The dorotheenstadt cemetery in Mitte is 250 years old. Between the old and new graves, the history of Berlin alive.

grave sites of Bert Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel on the cemetery in Berlin-Mitte photo: Reuters

Two hours you should take, if you let Ronald B. Smith on the dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, a cemetery on chausseestraße in the middle of lead. It is a tour through the cultural history of Berlin.

The philosopher Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel are buried here, the author Bertolt interior Brecht, Anna Seghers, and Christa Wolf, the former German President, Johannes Rau and Berlin-based architects such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Friedrich August Stüler. The dorotheenstadt cemetery, Berlin, celebrities, cemetery, is celebrating its 250. Birthday.

Almost every Sunday at 14 o'clock Smith offers public tours through the cemetery. You can come without registration. The American with German roots-and-white entertaining stories to the dead and to tell their graves – for example, that the urn of the in 2010 deceased Communards and participant of the student movement, Fritz devil disappeared about three weeks after his funeral. On the walkways beside the grave, scattered ashes is not proved to be the devil. The urn appeared in Dahlem – next to the grave of Rudi Dutschke.

A different story, there is the grave of Ernst Litfaß, the inventor of the after him named column. The tomb of the 1874 deceased "king of advertising" was needed in 2012 to a thorough restoration. Although it is a honorary grave of the city, came to Berlin for this.

The entrepreneur Hans Wall, founder of the outdoor advertising and City-toilets specialist Wall AG, the saw personally in the Tradition of advertising, paid for the restoration. As the Wall died this summer, was he buried in the dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, a cemetery. Smith shows his grave on the back of the advertising-tomb.

The dorotheenstadt cemetery is a place where Berlin's history is laid out. 1762 or 1764, received a German and a French Protestant Church by Royal decree, the property is close to the Friedrichstraße, which was at that time still before the gates of Berlin, for burials assigned to it. It took some years for the dead were transferred from the Church crypt there, and new burials in the cemetery took place.

Look At guided tours and events at the cemetery under https://evfbs.de/index.php?id=602https://www.dorotheenstädtischer-friedhof-führungen.de/

More The anniversary book: The dorotheenstadt cemetery. A prominent story in the middle of Berlin.Martin Ernerth/Jörg Kuhn (Ed.), Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2019, 184 pages, 20 euros. (taz)

Because of the was because of its secluded location and the distance to the Church are not popular. Under the first best, many Huguenots, expelled because of their faith, from France, and in Berlin had been taken, were buried. Here once prominent buried would be, was unthinkable.

The historian Jörg Kuhn describes the development of the prominent cemetery on the basis of three "centres of Gravity". The first began with the funeral of the philosopher and founding rector of the newly founded University of Berlin, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in the year 1814. Many scholars wanted to be buried near him, is handed down to the for his in 1831, deceased pupil of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

The second gravitational field began with the ceremonial burial of the architect Karl-Friedrich Schinkel in the year 1841. As a result, major builders, Industrial, and Ministerial were officials at the dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, a cemetery buried. There were tombs in the Form of mausoleums, artistically designed tombs with neo-classical columns, and portrait reliefs, which today are architectural monuments. The tomb of 1854, the deceased founder of Borsig-Werke, August adorns Borsig, for example, a bust of the deceased, framed by a classical-style mini-pillar hall.

Netspor xmlns="" class="article even"> Simple are initiated in the tombs of the Celebrities of the third gravitational center, the funeral of playwright Bertolt Brecht in 1956. Brecht's grave stone is a natural stone that on the not more than his Name is. The artist had his last residence in the Chaussee street, next to the cemetery.

The spatial proximity, but to be buried also the spiritual closeness to many of the buried awoke still alive in him the desire, here. As a result, many of the GDR were-intellectuals buried here: Brecht's wife, actress Helene Weigel, the composers Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau, and the economist Jürgen Kuczynski, for example. The Academy of arts of the GDR, funded a renovation of the cemetery portion and was allowed to bury their members there.

Until today, celebrities like to be in the cemetery, and is now in the middle of the city, bury. Some urns were also converted many years later here, so, for example, in 2003, of the who died in 1979 sociologist Herbert Marcuse. The grave stone of the savant has the shape of a catheter.

"250 years of the cemetery's history 250 years of the history of the city of Berlin." The set is from Markus Dröge, the long-standing Evangelical-Lutheran Bishop of Brandenburg and Berlin, and in his Preface to the published anniversary band to the cemetery history. The graveyard show, so Boring, "Prussia's Gloria and decline, the impotence of the first democracy, two world wars, the Nazi terror and genocide, the Failure of socialism and the construction of the Berlin wall, the peaceful Revolution and the effort of finding."

The Church chose this cemetery as a place of remembrance for Christian resistance fighter in the third Reich. To the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans von Dohnanyi and others who perished in the concentration camps, and have no burial sites, are memorial stones.

What distinguishes the dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, a cemetery of prominent cemeteries in other European capitals, are the tombs of, in the true sense of the word "normal mortals": the members of the Dorothee urban and Friedrichswerder parishes. You have a legal right to be buried here.

At the cemetery, you can see your loved ones with watering cans and floral arrangements between the groups of tourists. These "people next door, the are to perform their grief work, or as a pensioner, seeking fun and the Affection of the cemetery cats compete," shaped the daily life of the cemetery, writes the theologian Giselher Hickel in his article in the anniversary book. The keep the cemetery in front of it, to become a Museum.

The Evangelical Church as the largest in Berlin cemetery, carrier must connect to many places in Berlin cemeteries in or zoom out. Due to the Trend toward urns and communal graves, which take up less space than coffins, and family crypts is. Their most well-known cemetery, the Church is strengthening.

Since 2015, the Café Doro invites on the weekends for coffee, cake and Quiche in the cemetery. In the summer half of the year of the Evangelical cemetery Association is held once a month, with readings and concerts with the music and lyrics here Bestatteter. Coffee and culture at the cemetery? For the Evangelical cemetery Association, which wants its cemeteries more to show for Living make, it was an Experiment that succeeded: Not only family members and funeral companies, tourists, and neighbors.

the 2015 re-designed the cemetery chapel contributes. Here, the glass elements were installed, the light fittings allow a work of art in itself. Several times a week, the chapel invites you to a sunset, to light art demonstrations. The ideas are in demand. Connect Event with Christian Faith: tourists and grief-stricken to learn in the light of the room, Markus Dröge, "what Christians in the hope of the resurrection to be understood in the face of death".