Sophienfriedhof: The Cemetery on the Border
Why is it significant?
Walk slowly between the old gravestones: ivy climbing over broken angels, iron crosses leaning in the grass, tall trees closing over your head. The noise of the city drops away within a few steps, and it is hard to imagine that searchlights and watchtowers once stood just at the end of this path.
Key Facts
| Place | Sophienfriedhof: The Cemetery on the Border |
|---|---|
| Address | Bergstraße 29, 10115 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.53360, 13.39180 |
| Part of Walk | The Wall on Bernauer Straße: Escapes, Tunnels and the Mauerpark in Berlin |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk slowly between the old gravestones: ivy climbing over broken angels, iron crosses leaning in the grass, tall trees closing over your head. The noise of the city drops away within a few steps, and it is hard to imagine that searchlights and watchtowers once stood just at the end of this path.
This is the cemetery of the Sophien parish, opened in the first half of the nineteenth century when the old churchyard in the city could no longer hold the dead. The parish itself has a royal name: its church, a few streets south of here, was founded in 1712 and named after Queen Sophie Louise, the third wife of Prussia's first king. Among the people buried here is the composer Albert Lortzing, whose comic operas, like Zar und Zimmermann, were hugely popular in the nineteenth century. He died poor in Berlin in 1851, aged only forty-nine... a sad end for a man who had made half of Germany laugh.
In 1961 the border came right up to the cemetery. Its northern strip, along Bernauer Straße, became part of the border installations. Graves there were cleared to make room for the strip. For almost three decades, mourners tending family graves near the border did so under the eyes of the guards in their towers.
Cemeteries along the Wall were dangerous places, because they offered something rare: trees, shadows and hiding places right next to the strip. That is exactly why the border troops watched them so closely.
Today the cemetery is a peaceful green island again, and part of its lost land has become the memorial you just walked through. Notice how the living city has crept back, with neighbours using the paths as a quiet shortcut between the streets. Now leave the cemetery the way you came, return to Bernauer Straße and turn right, heading east along the memorial towards a small, round building made of earth.