Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery) Archives

POST 168: A GERMAN ACTION-THRILLER AS A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ABOUT MY GREAT AUNT ELSBETH BRUCK

Note: This post is inspired by a German action-thriller I recently streamed on Netflix in which the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin is shown; this is where one of my great aunts happens to be buried. Investigating further, I learned a little about the importance of this cemetery in the former German Democratic Republic or East Germany and some of the important socialist and communist personages interred here.

I recently finished streaming a German action-thriller comedy series entitled “Kleo.” It follows the revenge journey of a former East German Stasi assassin named Kleo Straub. According to the storyline, in 1987, after successfully assassinating a double agent in a West Berlin club, Kleo is falsely imprisoned for treason by her agency. When she is released after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she plans her revenge on the conspirators who framed her, using her considerable skills as a trained assassin.

While the story is not true, it is based on real history. Fundamentally, it is historical fiction, with artistic license used to embellish real figures, politics, and history. To provide an authentic setting for the spy show, the show was filmed in different locations in Germany and Serbia.

As I will further explain, one scene in an episode of the first season was filmed in the former eastern part of Berlin and was immediately recognizable to me. This was very surprising since I claim no specific or even general knowledge of the geographic layout of Berlin, notwithstanding my family’s deeply rooted connection to this city but particularly because the landscape has been vastly altered from prewar times due to heavy Allied bombing during the war.

One historic personality who figures as a major antagonist in the first season is Erich Mielke (1907-2000). Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatsicherheit – MfS), better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dubbed “The Master of Fear” (German: der Meister der Angst) by the West German press, Mielke was one of the most powerful and most hated men in East Germany.

Wikipedia describes his role following his return to Germany from the Soviet Union after WWII as follows: “Following the end of World War II in 1945, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany, which he helped organize into a Marxist–Leninist satellite state under the Socialist Unity Party (SED). The Stasi under Mielke has been called by historian Edward Peterson the ‘most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil.’ During the 1950s and 1960s, Mielke led the process of forcibly forming collectivized farms from East Germany’s family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany. In response, Mielke oversaw the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall and co-signed standing orders for the Border Guards to use lethal force against all East Germans who attempted to commit ‘desertion of the Republic’.”

Wikipedia goes on to further describe his fate following German reunification: “After German reunification in 1990, Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for the 1931 policemen’s murders. A second murder trial for the 260 killings of defectors at the Inner German border was adjourned after Mielke was ruled not mentally competent to stand trial. Mielke was also charged, but never tried, with ordering two 1981 terrorist attacks by the Baader-Meinhof Group against United States military personnel in West Germany. Released from incarceration early due to ill health and senile dementia in 1995, Mielke died in a Berlin nursing home in 2000.”

According to the plot line in the German action-thriller, Kleo, suspecting Mielke, the former head of the Stasi, of a role in her indictment on treason cleverly orchestrates the now-imprisoned chief’s poisoning in Season 1, Episode 4. Her intent is not to kill him, but rather have him transported to a hospital where she can implausibly infiltrate the hospital, disguise herself as a nurse, and interrogate him. Suffice it to say, things go awry, and she winds up killing Mielke.

In Episode 6, Mielke’s State funeral takes place at the real Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde cemetery in the eastern part of Berlin, and is presided over by another historic personality, Erich Honecker’s wife, Margot Honecker (1927-2016). Mielke is, in fact, buried in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde.

Erich Honecker (1912-1989) was a real German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He was the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he became Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As leader of East Germany, Honecker was viewed as a dictator. During his leadership, the country had close ties with the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country.

As Cold War tensions eased in the late 1980s with the advent of perestroika and glasnost, the liberal reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Honecker refused to make any fundamental changes to the East German political system. He continued to maintain a hardline attitude modeled on the inflexible regimes of North Korea, Cuba, and Romania. Honecker was eventually forced to resign by the SED Politburo in October 1989 to improve the government’s public image, an effort that ultimately failed and resulted in the collapse of the entire regime the following month.

