Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde

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  Two young people visit the socialist memorial at the Zentralfriedhof in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde.

• The plaque with the name "Rosa Luxemburg" is embedded in the ground at the monumental Memorial to the Socialists.

• The communist leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who were murdered in 1919, are commemorated at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery.

The Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg is also known as the Socialist Cemetery. In addition to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, many other personalities of the German labor movement have their final resting place here.

The Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery), which is around one kilometer long and 250 meters wide, was laid out in 1881 by horticultural director Axel Fintelmann according to plans by Berlin city garden director Hermann Mächtig. The park cemetery was inaugurated on May 21, 1881 as a cemetery for the poor. The costs for the graves were borne by the city, which buried its poor exclusively in this cemetery until 1911. Due to its park-like design, the cemetery was also preferred as a burial site by wealthy Berlin bourgeois families from the beginning of the 20th century.

Graves of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

The German social democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826-1900) is also buried here, whose burial made the cemetery famous beyond the city limits. His son Karl Liebknecht was buried here in January 1919, as was the socialist Rosa Luxemburg in May of the same year. In 1926, the architect and later Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed a 12-metre wide and 6-metre high revolutionary monument made of red bricks, which was destroyed by the National Socialists in 1935.

Socialist memorial at the Zentralfriedhof

In the front part of the cemetery, where the well-known social democrats Paul Singer (1844-1911), Hugo Haase (1863-1919) and Theodor Leipart (1867-1947) are buried, there is now the "Memorial to the Socialists", which was inaugurated in 1951. Their gravestones are integrated into the left-hand side of the circular wall, while the urns of politicians from the former GDR are located on the right-hand side, with the gravestones of the poets and writers Erich Weinert (1890-1953), Friedrich Wolf (1888-1953) and Willi Bredel (1901-1964) next to them. A porphyry block was erected in the center of the memorial, a tall stele-like granite monument with twelve stone slabs bearing the names of great workers' leaders, including Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919), Rosa Luxemburg (1870-1919), Ernst Thälmann (1886-1944), Rudolf Breitscheid (1874-1944) and Franz Mehring (1846-1919).

Graves of famous German artists

If you follow the western main axis from the main entrance in Gudrunstraße, you will reach the graves of important German artists, such as the tomb of the graphic artist Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), a standing bronze slab with a relief, created by the artist herself in 1936. Close by is the grave of the painter and graphic artist Otto Nagel (1894-1967). At the end of Kastanienallee to the left is a circle with the grave of the writer F.C. Weiskopf (1900-55), on which there are two bronze plaques. Along Pergolenweg is the grave of the film director Konrad Wolf (1925-82) and the stele-shaped grave of the graphic artist and painter Paul Meyerheim (1842-1915). The cemetery's ceremonial hall, built in 1890-93 according to plans by Hermann Blankenstein, was destroyed in 1945, rebuilt in the 1950s and modernized in 1979.

Information

• Address:
  Gudrunstraße 33
  10365 Berlin
  City map
• Opening Hours: Daily until dusk