The Sophien congregation established its first cemetery next to Sophienkirche in 1713 and created another cemetery in front of the Hamburger Tor in 1798. Due to legal requirements and Berlin’s rapid growth, a new cemetery on Bergstraße became necessary in 1827, while the old burial ground was sold, deconsecrated, and later developed into the First Berlin Public Bathhouse.
The new “II. Sophien Cemetery” was expanded in 1852 and connected in 1865 via a visual axis to the Lazarus Hospital and Deaconess House. When the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the cemetery boundary ran directly along the sector border, resulting in part of the site being used for border fortifications. The former death strip was preserved after reunification and is now part of the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Straße.
