Sowjetischer Ehrenfriedhof
About This Site
A cemetery of honour for the Red Army, laid out in June 1945, where 640 Soviet service personnel were buried in the first ten months of the peace.
June 1945
The cemetery was established as an "Ehrenfriedhof der Roten Armee" in June 1945[1] — two months after American troops took the town and within weeks of the Soviet occupation taking over Thuringia. By April 1946, 640 Soviet service personnel had been buried there: people killed during the war or who died of its consequences afterwards.[1]
What the number means, 1945
640 graves in ten months, in a town of this size, is a measure of how the war did not stop when it ended. Many of those buried died after May 1945, of wounds, illness and the conditions of a ruined country — the same months in which the Soviet occupation was reopening the camp on the Ettersberg as Special Camp No. 2. The two facts belong to one year and are rarely told together.
Visiting
The city lists the cemetery as freely accessible.[1] It has no ticket desk, no opening hours and no website — and it is a quieter place than any of Weimar's monuments, which is generally the point of it.
Questions visitors ask
- What is the Sowjetischer Ehrenfriedhof?
- A cemetery of honour for the Red Army, laid out in June 1945, two months after American troops took the town and within weeks of the Soviet occupation taking over Thuringia.[1]
- Why so many burials in the first year of peace?
- 640 Soviet service personnel were buried there by April 1946[1] — people killed during the war or who died of its consequences afterward. Many died after May 1945, of wounds, illness and the conditions of a ruined country: a measure of how the war did not stop when it ended.
- What else was happening at the same time?
- The Soviet occupation was reopening the camp on the Ettersberg as Special Camp No. 2 in the same months — two facts that belong to one year and are rarely told together.
- Can I visit, and is there a fee?
- Yes — the city lists it as freely accessible.[1] There is no ticket desk, no opening hours and no website; it is a quieter place than any of Weimar's monuments, which is generally the point of it.
Sources
- Kirchen und Friedhöfe — Stadt Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Visit Information
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
Laid out under the Soviet occupation that preceded the GDR, and maintained through its forty years.
For forty-five years Weimar was a provincial town that the state could not afford to neglect, because the classics it kept were the pedigree East Germany wanted for itself.
Its dead are the war's, buried in the same months in which the Soviet occupation reopened the camp on the Ettersberg.
The regime wanted Weimar for what its name meant, and it built a concentration camp on the hill above the town. Both facts belong to the same twelve years.