Is it strange, when visiting a vibrant city, to seek out the local dead? Why do cemeteries – full of old stones and ancient history - attract so many modern travelers? Momondo asked our city bloggers to unearth an explanation and give us the low-down on the neighborhood necropolis. You'll read about the best burials in Berlin, the most entertaining interments in Prague, the graves of American heroes in New York and a cemetery with a magnificant view of Istanbul plus tips on what JP Sartre likes on his Paris grave and about Soeren Kierkegaard's and Karl Marx's last resting places in Copenhagen and London. Are you ready to go beneath the surface?
Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery
While wandering about a huge, weedy cemetery on a damp Autumn day may not be everyone's cup of tea, it certainly has its fans, as I found this past Sunday, making my way along the stony paths of Berlin's Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery. Opened in 1909 the cemetery was a response to the rapid growth of the urban population following Berlin's emergence as the capital of a unified Germany and a major industrial center.
Unlike many older European cities Berlin had never arranged for a central cemetery, and Stahnsdorf was opened to relieve the burden on the many smaller graveyards dotted around town. These days it’s a popular destination with families and sightseeing groups who enjoy the quiet tree-lined walkways and parklike ambience. I was impressed by the number of visitors even on this chilly, late afternoon.
I first chanced across the 156 hectare memorial park last summer, having lost my bearings bicycling back from the small town of Potsdam, once home to the summer retreats of Prussian royalty. As I pedaled along a sandy trail through the piney scrubs, I found myself cycling along a tall fence and soon began spying mossy mausoleums and ancient crypts overgrown with ivy.
I was approaching the cemetery from the backend and it was a good fifteen minutes before I finally reached its public entrance, which gives you an idea of its vast size. The discovery aroused my morbid curiosity but I had to postpone that first visit, as an out-of-town friend was waiting for me back in Berlin. Since then I've visited Stahnsdorf several times, each time finding something new and notable along its winding pathways.
As an enthusiast of German Expressionism I was particularly excited to find the resting place of filmmaker F.W. Murnau, director of “Faust” and “Nosferatu” – one of cinema’s earliest vampire tales, the film remains unsurpassed in its evocation of dread and decay. While it can’t be seen in the photo, behind the Murnau memorial is a stairway leading downward into the family’s crypt, accessible through a gate which, when pulled open, makes an appropriately eerie groan.
Farther along is the cemetery’s large mourning chapel, completed in 1911 in the fashion of a traditional Norwegian wooden church by then Prussian royal building surveyor Gustav Meyer. Its dark pine paneling and austere design fit peaceably into the deep, green Brandenburg landscape, but also lend the chapel a spooky quality – despite the number of couples pushing prams through its wooden doors.
Nearby is another notable grave, remarkable for its designer instead of its occupant, that of Julius Wissinger, a successful German merchant. The concrete memorial, whose shape recalls the ribs of a ship or the vault of a cathedral, was designed by Expressionist architect Max Taut, who played a leading role in Berlin’s early 20th century development.
The weak sun was dropping through the dark pines as I continued meandering and marveling at the beautiful memorials and somber stones. Some have been lovingly maintained or carefully restored, while many others are overgrown and half forgotten. The cemetery’s guardians have even put together an audio tour (in German of course) guiding interested visitors to the resting places of the cemetery’s thirty most celebrated occupants. But that will have to wait until my next visit - the cemetery closes just after sundown, and soon I was cycling back into the city – leaving the famous and not-so-famous to rest in peace beneath a starlit Stahnsdorf sky.
