Tannenberg Memorial

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Tannenberg Memorial

The Tannenberg Memorial was a large German memorial remembering the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914. This battle had been named after the medieval Battle of Tannenberg (1410). The German commander in the victorious battle, Paul von Hindenburg, became a hero, and was elected Reichspräsident.

The architects of the memorial were the brothers Johannes and Walter Krüger, from Berlin. The memorial was built in 1927 by the Weimar Republic near Hohenstein (Ostpreußen) (now Olsztynek, Poland). The octagonal layout with towers is reminiscent of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II's Castel del Monte (Apulia), and also of Stonehenge, in some aspects.

In 1934, when Reichspräsident Hindenburg died, his coffin, and that of his wife which had died in the 1920s, was placed there. Hitler order the monument ot be re-designed and renamed to "Reichsehrenmal Tannenberg".

In 1945, as Soviet forces advanced into East Prussia, Hitler ordered Hindenburg's coffin to be disinterred and moved to Marburg an der Lahn, and the memorial destroyed. Poland removed the remains later.