From woodland clearing to municipal cemetery
The forest administration created a burial ground near the Havel in 1878/79 for unidentified dead. Many had been recovered from the water, while people who died by suicide were often refused burial in church cemeteries at the time. This exclusion gave rise to the historical nicknames “cemetery of the nameless” and “suicide cemetery”. They explain the history but are not the site’s current official name.
Early traces
The earliest surviving register entry is dated 22 January 1900 and concerns a 22-year-old journeyman locksmith. A simple brick mortuary built in 1911 no longer survives. Towards the end of the First World War, soldiers, civilians and Russian prisoners of war were also buried here. Five large wooden crosses with Cyrillic inscriptions commemorate Russian dead.
Richard Thieme’s walled grounds
The site became municipal with Greater Berlin in 1920, and its early special role ended in 1927. In 1928/29, Wilmersdorf garden director Richard Thieme designed the permanent wall and stone portal with iron gates. Since then, the 4,980-square-metre grounds have been maintained as a regular cemetery. They are now protected as a garden monument.
Remembering the Second World War
After 1945, civilians provisionally buried in Berlin parks during the final days of the war were reinterred here. More than 60 individual graves and one collective grave preserve their memory.
Present status
No new graves are allocated; burials are limited to existing rights of use. The site nevertheless remains an accessible historical place in the forest. The cemetery tour connects precise map points without estimating unknown historical positions.