Memorials of Berlin
Ernst Thälmann monument is situated in the Ernst Thälmann park. The monument was designed by the Soviet sculptor Lew Kerbel and depicts Ernst Thälmann, the former chairman of the German Communist Party KPD. Thälmann led the party and its paramilitary arm in the troubled years of the Weimar Republic from 1925 until his arrest in 1933. His arrest followed the Reichstag Fire Decree and the mass arrests in the early years of Nazi Germany. He was transferred between prisons without a trial and ultimately came in the hands of the Gestapo. In 1944, Thälmann was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was murdered. The rememberance of Thälmann was a central pillar for former East Germany's socialist ideology. and is now highly controversial.
Berlin's eventful history can be seen and experienced at almost every street corner. The past lies in thick layers over the city. In this series I present some of the most important but also unknown and interesting memorials.
Anhalter Bahnhof. Once one of Berlin's most important railway stations opened in 1841 and was rebuilt as a "Gateway to the South" in 1872. During the Second World War the Anhalter Bahnhof was one of the three stations that were used to deport about 55,000 Berlin Jews. The building was damaged in the air raids in 1943 and 1945 and finally closed for traffic in 1952. Only some fragments of the entrance have been preserved until today.
Bismarck Memorial in the Tiergarten in Berlin. The statue is dedicated to Otto von Bismarck, Germany's first chancellor, and was built in 1901 by the sculptor Reinhold Vegas. The monument was originally located on the Königsplatz near the Reichstag building but was relocated in 1938 to make space for the then planned new capital of Nazi Germany.
Levetzow Synagogue Memorial. One of Berlin's biggest synagogues was once located behind these walls. On 9th of November 1938, the synagogue at the Levetzowstraße was partially damaged during the Novemberpogrome. Still, services were held there until 1941. From 1941 until 1943 the building served as a detention center for Jews who were about to be deported into concentration camps. The synagogue was further damaged during air raids in 1945 and demolished 10 years after the end of the Second Word War.
Deportation Memorial Putlitzbrücke (Deportationsmahnmal). The memorial was designed by the sculptor Volkmar Haase and set up on the Putlitzbrücke in 1982. The bridge spans over the tracks of the rail yard Moabit, from which more than 32,000 Jewish citizens were deported into Nazi concentration camps beginning in 1942.
Trains to Life - Trains to Death is a bronze sculpture by the Israeli architect Frank Meisler. Meisler was born into a Jewish family in 1925 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). in August 1939 he was brought with a Kindertransport (children's transport) via Berlin and the Netherlands to Liverpool. His parents were arrested only three days later, held in the Warsaw Ghetto and murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp. On 16th November 1938, only days after the Novemberpogrome against Jews throughout Germany had taken place, the British government decided that the United Kingdom would accept unaccompanied children without limit. The memorial is located on the authentic place of departure at the Friedrichstraße station.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The 19,000-square-meter large site consists of 2,711 concrete stelae arranged in a grid pattern. Designed by the architect Peter Eisenman and the engineer Buro Happold the memorial was inaugurated in May 2005. The arrangement is designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere. The whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.
Soviet War Memorial. The memorial and war cemetery in Berlin's Treptower Park was built after the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopsky in 1949. It commemorates 7,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who were killed in the Battle of Berlin. The memorial is part of a triptych with the Rear-front Memorial in Magnitogorsk (Russia) and the Memorial The Motherland Calls in Volgograd (Russia).
The fading scars from the Battle of Berlin, still clearly visible on many buildings, are vivid reminders of the terrible consequences of nationalism in Europe. This part of the Humboldt University's facade was only partially repaired.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. The original church on the site was built in the 1890s. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. After a dispute over the reconstruction, an agreement was reached on the demolition of the church nave, the preservation of the 71-meter high tower ruin as a memorial to the Second World War and the construction of a new ensemble consisting of four parts.
The Victory Column in Berlin's Tiergarten district was originally designed to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War (1864). The three segments of the column also commemorate the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870). The 67-meter high column was inagugrated in September 1873. The iconic Berlin landmark was originally located in front of the Reichstag building, from where it was moved to its current location at the Großer Stern in 1938.
