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Eternal rest

In an imposing funeral procession on May 9, 1864, the opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer was led to his final resting place in the Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee. The famous musician had died unexpectedly in Paris. After a moving memorial service in the great hall of the Gard du Nord, a special train carrying the body headed for Berlin. During a stopover in Aachen then Queen Augusta boarded the train and escorted the corpse to his destination. At his own request, Meyerbeer was buried next to his mother Amalie Beer, who in her times hosted one of the city’s most glamorous salons.

Contrary to Meyerbeer, the coffin of the equally important impressionist, former academy president, and freeman of the city of Berlin, Max Liebermann, was only escorted by about 100 mourners to the cemetery in 1935; only four of the many artists he sponsored were present, among them Käthe Kollwitz.

Surrounded by a high stone wall, the quiet place with its ivy-covered tombstones is now on the other side of the busy main road. When it was inaugurated in 1927, it was still outside the city gates and replaced the Jewish burial site on Große Hamburger Straße. The tomb stones with their bilingual, Hebrew-German inscriptions, which only came into use at this time, bear witness to how strongly Jews felt they were part of German society in the 19th century.