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 the Mayor of Charlottenburg, Otto Ferdinant Sydow, the Royal Court Gardener George Steiner (1774-1834), who worked at Charlottenburg Palace and played a leading role in Berlin garden design, was entrusted with the design of the churchyard. Unfortunately, not much remains of the original landscape garden with its "large rondels and ovals". It has undergone major changes as a result of extensions, cession of land 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 churchyard gained unexpected fame in 1930 when the "master thieves of Berlin", the brothers Franz and Erich Sass, tried to hide the million-dollar robbery from the Disconto company in Kleiststraße here. Source: Churchyard administration of the evangelical Luisen parish