Following German reunification in 1990, Honecker sought asylum in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow, but was extradited back to Germany in 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, to stand trial for human rights abuses in East Germany. Suffering from terminal liver cancer, however, the trial was abandoned, and Honecker was allowed to rejoin his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994. Honecker is buried in the central cemetery in Santiago, not in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in Berlin.

A brief digression for context as to why I’m writing this post. My father customarily referred to family and acquaintances using sobriquets, often slightly pejorative ones. In French, the language we spoke at home when I was growing up, he called one of his aunts living in East Berlin during the Cold War “la Communiste,” the Communist. I never met her. I can no longer recall exactly when I learned her real name was Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970) (Figure 1), but I probably heard it from my German now-deceased older first cousin. This may also have coincided with when I learned that her surviving personal papers are archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. (Figure 2) I discussed in Post 15 having visited and photographed Elsbeth’s personal papers (Figure 3) in 2014. I visited her tomb in 2012, located in none other than the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichfelde (Figure 3) in the Lichtenberg borough of Berlin. (Figure 4)

Figure 1. My great aunt Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970)

Figure 2. Entrance sign to the Stadtmuseum in Spandau

Figure 3. My great aunts Franziska Bruck and Elsbeth Bruck’s personal papers

Figure 4. Entrance to the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde, located in the Lichtenberg Borough of Berlin

Let me provide some brief history about this cemetery. Beginning in 1900, with the burial of Wilhelm Liebknecht, founder of the Socialist Democratic Party (SPD), the cemetery became the resting place for many of the leaders and activists of Germany’s social democratic, socialist and communist movements. In 1919, the coffins of Karl Liebknecht (son of Wilhelm Liebknecht) and Rosa Luxemburg, co-founders of the Communist Party of Germany, were buried in a mass grave in a remote section of the cemetery.

Notwithstanding a 2009 Charité autopsy report casting doubt on whether Rosa Luxemberg’s remains were ever buried there, to this day a grave commemorating her and nine other foremost socialist leaders surrounds the central garden roundel at the cemetery. The Charité, incidentally, is Europe’s largest university hospital, affiliated with Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. And Humboldt University it so happens is where my uncle Professor Dr. Franz Müller (Figure 5), husband of my aunt Suzanne Müller, nee Bruck, murdered in Auschwitz, taught until the Nazis came to power in 1933 and revoked his teaching credentials.

Figure 5. My uncle Dr. Franz Müller as a professor at Humboldt University

The so-called “Monument to the Revolution” was erected in front of the mass grave where the coffins of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had been interred in 1919. It was destroyed by the National Socialists in January 1935. The division of Berlin following the Second World War caused the cemetery to be within the borders of East Berlin, where it was used to bury East German (GDR) leaders.

The current “Memorial to the Socialists” (German: Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) was inaugurated in 1951. Although located some distance from the site once occupied by the 1926 Monument to the Revolution, the 1951 memorial was planned as its “moral successor” and as the central memorial site for East Germany’s Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters.

The 1951 Memorial to the Socialists consists of a central garden roundel (Figure 6) surrounded by a semi-circular brick wall. (Figure 7) The central garden roundel is dominated by a porphyry stele or obelisk with the words Die Toten mahnen uns (English: The dead remind us), which is surrounded by 10 graves commemorating foremost socialist leaders, including Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. (Figure 8) Set into the semi-circular brick wall are gravestones and niches with the urns of distinguished Socialists and Communists, as well as a large red marble tablet bearing the names of 327 men and women who gave their lives in the cause of fighting the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945.

