Berlin-Charlottenburg, Luisen-Friedhof I

The oldest of the three Luisenfriedhof cemeteries was established outside the city limits of Charlottenburg in 1815 to protect the population from supposedly dangerous "Mephitic vapors". It replaced earlier burial grounds which were located in the courtyard of the Lützow church (now Alt Lützow) and in the area of today's Warburgzeile and Loschmidtstrasse. At the instigation of Charlottenburg mayor Otto Ferdinant Sydow, the royal court gardener George Steiner (today's court gardener), who worked at Charlottenburg Palace, was commissioned to build the cemetery. George Steiner (1774-1834), who played a leading role in Berlin garden design, was entrusted with the design of the churchyard grounds. Unfortunately, not much of the original landscape garden with "large rondels and ovals" has survived. It has undergone major changes as a result of extensions, land being ceded to the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium and the Protestant school, as well as damage during the Second World War. Numerous long-established Charlottenburg families are buried in Luisenfriedhof I. The graves of some of them, such as those of the Werner von Siemens family, were moved to Stahnsdorf after the cemetery was temporarily closed. The cemetery gained unexpected fame in 1930 when the "master thieves of Berlin", the brothers Franz and Erich Sass, tried to hide the million-euro robbery from the Disconto company in Kleiststraße here. Source: Cemetery administration of the Protestant Luisen parish