I’m a photographer from Brazil, based in Berlin. I’m attached to this city since 5 years and I have been trying it out from top to bottom, from inside out. Here are some of my personal highlights.
A green oasis wedged between the continuous blocks of apartments, this Cemetery provides a place to be alone or take sleeping kids. I love how from the front it looks slightly macabre and a rigid with it's iron gate. But if you dare to enter its a fantastic place to escape and think.
There's a battle going on locally about adding a building inside the ground to help fund the archive and maintenance of the site. The Chair Anke Reuther feels the park is being disrespected with children playing on the headstones and people using it as a place for picnics.
Whilst i don't know the in's and out's I love seeing this beautiful 'life cycle' playing out under the trees (which have probably seen it all before). I love that people use a cemetery for living and in our ever crowded cities a green space is being claimed by the community. I do feel there is a hushed respect that i don't see in other parks which gives the place a reflective mood. Personally another building would ruin the magic of the place.
Perhaps some more input from the people who use it could be the key? Or even a re-examination of the inscription above the gate:
Make life
good and beautiful here,
no other world is,
no resurrection.
Boutique space offers natural perfumes, organic soulful objects, Japanese crafts/ceramics and antiques, natural incenses and smudges, resins and wood pieces for burning in incense ceremony. There are also Chinese tea ceremony going on Saturdays, zen meditation, scent-related soirees and other workshops.
Osteria Sippi is an incredible simple italian restaurant where everyone feels immediately at home. They not only know their food game but have also an impressive range of really good wines.
Cemetery of the Dreifaltigkeitsgemeinde (Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof) in Kreuzburg on Mehringdamm 22, between Zossener Strasse and Blücherstrasse. The grandson of German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, is musician Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn who was born in Hamburg and lived in Berlin from age two. Felix Mendelssohn and his family are buried in the middle of Kreuzburg at the Cemetery of the Dreifaltigkeitsgemeinde. Today it is administered together with its 5 neighbouring Protestant cemeteries by the cemetery administration St. Jacobi number I.
What looks like a plant nursery from the outside, is both, a plant nursery housing two rescued Amazonian parrots and a hidden cafe serving up some of the loveliest cakes and cuppas in all of Berlin. Brace yourself fir occasional screeching parrots flying around though that only adds to the charm of Blumen cafe.