Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof Berlin

Welcome to the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof, a site of exceptional cultural and historical density located in the Berlin district of Schöneberg. Established in eighteen hundred and fifty-six, this cemetery was originally the…

We find ourselves at a surprisingly modest set of graves: the final resting place of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. While their names are synonymous with the magical worlds of Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel, the brothers were…

In stark contrast to the Grimm graves, we now stand before the monumental Hansemann Mausoleum. This structure exemplifies the wealth and status of the cemetery's earliest 'residents.' David Justus Ludwig Hansemann was a prominent…

We now approach a site of profound historical tragedy: the memorial to Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and the other conspirators of the July twentieth, nineteen hundred and forty-four plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.…

We move from the tragedies of the mid-twentieth century to a site of modern cultural rebellion: the grave of Rio Reiser. Born Christian Möbius, Reiser was the lead singer of the influential band Ton Steine Scherben and is often…

No tour of this cemetery would be complete without visiting the grave of Rudolf Virchow, the father of modern pathology and a giant of nineteenth-century science. Virchow’s work on cellular pathology revolutionized our…

In another corner of the cemetery, we find the final resting place of Carl Bolle, a man who built a commercial empire out of a simple milk delivery cart. Bolle was the founder of the Meierei C. …

As we conclude our journey through the Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof, we are left with a profound sense of the layers of history that coexist in this quiet corner of Schöneberg. We have moved from the scholarly simplicity of the…