Dorotheenstädtisch-Friedrichswerderscher Friedhof, Berlin

The Dorotheenstädtisch-Friedrichswerderscher Friedhof is a historic burial ground, entered from Chausseestraße 126. Within this compact enclosure, sculpted memorials turn burial places into a survey of Berlin’s funerary art, especially the work of the nineteenth century. The grounds cover about 1.7 hectares and are protected in their entirety as a garden monument.

The cemetery began in 1762, with burials starting in 1770. It was created for the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder parishes, and its character changed as nearby academies drew artists, architects, scholars and musicians into the surrounding quarter. Their graves brought increasingly elaborate monuments, including designs by prominent artists.

Look at the grave markers as a group: you can find cast-iron crosses, railings, tablets and symbolic figures among the stone memorials. Karl Friedrich Schinkel supplied designs for several families of steles, each crowned with a palmette ornament and an allegorical figure. The cemetery also preserves the graves of figures such as Schinkel, Christian Daniel Rauch and Johann Heinrich Strack.

Between 2000 and 2006, restoration work renewed 38 graves, including theirs. The remarkable story here is that a small cemetery became an open-air catalogue of changing memorial design, from austere tablets to richly worked metal and monumental tombs.