White crosses

The 1990 memorial on a fence in front of the wall

The White Crosses memorial on the banks of the Spree on Friedrich-Ebert-Platz next to the Reichstag building in Berlin commemorates the victims of the Berlin Wall . The location of the memorial was first on the east side of the Reichstag on a fence in front of the wall and then opposite the south side of the Reichstag on a fence in the zoo .

history

The White Crosses on the corner of Ebertstrasse and Scheidemannstrasse

The private Berlin Citizens' Association donated the memorial on the 10th anniversary of the construction of the Wall on August 13, 1971. From 1961 to 1990 the Wall ran directly on the bank, the water surface was in East Berlin . The crosses were mounted on a fence in front of the wall on the east side of the Reichstag in West Berlin . Originally, the citizens' association set up a white cross at every place along the wall where a person was killed trying to escape . The maintenance of the crosses distributed over the city area exceeded the possibilities of the association, so that it decided to concentrate on the location at the Reichstag and one in Bernauer Strasse .

Due to the construction of the supply tunnel for the German Bundestag and Friedrich-Ebert-Platz as part of the new building of the Bundestag building - the federal ribbon  - the memorial had to move to the zoo in 1995 at the expense of the federal government . At the corner of Ebertstrasse and Scheidemannstrasse opposite the south side of the Reichstag building, 15 crosses have been placed. After a ceremony in the German Bundestag for the 50th anniversary of June 17, 1953 , the then President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Thierse, together with the Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit, presented the square on the northern side of the Reichstag and the memorial site to the public. The crosses on the zoo were preserved.

The new installation, based on a design by landscape architect Jan Wehberg, has eight places for crosses, seven of which are occupied. The crosses are marked on both sides with names and the corresponding date of death. Wolfgang Thierse said at the handover:

"Since 1971, the 'Wall Crosses' have been a reminder of all those who were killed in such attempts to escape, and have since become part of Berlin and German history."

A similar memorial stood at Checkpoint Charlie with the Freedom Memorial . The working group on August 13th 2004 set up a field with 1067 crosses for all fatalities on the inner-German border and the Berlin Wall. The memorial was cleared in 2005.

In 2014, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the White Crosses were temporarily stolen from the Center for Political Beauty and taken to the external borders of the EU in order to remind the refugees who have now died there by the thousands.

Victim names

The White Crosses on the banks of the Spree, in the background the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus

The bank of the memorial, in the background the Reichstag

On the crosses are the names of 13 victims of the wall. A cross is dedicated to "The unknown victims on the wall", an earlier formulation was "The 'unknown' victims on the wall". Among the names chosen are the first gun victim Günter Litfin and the last gun fugitive Chris Gueffroy . 11 of the 13 victims died between 1961 and 1965. Of the victims listed on the river side, five died in the water, four of the victims on the square. On the 15th cross with the inscription “13. August 1961 Construction of the Wall ”, as can be seen in the Tiergarten installation, the new installation does without.

Shore side

• Günter Litfin , August 24, 1961, shot dead in the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal
• Udo Düllick , October 5, 1961, drowned under fire in the Spree at the Oberbaum Bridge
• Hans Räwel , January 1, 1963, shot dead in the Spree near the Oberbaum Bridge
• Klaus Schröter , November 4, 1963, shot dead in the Spree between the Marschall Bridge and the Reichstag building
• Heinz Sokolowski , November 25, 1965, fatally shot on the wall in Dorotheenstrasse
• Marienetta Jirkowsky 22 November 1980 (inscription "Marienetta Jirkowsky)", on the border in Frohnau shot

Waterside

• Werner Probst , October 14, 1961, shot dead in the Spree near the Schilling Bridge
• Ingo Krüger , December 10, 1961, drowned in the Spree near the Friedrichstrasse train station
• Philipp Held , April 11, 1962 (exact date of death not known), found dead on April 22, 1962 from the Spree
• Axel Hannemann , June 5, 1962, shot dead in the Spree near the Reichstag building
• Lutz Haberlandt , June 27, 1962 (inscription without "t" in the surname), shot dead in the border strip at the Charité
• Wolf-Olaf Muszynski , March 1963 (presumably died in February 1963), rescued from the Spree on April 1, 1963
• Chris Gueffroy , February 5, 1989, shot dead on the Britzer connecting canal

Web links

Commons : White Crosses  - Collection of Images

• “White Crosses” memorial / German Bundestag . Information from the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection , requested on September 27, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} ' Ceremonial handover of the “Wall Crosses” memorial site . Urban development Berlin, June 17, 2003
2. ↑ ^{a b} Memorial “White Crosses” / German Bundestag . ( Memento from May 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) berlin.de
3. ↑ Uwe Aulich: The 16 wooden crosses are still missing the inscription . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 5, 1995
4. ↑ Address by Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse on the completion of the western Spreeplatz and the re-erection of the wall crosses on June 17th . German Bundestag, June 17, 2003
5. ↑ Investigations into the wall cross action stopped ( memento from June 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) rbb-online.de
6. ↑ Fatalities of the Wall: Muszynski, Wolf-Olaf . chronik-der-mauer.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '10.7 "  N , 13 ° 22' 36.6"  E