The Monument to the Revolution was built in 1926 on the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin in memory of the murdered Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, victims of the Reichstag riots of 1920. The building was demolished in 1935 by the Nazis and not restored after the end of the Second World War. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe commissioned the patron of the arts and the German Communist party Eduard Fuchs to design revolutionary monument with the essential element of a brick wall. The sculptor Herbert Garbe was involved in the design and later the construction.
In February 1933, National Socialists began to destroy the memorial by first demolishing the five-pointed star. He came as a trophy in the Revolution Museum of SA Standard 6 in Taubenstrasse 7. In the years 1944 and 1945, new graves were created here due to the war (after 25 years), whereby the bones of the revolutionaries were obviously lost (except Franz Mehring ).
After The Destruction
After the end of the Second World War, the ruined revolutionary monument was not restored. However, the tradition of commemorative marches and rallies was revived, for which in 1946 a provisional replica of the monument was erected.
Repeatedly there were initiatives to permanently reconstruct the destroyed memorial. A Liebknecht-Luxemburg society founded in West Berlin in 1968 tried for some time to rebuild the memorial in Tiergarten. However, numerous supporters such as the Social Democrats Kurt Neubauer, Walter Sickert, Wolfgang Abendroth, Ernst Bloch and Walter Jens did not succeed in obtaining funding. Also, the architect had refused his consent. So this idea was not realized.
In 1968, under the name Aktion 507, a group of young Berlin architects, assistants and architecture students met at the Technical University of Berlin. In addition to an exhibition, another public action of the group was a fundraising for the reconstruction of the Revolution Monument at a new location on the Landwehrk Canal. However, the reconstruction did not go beyond a symbolic laying of the foundation stone on the day of the opening of the New National Gallery.
In 1982, on the original site of the Revolution Monument, a blackboard was designed by Gunther Stahn and Gerhard Thieme with the inscription: "On this foundation stood the Revolution Monument for Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and many other revolutionary fighters the German labor movement. Built in 1926 by the Communist Party of Germany according to plans by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe."
