The Suicide Cemetery

Hidden within compartment 135 of the Grunewald forest, Berlin’s largest contiguous woodland, lies a remarkable burial site near the Havel River. Known as the Cemetery of the Nameless, or simply the Suicide Cemetery, this small cemetery occupies a secluded spot not far from Schildhorn, a peninsula forming Jürgenlanke Bay. In the 19th century, drowned bodies, often suicides, frequently washed up along the shores, as “going into the water” was considered an easy and inexpensive way to end one’s life.

Until the late 19th century, burying suicides was problematic because Christian churches considered them “mortal sinners” and refused them consecrated ground. In 1878, the forest authorities began burying such individuals in a clearing. The oldest known grave dates to January 22, 1900, the 22-year-old locksmith’s apprentice. Word spread, and relatives from beyond the region began contacting the forester, or sometimes burying their dead there without permission.

By the end of World War I, the cemetery also became a resting place for war victims. Five Russian Orthodox crosses commemorate tsarist Russians who, unable to cope with the Bolshevik victory, took their own lives. After the formation of Greater Berlin in 1920, the city assumed responsibility for burials and gradually established secular cemeteries across the districts. In 1928, Grunewald Cemetery was fenced, given a stone gate, and formally maintained, becoming a burial ground not reserved exclusively for suicides. In 2018, the State of Berlin prohibited new burials.

The cemetery’s most famous resident is Christa Päffgen, who rests beside her mother, Margarete. Known professionally as Nico, she was one of Germany’s first supermodels in the 1950s, later moving to New York and joining Andy Warhol’s Factory. She became a founding member of The Velvet Underground and had high-profile relationships with Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Jimmy Page, and Lou Reed, while bearing a child fathered by Alain Delon. Her life was marked by heavy drug use, which some viewed as a slow form of self-destruction.

In 1974, her solo album The End was promoted with the cynical line, “Why commit suicide when you can buy this record?” Nico’s last concert in Berlin took place at the Quasimodo Club on June 6, 1988. She died one month later in Ibiza following a bicycle accident and was buried in the Grunewald Cemetery.