Sculpture of an angel in the St. Elisabeth cemetery

by Silva Wischeropp

Wonderful angel sculpture taken at the Berlin cemetery in Berlin-Mitte.
The St. Elisabeth Cemetery is a cemetery of the Protestant parish on the Weinberg in the Mitte district of Berlin. The burial ground, which was laid out as an avenue cemetery east of Ackerstraße, was inaugurated in 1844. The cemetery with a size of 2.69 hectares is a registered garden monument.

Directly adjacent, on the other side of Ackerstrasse, is the Sophiengemeinde Cemetery II, which has been in use since 1827.
In 1875, the St. Elisabeth parish established a second cemetery, the St. Elisabeth Cemetery II, on Wollankstraße in today's Gesundbrunnen district.

After the Protestant St. Elisabeth parish was established in the early 1830s, with the Elisabeth church designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel as its centre, the parish established a cemetery in 1843, which was consecrated in January of the following year.
The grounds were four acres in size and divided into burial quarters by avenues lined with lime trees. In 1846, the municipality had a residential building for the gravedigger built near the entrance according to designs by Johann Nietz, which later served as the cemetery administration. As early as 1850, the cemetery was extended by ten acres. In this context, the second patron of the community, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, donated a cast-iron neo-Gothic cross from the Royal Iron Foundry in 1851, which was erected as a point de vue at the intersection of the main avenues.