Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery

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The Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery (German: 'Invalid's Cemetery') is one of the oldest cemeteries in Berlin. The cemetery was the traditional resting place of the Prussian military, and is regarded as particularly important as a memorial to the German Wars of Liberation (1813 - 1815).

[edit] History of the Cemetery

Tomb of general Gerhard von Scharnhorst

The cemetery was established in 1748 to provide burial grounds for those wounded in the War of the Austrian Succession, who inhabited a nearby hostel built on the orders of Frederick II of Prussia. A royal decree of 1824 declared that the Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery should become the burial grounds for all distinguished Prussian military personnel. One of the most notable tombs from this period is that of Gerhard von Scharnhorst (a hero of the Napoleonic Wars), designed by Schinkel with a sculpture of a slumbering lion cast out of captured cannon by Rauch. The cemetery was also the resting place of the soldiers killed during the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states of 1848. By 1872, approximately 18,000 funerals had taken place in the cemetery.

Numerous commanders and officers who fought in World War I were buried in the cemetery, along with several high ranking members of the Freikorps. The body of Manfred von Richthofen (the 'Red Baron') was transferred to the cemetery in 1925 from his original grave in France. During the Weimar Republic, high-ranking military personnel continued to be buried in the cemetery, but approximately half the graves were gardened over in this period. In Nazi Germany, several Nazi officers (including one member of the Sturmabteilung) were buried in the cemetery.

After World War II, the Allied control council decreed that all Nazi monuments (including those in cemeteries) should be removed, but this resulted in few major changes in the Invalidenfriedhof. The most notable change was the removal of the grave-marker of Reinhard Heydrich, who was buried in a plot next to that of Scharnhorst, in 1945; the Allies believed that his gravesite could be used by neo-Nazis as a rally point. In May 1951, the city council closed the cemetery off to the public so that repairs and restoration could be carried out, and to prevent any further damage of the graves.

The Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery, with the remains of the Berlin Wall in the background

With the division of Berlin in 1961, the cemetery became part of East Berlin. Since it lay close to the Berlin Wall, in the 1960s over a third of the cemetery was destroyed to make way for watch towers, troop barracks, roads and parking lots. The degradation of the cemetery continued in the 1970s, when soldiers stationed nearby began to use abandoned or damaged gravestones to build shelters in case of bad weather. It was probably only the fact that the cemetery contained the graves of German freedom fighters like Scharnhorst (whom the National People's Army regarded as their forerunners) that prevented its total destruction.

After German reunification in 1990 the cemetery was placed under the monument protection scheme and restoration work began.