Max Berg gave this cemetery chapel a radically modern form at a moment when funeral architecture in Wrocław still often looked to older styles. This is a modernist building, completed in 1921, and it still serves both as the cemetery’s chapel and its mortuary. Berg had already prepared three unbuilt schemes for a larger chapel before his fourth design finally went ahead in 1920.
Construction began that May, the structure was complete by November 1921, and the chapel opened on 8 December. As you stand still, take in the way the building is assembled from plain geometric volumes rather than a single traditional church-shaped mass. Its flat roof, restrained exterior treatment, and white façades made it an early local example of the Neues Bauen movement.
The project was conceived as a unified work: Hans Leistikow created abstract frescoes and stained glass, while Alfred Vocke contributed sculpture. Berg also designed the catafalque, iron cross, candlesticks, and benches. The older cemetery chapel was demolished after 1945, leaving this as the cemetery’s sole setting for both religious and secular funeral ceremonies. It entered the heritage register in 2010.
