White Crosses

The White Crosses Memorial stands on the banks of the Spree River at Friedrich-Ebert-Platz, right next to the Reichstag building in Berlin. The memorial honors the people who lost their lives trying to cross the Berlin Wall. The initiative began in 1971 with a private Berlin citizens' association, which originally placed a white cross at each location along the Wall where someone had died. Because the association couldn't keep up with maintaining these scattered sites, it concentrated its efforts on central locations. After the memorial was relocated in 1995 during construction of the new Bundestag complex, it was re-established on the north side of the Reichstag.

The current installation, designed by landscape architect Jan Wehberg, has eight spaces for crosses, seven of which are occupied. Each cross bears the victim's name and date of death on both sides. The names commemorate people who drowned in the Spree or were shot there between 1961 and 1989, as well as other victims at various locations in Berlin. In addition to honoring those who died at the Berlin Wall, there was at one time a field of more than a thousand crosses for all victims of the inner German border, but it was removed again in 2005.

The site has also taken on political significance in more recent history. In 2014, the Center for Political Beauty temporarily removed the crosses and took them to the external borders of the European Union. The action was meant to draw attention to the many refugees who die at the EU's borders, and to draw a link between the historic Wall and today's border conflicts.