Elisabethkirche Marburg

The grave of former Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and his wife Gertrud is located in the northern tower chapel of the Elisabeth Church. Both were buried in the Tannenberg Memorial in East Prussia in 1934. To prevent the bodies from falling into the hands of the Red Army, Hitler had the couple's coffins removed from the memorial by Wehrmacht units on 12 January 1945, one day before the Red Army opened the Battle of East Prussia The crates were transported from Königsberg with the light cruiser Emden to Pillau, from where the passenger ship Pretoria took them to Stettin. At the end of the war, both coffins were in a salt mine in Thuringia, where they were discovered by American army units in the summer of 1945. In August 1946, the coffins were finally buried in the tower hall of the Elisabeth Church.

Before the end of the war in 1945, the coffins of the Prussian kings Friedrich II and Friedrich Wilhelm I were temporarily stored in a Thuringian salt mine. After the end of the war, soldiers of the American army brought the coffins from Thuringia back to the Elisabeth Church. At the initiative of Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the coffins finally came to the chapel of Hohenzollern Castle.

The northern wall of the nave still bears traces of the aerial bombardment of 22 February 1944. Otherwise the church remained undamaged.

Do you have more information about this location? Inform us!

Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: TracesOfWar.com