Günter Litfin Memorial. Günter Litfin was the first victim to be killed by East German border troops while trying to cross the border. The German Democratic Republic started the construction of the Berlin Wall on 13th August 1961. The 24-year-old Litfin was a taylor in West Berlin but lived in the eastern part of the city. Litfin decided to move to West Berlin before the border was closed and had even found an apartment a day before this happened. With the construction of the Berlin Wall he was effectively trapped in East Germany. On 24th August 1961, Litfin tried to escape through the train tracks connecting East and West at the area where currently Berlin's Main Station (Hauptbahnhof) is located. Litfin was discovered by the officers of the East German Transportation Police and shot dead. The Günther Litfin Memorial was established by Litfin's brother Jürgen Litfin and built inside one of the former Berlin Wall watchtowers only a few hundred meters away from the place of the shooting. The memorial is dedicated to all victims of the Berlin Wall.
Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer. The memorial is one of the few places where a fragment of the original Berlin Wall has been preserved until today. The construction of the border wall began on 13th August 1961. The memorial commemorates the 28-year-long separation of Berlin and the victims of the border regime who lost their lives trying to cross the death strip.
Soviet War Memorial. The memorial was built in 1945 in Berlin's Tiergarten district and commemorates the 80,000 soldiers of the Red Army who died during the Battle of Berlin. Soviet soldiers killed during the battle are buried in the rear part of the complex. The exact number of the killed is unclear - the figures range from 2,000 to 2,500.
Memorial to the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The memorial was built in 1968 by Fritz Cremer, sculptor and deputy president of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic. The International Brigades were paramilitary units recruited by Comintern (The Communist International) with the aim the fight in the Spanish Civil War. Many of the fighters fled to France in February 1939, where they were interned in camps. The German volunteers of the Comintern were extradited to Germany by Vichy France in 1940 and brought to Dachau concentration camp.
Berlin Airlift Memorial. The Berlin airlift supplied the city of Berlin during the soviet blockade from June 1948 until May 1949. The Berlin blockade was one of the major international crises during the Cold War. When the access of the Western Allies to the city was blocked, the aircrews from the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the French Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the South African Air Force flew over 200,000 flights, providing food, fuel and other necessities for the inhabitants of the city. By spring 1949 the airlift delivered more cargo than had been transported by rail before the blockade started. On 12th May 1949 the Soviet Union lifted the blockade of West Berlin.
Karl Marx bust stands at the Straußberger Platz. The sculpture by Will Lammert was set up in 1983. In the wake of the peaceful revolution, the Berlin city senate removed many political monuments but left the bust of Karl Marx on at its original location at the Karl-Marx-Allee.
Rosa Luxemburg memorial is situated at the Landwehr Canal. Rosa Luxemburg was an influential revolutionary socialist, Marxist theorist and an anti-war activist. She was abducted by paramilitary forces during the German Revolution on 15th January 1919 and transferred to a government volunteer regiment, where she was tortured and executed. Her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal close to the Liechtenstein Bridge. Luxemburg was a member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the First World War and joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) later on. As a reaction to the German parliament's vote for war bonds in 1914 she established the "Group International" which later became the Spartacus League, a revolutionary communist movement. She was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD, 30th December 1918 - 1st January 1919), when the Spartacus League merged with smaller groups of left-wing radicals. When the German revolution started in 1918, the constitutional monarchy was replaced by a parliamentary republic. Karl Liebknecht, one of Luxemburg's longtime companions, proclaimed the Free Socialist Republic of Germany on 9th November 1918, only two hours after the SPD member Phillip Scheidemann had proclaimed the German Republic. Luxemburg's Spartacus League was actively involved in the fights during the following revolutionary period.
Otto Lilienthal memorial, built by the sculptor Peter Breuer in 1914, is dedicated to the German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal. He became famous as "the flying man" and was the first person to conduct broadly documented, repeated and successful flights with gliders. Lilienthal died in an accident during a test flight on 10 August 1886.
