Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park

At the end of a long axis, a bronze soldier stands on an artificial burial mound. He carries a child on his left arm and with the lowered sword in his right hand shatters a swastika. The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is both monument and cemetery: more than 7,000 Red Army soldiers killed in the Battle of Berlin in 1945 are buried here. Covering about nine hectares, it is the largest Soviet memorial in Germany and a place where 20th-century German and European history is written in stone.

History

Around 80,000 Soviet soldiers died taking Berlin. The Soviet military administration created several memorials, the central one in Treptower Park. 33 designs were submitted; from June 1946 a team led by architect Yakov Belopolsky and sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich built the complex on a former sports meadow. It was inaugurated on 8 May 1949, four years after the end of the war. In East Germany it hosted state ceremonies and mass rallies. In 1992 reunified Germany agreed with Russia to maintain the Soviet memorials permanently, and on 31 August 1994 the last Russian troops took their leave here. A restoration costing over €11 million was completed in 2004.

What to see

• Mother Homeland: a three-metre figure of a grieving woman beyond the granite entrance arches.
• Birch avenue and granite flags: a gently rising path leads to two stylised flags of red granite with kneeling soldiers in front.
• Sarcophagi: five lawns with laurel wreaths symbolise the graves, flanked by 16 limestone sarcophagi with war reliefs and Stalin quotations in Russian and German.
• The Liberator: 12 metres tall and 70 tonnes; with mound and pedestal the monument reaches 30 metres. The pavilion beneath holds a mosaic.

Good to know

The model for the statue was soldier Ivan Odarchenko; the sculptor stressed that the rescued child is purely symbolic. The actual graves lie mostly under the plane trees at the sides and beneath the mound. Volunteers have recently researched thousands of names, including about 100 women and some 1,500 soldiers from Ukraine.

Visiting

Enter from Puschkinallee in the north or Am Treptower Park in the south. Treptower Park S-Bahn station on the Ring line borders the park. Every year on 9 May many people come for commemorations and wreath-laying.

Tripto tip

Allow about an hour and walk the whole axis up to the pavilion. Remember this is a cemetery: the lawns at the edges are mass graves, even if unmarked.