TODAY IN BERLIN: THE NOSE-CRUSHERS AT THE NEW LEICHENSCHAUHAUS
Berlin’s New Mortuary
On January 22, 1886 Berlin’s Leichenschauhaus, the City Morgue, opened in Hannoversche Straße (then Communication am Neuen Thor) at No. 6. The official opening ceremony took place in March of the same year.
It was Berlin’s second city morgue after the one that operated at the old Koppensche Armenfriedhof (Koppen's Poor Cemetery) on today's Koppenplatz in Berlin-Mitte, on the edge of the historic Scheuenenviertel. This morgue was, however, disused back in the 1830s due to horrid conditions.
The new Berlin City Morgue, built on the site of the old Charité cholera cemetery, had a 25-metre long viewing hall with seven cooled cells (for two corpses each) and glass ceiling for daylight viewing.
Bodies collected in the city were normally displayed over the period of three weeks, then buried by the city if not recognised. The coffins in which they were interred, very basic and rather small, were dubbed "Nasequetscher" (nose-crushers).
The Leichenschauhaus, opened on this day in 1886, saw them all: Otto Lilienthal, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, little Lucie Berlin whose body parts where fished out of the Spree in 1904, as well as victims of the gruesome serial-killer Carl Grossmann, the Nazi-Icon Horst Wessel (mentioned in this series before) and Peter Fechter who died during his failed attempt to escape to WestBerlin.
The mortuary in Hannoversche Straße closed in 2005.