Berlin-Wedding, Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof II

The Dorotheenstädtisch-Friedrichswerder cemetery was and is, in addition to its function as a burial place for the deceased of both communities, also a traditional cemetery for important artists, politicians and scholars. These include, to name but a few, the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the writer Heinrich Mann, the writer Anna Seghers, the composer Hanns Eisler, the playwright Bertolt Brecht and his wife, the actress and theater director of the Berlin ensemble Helene Weigel-Brecht, the Prussian minister Hans Delbrück, the playwright Heiner Müller, the co-founders of the Berlin Dada group, the brothers John Heartfield and Wieland Herzfelde, as well as the master builders and sculptors of classicism Christian Daniel Rauch, Johann Gottfried Schadow, Karl-Friedrich Schinkel and Friedrich August Stüler. The victims of war and tyranny are mainly buried in 2 collective graves. They are mainly civilians and some soldiers who died between the end of March and the beginning of May 1945. In one of the collective graves, which was created from a bomb craters immediately after the end of the war, 8 murdered resistance fighters are also buried, including Klaus Bonhoeffer, Rüdiger Schleicher and Friedrich Justus Perels. They were members of the "Kreisau Circle" resistance movement and had links to the assassins of July 20, 1944. On the night of April 22-23, 1945, the SS led the prominent prisoners from the Lehrter prison to a nearby rubble field and shot them. Their names are listed on a memorial stone, as are the victims Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Justus Delbrück and Hans von Dohnanyi, who died in concentration camps. Other victims, a third of whom are unknown by name, are named on a bronze plaque. Only half of the 52 victims of the second collective grave are known.