Neue Wache

The New Guardhouse (MAP) was built from 1816 to 1818 on behalf of the Prussian King, Frederick William III, according to a design by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. From 1818 until 1918 the Royal Palace Guard was located here. In 1931 the Prussian government had the Guardhouse redesigned. Heinrich Tessenow created a memorial to those who fell in the First World War. In the centre of the room stood a blcok of granite with a silver wreath of silver leaves. Shortly before the end of the Second World War, the building was severly damaged by bombs. In 1969 the mortal remains of an unknown soldier and an unknown concentration camp prisoner were laid to rest here. They are surrounded by earth from the battlefields of the Second World War and from various Concentration Camps. The interior design from the time of the Weimar Republic was largely restored. n enlarged replica of the sculpture by Kathe Kollwitz known as "Mother with her Dead Son," a modern-day Pieta, stands in the center of the Memorial.