User:DEnglish/Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Cemetery I

The Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Cemetery I (also known as the Old Cemetery of the Parishes of Saint Nicholas and Saint Mary) is a cemetery at Prenzlauer Allee No. 1 in the Prenzlauer Berg locality of the Berlin district of Pankow.

History
The cemetery was opened by the Parishes of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas within the customs wall at Prenzlauer Tor on 27 July 1802. It was expanded in 1814 and 1847 to a total area of 35,400 sq m. In 1858 a new piece of land was bought at Prenzlauer Allee Nr. 7, which is known as the 'new' cemetery—also Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Cemetery II.

In recent years the cemetery has undergone rigorous restoration.

Most significantly, the partially-open east wall with hereditary graves of different architectural styles has been preserved.

The north wall was destroyed during the Battle of Berlin. The former headquarters of the Hitler Youth stands opposite, in what was then the Jonass department store. Berlin's defensive forces, including members of the Hitler Youth, holed themselves up for protection behind these hereditary gravestones during the Battle, prior to the City's surrender to the Red Army.

After the cemetery was closed to new burials in 1970, it was re-opened for use in 1995. During this historic break in active usage, the cemetery was overrun by vegetation, which has, in part, been preserved, along with several grave crosses from the Royal Prussian Iron Foundry. Bridging the gatesposts of the main entrance is a relief in stone by Ernst Wenck, depicting man's journey through life to death.

Both the wall and the main entrance are now (2023) defaced by graffiti.

Graves of notable persons



 * Bernhard Rode (1)* (1725–1797), painter and etcher (transferred from the Schützenfriedhof; tomb donated by the Academy of Arts in 1852)
 * Christian Johann Richter (2) (1743–1814) (hereditary grave of the Richter family and oldest plot)
 * Franz Daniel Friedrich Wadzeck (3) (1762–1823), professor, librarian, founder of the Wadzeckstrasse orphanage
 * Konrad Gottlieb Ribbeck (4)* (1759–1826), honorary citizen, theologian, provost of Saint Nicholas
 * Gotthilf Benjamin Keibel (5) (1770–1835), Major General
 * Friedrich Gottlieb von Halle (6) (1780–1841), banker (tomb from 1819)
 * Theodor Heinsius (1770–1849), pedagogue, director of the Greyfriars' Grammar School
 * Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey (7)* (1805–1856), Chief of Police in Berlin (bust by Friedrich Wilhelm Holbein)
 * Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch (8) (1793–1859), silk manufacturer, Prussian (Privy) Finance Counsellor, Berlin alderman, Berlin city councillor
 * Ludwig Jonas (9)* (1797–1859), preacher
 * Carl Ritter (10) (1779–1859), co-founder of the Berlin Geographical Society
 * Heinrich Wilhelm Keibel (11) (1792–1860), soap manufacturer, Berlin city councillor, Berlin alderman for Keibelstraße
 * Eduard Knoblauch (12)* (1801–1865), architect
 * Karl Wilhelm Kläden (13) (1802–1867), preacher, inspector of the Schindler Orphanage (tombstone portrait medallion disappeared 2012)
 * Karl Immanuel Nitzsch (14) (1787–1868), Provost of Saint Nicholas
 * Christian Wilhelm Brose (15) (1781–1870), banker (mausoleum of the Brose family from 1814/15; probably based on a design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel)
 * Johann Julius Wilhelm Spindler (16) (1810–1873), founder of dye works and laundry after whom Spindlersfeld is named (designed by Walter Kyllmann 1886)
 * Gustav Rose (17) (1798–1873), mineralogist
 * Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (18)* (1795–1876), zoologist, ecologist and geologist
 * August Wilhelm Bach (1796–1869), composer, organist, and director of the Royal Institute of Music
 * Heinrich Wilhelm Dove (19)* (1803–1879), physicist and meteorologist
 * Julius Müllensiefen (20) (1811–1893), Preacher of St. Mary's
 * Friedrich Hofmann (1820–1895), City school inspector, director of the Greyfriars' Grammar School
 * Alfred Boretius (21) (1836–1900), Lawyer, contributor to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, journalist
 * Carl Spindler (16)* (1841–1902), entrepreneur
 * Bruno Brückner (22) (1824–1905), Provost and Superintendent General of Berlin
 * Heinrich Siegmund Blanckertz (23) (1823–1908), founder of the German steel spring industry
 * Ludwig Wessel (24) (1879–1922), evangelical pastor
 * Hermann Bauke (25) (1886–1928), professor of theology in Kiel
 * Heinrich Wilhelm Dove (19) (1853–1931), Berlin city councillor, member of the Reichstag
 * Rudolf Blanckertz (26) (1862–1935), Pen manufacturer and founder of the German Museum of Books and Writing
 * Alexander Weiß (1863–1937), Royal Prussian Horticultural Director
 * Wilhelm Haendler (27) (1863–1938), Superintendent General of Berlin
 * Reinhold von Sydow (1851–1943), Prussian Minister of State
 * Franz Mett (1904–1944), communist and resistance fighter
 * Fritz Mierau (1934–2018), Slavist, literary historian, translator, editor, and author
 * * Grave of Honour of the State of Berlin
 * * Grave of Honour of the State of Berlin
 * * Grave of Honour of the State of Berlin

