Neue Wache Memorial

Neue Wache – © floehr-photocase.com

The Neue Wache memorial has been the main memorial site for the victims of war and tyranny since 1993. The building, which was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as a memorial to those who had fallen in the Napoleonic wars, was built between1816 and 1818 on the boulevard Unter den Linden. From 1818 to 1918, the Royal Guard was stationed here. In 1931, Heinrich Tessenow created a memorial for those who had fallen in World War I. Shortly before the end of World War II, the Neue Wache memorial was severely damaged by bombs.

After 1960, the restored building in East Berlin served as a "memorial to the victims of fas-cism and militarism" which housed an eternal flame. In 1969, the remains of an unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp prisoner were buried there, surrounded by earth taken from the battlefields of World War II and from concentration camps. Until 1990, on every Wednesday an honour guard marched in front of this memorial.

After German reunification, the Neue Wache became the "Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny." In the centre of the memorial space there stands the large sculpture "Mother with her Dead Son" by Käthe Kollwitz.