In the Reinickendorf area of Berlin you’ll find a structure that in many ways looks very out of place – the Russian Orthodox Cemetery Church, built for Berlin’s ex-patriot Russian community in 1894.
It has a classic Russian look about it, with five strikingly blue onion domes. Wandering around the grounds you’ll also find that the vast majority of the graves have inscriptions in the cyrillic alphabet. One can only imagine what life was like for the many people buried here who must have spent the majority of their lives being unable to return to their native country, or perhaps even to communicate with friends and relatives on the other side of the Iron Curtain, which was only a few short miles away in every direction…
From Russian Orthodox Church Tegel December 2010 |