Cemetery of the March Fallen

About

The Cemetery of the March Fallen is a cemetery in Volkspark Friedrichshain in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. It was laid out for the victims of the March Revolution of March 18, 1848, the March Fallen. In 1925, the Berlin architect Ludwig Hoffmann redesigned the park and gave it its existing three-sided shape. Further redesigns took place in 1948 and 1957. After the November Revolution of 1918, the first Berlin soldiers who died in the uprising were also buried here, as commemorated by the bronze statue of the Red Sailor by Hans Kies, which was erected in 1960. In 1948, a memorial stone with the names of those who died in the March uprising was erected to mark the cemetery's 100th anniversary. Today there are still 18 gravestones, three iron grave crosses, a stele and two cast iron memorials. The cemetery of the March soldiers is now a memorial and garden monument. A total of 255 March soldiers and 33 soldiers of the November Revolution rest in the cemetery.

The first people to be buried in the Cemetery of the March Fallen were 183 civilian victims of the barricade battles of the March Revolution on March 18, 1848. They were buried on March 22, 1848, on Lindenberg, the highest elevation of the Volkspark, which was still under construction at the time and was also popularly known as Kanonenberg. The Berlin City Council only decided to build the new cemetery on a 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres) site the day before the burial based on a motion by city council member Daniel Alexander Benda. It was intended that the fallen soldiers should also be buried here alongside the civilian victims. The decision for a joint burial had already been widely discussed and mostly rejected by the population, but in the end the military decided not to make the bodies of the dead soldiers available. The two windmills that existed at the time were to be demolished for the construction of the burial site. In addition, a memorial was to be erected in the cemetery, which was not yet part of the Berlin city area at the time, and another in the city. Despite this decision, only one mill was demolished and the area was considerably smaller as a result. The second mill burned down in 1860. The burial of the soldiers did not take place here either, but only on March 24 at the Invalids' Cemetery in Berlin-Mitte. The planned monuments were not erected either. The cemetery was originally laid out in a square with diagonal paths leading to a surrounding path along which the graves were located. A traffic circle with a summer lime tree stood at the center of the cemetery.

After an opportunity for a private farewell on March 21, the funeral took place on March 22. On this day, a procession was prepared and the whole of Berlin, including the Berlin City Palace and the Scharnhorst and Blücher memorials in the city center, were decorated in red, gold and black. Helpers decorated the coffins of the fallen with flowers from the royal garden. The March Fallen (1848) were laid out on the Gendarmenmarkt. 100,000 people gathered, and Adolf Glaßbrenner even spoke of 300,000. The relatives of the dead gathered for a Protestant service in the New Church, the church next to the German Cathedral on the Gendarmenmarkt. Those present sang the hymn "Jesus, My Confidence", after which they left the church.The Protestant preacher of the Neue Kirche Adolf Sydow, the Catholic chaplain Johann Nepomuk Ruhland from the St. Hedwig's Cathedral and the rabbi Michael Sachs held a short consecration speech in front of the door, an interreligious meeting which the Königlich privilegierte Berlinische Zeitung commented on as follows: "it was a historic moment which is as unprecedented in history as this whole ceremony itself".

The procession from the New Church to the cemetery consisting of 20,000 participants and 3,000 stewards, was about 7.5 kilometres (4.7 miles) long and lasted four hours. The Königlich privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung (later Vossische Zeitung ), whose entire editorial staff attended the funeral, noted that the symbols carried "seemed to embody the entire history of our fatherland". The participants carried flags from other cities as well as those of individual trades in the city. There were hardly any medals or uniforms. On the way across Berlin's Schloßplatz, Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV took off his helmet on the balcony, as previously planned.

In the cemetery itself, Adolf Sydow preached first, followed by Assessor Georg Jung, the spokesman for the Berlin Democrats, who also gave a speech. In the following weeks, other victims of the fighting who succumbed to their injuries were buried on this site. The total number of graves rose to 254.

The Cemetery of the March Fallen became a symbol of the German democratic movement from 1848 onwards. The site regularly served as an important memorial and demonstration site.

In June 1848, around 100,000 Berlin students took part in the first demonstration at the graves at this site. They wanted to commemorate the dead and at the same time warn those in power not to hastily reverse the changes brought about by the revolution. A letter from the students to the magistrate makes this clear:

"The purpose of the procession is to react to the widespread disapproval and condemnation of a revolution to which we owe our political rights, and to honor the names of the fallen, crowned by their wounds."

As early as March 25, 1848, a public announcement was published in several Berlin newspapers asking for donations and designs for a monument in the cemetery, for which the foundation stone was to be laid on the anniversary of the revolution. This announcement was addressed to the entire German people, pointing out that the March Revolution had a national significance and that Berliners were therefore not solely responsible. The money raised by the committee to erect the monument was administered by the merchant and shoe manufacturer F. H. Bathow. However, as this committee was not officially authorized, Bathow was forced by the police to hand over the money. The whereabouts and the amount of money collected remained unclear; according to contradictory reports, it was either deposited at the municipal court in 1854 or transferred to the pension fund of the policemen.