Tombs of architectural interest

 * Mausoleum of the Hildebrand family (40), erected in 1851
 * Mausoleum of the Leo family (41), erected in 1851
 * Mausoleum of the Kux family (42), built in 1871, renovated in 1993
 * Wall grave of the Franz family in the form of a portal (43), first burial in 1862
 * Tomb of Justice Councillor Kurt Ackermann with grave figure "Flora" in marble by Wilhelm Wandschneider, 1902
 * Tomb of Schumann-Recke with a larger-than-life mourner by Otto Stichling (44), c. 1906


 * Friedrich Gedike (1754–1803), pedagogue, director of the Greyfriars' Grammar School
 * Gustav Köpke (1773–1837), pedagogue, philologist and theologian, director of the Greyfriars' Grammar School
 * Johann Joachim Bellermann (1754–1842), theologian and semitist, director of the Greyfriars' Grammar School
 * Heinrich Rose (1795–1864), discoverer of Niobium
 * August Wilhelm Bach (1796–1869), composer and organist
 * Carl Siechen († 1869), German entrepreneur, restaurateur, and founder of the Siechen beer house
 * Adolph Friedrich Riedel (1809–1872), archivist and historian
 * Johann Friedrich Bellermann (1795–1874), philologist and pedagogue, director of the Greyfriars' Grammar School (gravestone with a portrait medallion by Alexander Gilli)
 * Johann Christian Poggendorff (1796–1877), physicist
 * Johann Gustav Stahn (1806–1878), chief consistorial councillor and member of the Evangelical high consistory of the old Prussian Union
 * Eduard Mandel (1810–1882), engraver
 * Julius Friedländer (1813–1884), numismatist
 * Max von Forckenbeck (1821–1892), lawyer, politician, and Mayor of Berlin from 1878 to 1892
 * Paul Jeserich (1854–1927), forensic chemist, inventor of forensic photography and microphotography
 * Erich Groschuff (1874–1921), German chemist

Of controversial interest was Horst Wessel's grave, which was destroyed immediately after the end of the war, but was still recognisable as of 2013. Joseph Goebbels had the original inconspicuous grave of the Wessel family expensively redesigned in marble as a national memorial. Horst Wessel's nationalist father, Ludwig Wessel (✝ 1922), had been the pastor of the Parish of Saint Nicholas, and after 1945 the Parish did not want to give up its old pastors' grave. A marble fragment with the letters Ludwig W commemorated him until 2013. In 2000, an anti-fascist 'gravedigging committee' confessed to having exhumed the remains buried in the Wessel family plot, and throwing them all into the River Spree. According to the Berlin police, however, only superficial digging was carried out. The perpetrators were never identified. Horst Wessel's grave was removed from the cemetery in June 2013, as it had become a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis since the German reunification.


 * Berlin funeral services
 * List of cemeteries in Berlin