Friedhof Heerstraße

The state-owned Heerstrasse Cemetery in Berlin-Westend was laid out in 1924 by landscape architect Erwin Barth as a park-and-forest cemetery, around the same time as the nearby Heerstrasse housing estate. Across nearly 15 hectares, burial sections spread between old pines and oaks, threaded by a pond and staggered hedge rooms. Many figures of Weimar-era culture lie here: the cartoonist George Grosz, the poet Joachim Ringelnatz, actress Tilla Durieux, publisher Samuel Fischer, composer Hanns Eisler. The mayor of West Berlin Heinrich Albertz is also buried here. Unlike the densely packed Dorotheenstaedtischer Friedhof in the centre, Heerstrasse feels spacious, almost like a forest. For a quiet afternoon in western Berlin you get woodland, famous graves and beautifully designed early 20th-century memorials.