funeral site and memorial on the Altglienicke Cemetery, Berlin

More than 1,360 victims of National Socialism are here interred, seemingly invisible. Buried, because to a large extent this occurred without any sense of culture or decency. The density and superposition of the burials in the tightest of spaces is the starting point of the work, and the burials carried out between 1940 and 1945 are hardly imaginable even on location. The ‚witnesses‘ were and are the mighty lime trees, with their crowns towering over the grave area. Their roots are interwoven with the earth, and have been ‚perpetrated with ash‘ for almost 80 years. The lime trees must be protected just as the area itself needs to be – they narrate and propagate the story of those buried here. A precisely structured frame of clinker bricks encloses the grave field. Along the cemetery path, three surfaces, slightly slanting out of the frame and raised by about twelve centimetres, bear the inscriptions of the victims‘ names. These are arranged in eight continuous lines, according to the format of the clinker. It is possible to find either individual names or to ‚freely‘ cross-reference between the lines. The earthy, warm grey colours of the clinker bricks vary according to origin and allow the diversity of the victim groups to be experienced without however departing from the unifying element. Memorial lines in the various languages of the victims are arranged between the names of the victims and are of equal value to these in terms of design. They cite and reflect the common grave below the canopy of these old lime trees.