Due to the confiscation of the money, there was no memorial to mark the anniversary of the revolution. By this date, not all graves had even been fitted with simple wooden crosses and the city government did not want to finance them. So the Berliners provided the about 60 missing crosses through a spontaneous collection between March 18 and 22, 1849.

Due to the political situation leading up to the first anniversary of the revolution, both the magistrate and the city council anticipated new uprisings in Berlin. For this reason, the military and police forces were massively reinforced. The Königlich privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung wrote on March 20, 1849:

"The city itself already presented a completely warlike appearance on the 17th, and every measure that could be taken in a state of siege had been taken. In every village and suburb around Berlin significant numbers of troops were camped (...). Friedrichshain in front of the Landsberg Gate was particularly heavily garrisoned. The few buildings located at the entrance to Friedrichshain were filled with soldiers down to the smallest rooms (...) Large units of dragoons patrolled every road, and Friedrichshain was also guarded by a division of guards.

"The city itself already presented a completely warlike appearance on the 17th, and every measure that could be taken in a state of siege had been taken. In every village and suburb around Berlin significant numbers of troops were camped (...). Friedrichshain in front of the Landsberg Gate was particularly heavily garrisoned. The few buildings located at the entrance to Friedrichshain were filled with soldiers down to the smallest rooms (...) Large units of dragoons patrolled every road, and Friedrichshain was also guarded by a division of guards."

Despite this military and police presence, thousands marched to the graves of the March Fallen on March the 18th. Most of them were workers. The graves had already been decorated with flowers the previous night and employees of Borsigwerke had erected a steel pillar at each of the four corners of the cemetery, which was topped with two torches. In the afternoon of the day, the feared clashes between demonstrators and the security guards did indeed occur, but the outcome was relatively mild. When Otto von Bismarck visited the cemetery in September 1849, he wrote bitterly to his wife:

"Yesterday I was with Malle [Malwine von Arnim-Kröchlendorff, Bismarck's sister] in Friedrichshain, and I could not even forgive the dead. My heart was full of bitterness against the worship of the graves of these criminals, in which every inscription on the crosses boasts of 'freedom and justice', a mockery of God and man. I say to myself that we are all sinners, and God alone knows how to tempt us; but my heart swells with poison when I see what these murderers have made of my fatherland, and how Berliners still worship their graves today."

To avoid riots in the following years, the Prussian State Ministry banned people from entering the cemetery on March 18, 1850, and on the anniversaries of the following years. As early as March 17, 1850, all entrances were cordoned off by police forces. On the same day and the following day, workers arrived at the park and attempted to enter the cemetery grounds to lay flowers and wreaths. The commemorative events were then held in the surrounding garden pubs, and there were also clashes between the police and the demonstrators that year.

On March 20, 1850, the Königlich privilegierte Berlinische Zeitung announced that the cemetery of the March Fallen was to be levelled and the graves relocated. The site was to make way for a new railroad station. However, this announcement was never carried out, and so many workers came to the cemetery on March 18, 1851. This day again ended in riots, which this time did not end without casualties. By March 18, 1852, all paths to the cemetery, except the main path from Landsberger Tor, had been planted with flowers and thus made impassable. However, in the run-up to the Cologne communist trial that year, 10,000 demonstrators came to the park and once again the day ended in violence. From 1853, the entire park was cordoned off with a high wooden fence, later a bar fence. By this means, the authorities prevented a gathering at the cemetery that year.

The planned construction of the station was not reported again until February 1854, after the construction of an orphanage on the edge of the park was rejected in 1853 on the grounds that the sight of the cemetery could remind young people of the March Revolution of 1848 daily and thus incite them to rebellion once again. Once again, the cemetery was not relocated, and until 1856, many people gathered at the cemetery every year to commemorate the revolution and the fallen. In a letter dated October 22, 1856, the Chief of Police of Berlin asked the city magistrate to make access to the cemetery impossible by planting a thorny hedge, "with the intention of allowing the site to fall into oblivion if possible". The magistrate rejected these plans and once again suggested relocating the dead, which the police commissioner agreed to on the condition that this should be done as quietly as possible.

In October 1857, the press and thus the public became aware of the magistrate's plans through relatives of the dead, from whom the magistrate wanted to obtain permission to relocate the dead in return for money. In September 1858, the magistrate presented a plan to the city council for an immediate relocation, which the council approved. As a result, an unknown number of coffins were also dug up, but a complete relocation did not take place. On May 15, 1861, the Königlich-Privilegierte Zeitung announced that access to the cemetery was once again permitted without restriction.

Between 1868 and 1874, the [[Friedrichshain municipal hospital| Friedrichshain municipal hospital]] was built on Landsberger Allee near the cemetery. Since then, the cemetery itself has been located directly next to the hospital wall, separated from the rest of the Volkspark by the access road to the hospital's main entrance.