Figure 6. The central garden roundel with obelisk at the “Memorial to the Socialists” at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde

Figure 7. The semi-circular wall at the “Memorial to the Socialists” at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde

Figure 8. The gravestone for Rosa Luxembourg near base of the central garden roundel at the “Memorial to the Socialists” at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde

Of more personal interest is the area immediately behind the semi-circular brick wall of the Memorial to the Socialists, referred to as the Pergolenweg Ehrengraben (i.e. “tombs of honor”) section of the cemetery. Here are buried the urns of Socialists, Communists and anti-fascist fighters of merit who were considered distinguished enough by the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany to rest in the vicinity of the foremost party leaders yet not as eminent as to entitle them to a grave in the Memorial to the Socialists itself. Until 1989, decisions whether a person should be buried in the Memorial to the Socialists or the adjacent Pergolenweg section of the cemetery rested solely with the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and many honored this way were also given a state funeral.

Previously unknown to me is that my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s headstone is in the Pergolenweg section of the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. (Figure 9) My great-aunt’s placement in this section of the cemetery confirms what I already knew about her, namely, that Elsbeth was a very high-ranking apparatchik in the former GDR government, that’s to say, a prominent member of the Communist Party apparat or administrative system. Whether she was given a state funeral upon her death in 1970 is unknown to me.

Figure 9. My great aunt Elsbeth Bruck’s headstone located in the Pergolenweg section of the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde

Another thing that attests to the high esteem with which Elsbeth was regarded within the former GDR is an award she received. She was given the “Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in Silber,” the “Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver,” for “special services to the state and to the society.” This order survives with Elsbeth’s personal papers at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. (Figure 10)

Figure 10. The “Vaterländischer Verdienstorden in Silber,” the “Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver,” awarded to my great aunt by the German Democratic Republic

Fascinatingly, people buried in the Pergolenweg section could also have the urns of up to three family members buried with them. Amusingly, all this makes me wonder whether I could be buried alongside my great aunt. I presume this tradition ended with the demise of the GDR but it’s still entertaining to contemplate.

REFERENCES

Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde: Der Pergolenweg. Gedenkstatte der Sozialisten, Table 12. Tafel 12

Erich Honecker. In Wikipedia. Erich Honecker – Wikipedia

Erich Mielke. In Wikipedia. Erich Mielke – Wikipedia

Kleo. In Wikipedia. Kleo – Wikipedia

Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. In Wikipedia. Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde – Wikipedia

POST 127: MY GREAT-AUNT ELSBETH BRUCK, “LA COMMUNISTE,” A DDR APPARATCHIK

Note: In this brief post, I present recently acquired information about my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck derived from an entry on German Wikipedia.

My father would refer to his aunt living in East Berlin, in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) (German Democratic Republic), as “la Communiste,” the Communist, only ever using this sobriquet. She was an apparatchik, a member of the Communist Party apparat in the DDR. It was long after my father passed away in 1994 that I would learn that my great-aunt’s name was Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970). (Figure 1)

Figure 1. My great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck on March 15, 1967, in Berlin

While I obviously never met her, she led a comfortable life as a high-ranking Communist government official living in a sprawling apartment she boasted she would never be able to afford in then-West Berlin. As a child my second cousin, however, Margarita Vilgertshofer née Bruck, once visited Elsbeth in East Berlin circa 1968 in the company of her father, one of my father’s first cousins. I have no clear sense of Elsbeth’s life in her years living in East Berlin, though letters exist written to her by her niece, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, from Nice, France. Like many people living in post-WWII Germany, both East and West, the shortage of food and other everyday necessities was a commonly discussed topic; from time-to-time Hansi would send her aunt care packages. For this reason, I find it mildly amusing that when Margarita visited Elsbeth and she was busy touting the benefits of living in East Germany and how egalitarian society was, Margarita cheekily responded, “well, then, how come there are no bananas?!”

In any case, as mentioned in Post 126, a German lady posted separate entries on two of my renowned great-aunts, including Elsbeth Bruck, on German Wikipedia. While some of the information was drawn from what I wrote, other details were new to me so as in the case of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck, I provide in amended form here some of the discoveries about Elsbeth.

