoccupied. To the left of the entrance to the mourning hall you can see a sacred relief. Depicted inside the hall are the evangelists Matthew and Marcus .
The morgue has an outstanding technical monument that has not been in operation since the 1930s - a water-hydraulic elevator. Even after the renovation work, it has not recently been approved by the TÜV . So the coffins have to be carried further up from the cellar.
The oldest grave site still in existence is a lattice grave from the early days of 1911.
Around 1916 the area was also extended behind the chapel towards the border with the Rudow district .
In the rear area of the complex there are numerous boulders arranged in a semicircle , originally 70 in number, as well as five granite bowls. Most of them are not grave sites, but memorial stones for those who died in the First World War from the parish of Niederschöneweide. A place of personal mourning was built on them, mostly resting in distant soldiers' graves. A few were later reburied here. An obelisk bears the 144 names of all fallen.
In 1939 a burial ground was set up for the urns of Jewish citizens.
1940 was a urn collection point for the remains of more than 1,370 German and Polish prisoners from concentration camps , opponents of the Nazi regime, as well as victims of the so-called euthanasia program of the Nazis , the Action T4 . This is currently being redesigned and should include names of all dead.
When the Berlin Wall was in existence , from 1961 to 1989, the cemetery grounds behind the celebration hall were largely inaccessible as a restricted area. The chapel itself threatened to deteriorate without any functioning heating, the plaster was crumbling. Part of the war memorial, such as the urn grove for the Jewish victims, was leveled for the border strip. Much of this memorial has now been restored. Only the faded inscriptions still need to be renewed.
The heating in the chapel is on again, because in 2000 the chapel and colonnades were painstakingly reconstructed for around 943,000 DM. The walls were painted again in light sandstone colors. A Bible verse above the chapel, which disappeared during the GDR era, “Those who sow with tears, will reap with joy” (Psalm 126,5), was restored.
In the 1990s, an extension of the cemetery to the neighboring area to the south was considered. Due to the tendency towards smaller urn burials, the idea was given up.
Web links
- Altglienicke cemetery - Official homepage
- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
- Redesign of the memorial - Altglienicke memorial site
Individual evidence
- ↑ Give the Nazi execution victims a name. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
- ↑ Burial place & memorial cemetery Altglienicke. Retrieved January 13, 2020 (German).
Coordinates: 52 ° 24 '40 " N , 13 ° 31' 37.9" E