Elsbeth’s parents, my great-grandparents, were Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 2) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 3); they were the original owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Elsbeth was born in 1874 and was the youngest of my great-grandparents’ eight children. As in the case of her sister Franziska, I know nothing about Elsbeth’s early life in Ratibor. Her father passed away in 1892 when Elsbeth was 18 years old, so it’s likely she helped run the family hotel for a period until she left in around 1902 with her sister Franziska and her mother Friederike for Berlin.

Figure 2. Elsbeth’s father Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)

Figure 3. Elsbeth’s mother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

Elsbeth’s life took a decidedly different path than her sister Franziska’s. She was a pacifist and peace activist for much of her life. A 1907 photo I found on the Internet suggests that her involvement in the peace movement began almost immediately after moving to Berlin. The photo shows 31 members of the German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (DFG)) including an unidentified Elsbeth; the German Peace Society was founded in 1892 in Berlin but moved its headquarters to Stuttgart in 1900, and still exists today. In 1907, Elsbeth would have been only 33 years old; only six women appear in the group photo, so judging the age and appearance of these women I reckon the woman standing in the second row circled is likely Elsbeth. (Figure 4)

Figure 4. Thirty-one members of the German Peace Society shown in a photo taken in 1907 with the circled individual believed to be Elsbeth

Elsbeth later became a member of the Bund Neues Vaterland (New Fatherland League) and succeeded the German feminist and pacifist Lilli Jannasch as its managing director; this was the most important pacifist association during WWI from which the German League of Human Rights (German League for Human Rights – Wikipedia) (Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte) later emerged, an organization that included among its members Albert Einstein. Founded in 1914, the League moved more and more towards the left politically, exposing its members to persecution. As a result, both Elsbeth and Lilli Jannasch were taken into “protective custody,” and in February 1916 the League was banned by an organ of the police investigating political crimes. Despite her detention, Elsbeth remained politically active. Pacifists, however, continued to remain on the Berlin State Police’s radar, and a list of 30 well-known pacifists drawn up in January 1918 included Elsbeth’s name.

By 1920, Elsbeth had joined a short-lived German left-wing organization founded in 1919 for the promotion of proletarian culture, the Bund für proletarische Kultur, the League for Proletarian Culture. According to Wikipedia, this organization “. . . sought to wipe out the last traces of bourgeois culture from working class consciousness, seeing the disappearance of this pseudo-culture as no loss. They envisaged a new proletarian culture dormant within the working class which could be woken up and play a role in the revolutionary transformation of society.” Her association with this group makes it evident why Elsbeth became a DDR firebrand following WWII.

During the Nazi era, Elsbeth’s friends in the pacifist community helped her escape first to Prague, in then-Czechoslovakia, then to the United Kingdom. According to the 1939 census, she lived in the parish of Amersham (Buckinghamshire) northwest of London and earned a living as a teacher of voice training. (Figures 5-b) Following the war, she returned to Berlin, continued her campaign for freedom and human rights, and eventually became a high ranking, well-respected member of the East German government.

Figure 5a. Cover of the 1939 National Registration census book for the parish of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, England that includes Elsbeth’s name

Figure 5b. Page of the 1939 National Registration census book for the parish of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, England bearing Elsbeth’s name

In letters written to Elsbeth by her niece Hansi Goff, cited above, she often mentions the autobiography Elsbeth was working on. While this was never published, Elsbeth’s friend and roommate Cläre Jung (1892-1981) wrote the epilogue for this memoir entitled, Ein Leben für den Frieden (A Life for Peace); this manuscript is on file at the German Exile Archive in Frankfurt, Germany.

Elsbeth died on the 20^th of February 1970 at the age of 95. She is buried at the “Pergolenweg” grave complex (Figure 6) of the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial) (Figure 7) at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery) (Figure 8) in the borough of Lichtenberg in Berlin. Founded in 1881, it is the cemetery where many of Berlin’s Socialists, Communists, and anti-fascist fighters are interred.