The 80-year-old Hindenburg was dressed in the uniform of a Colonel-in-chief of a Masurian regiment to which he'd been appointed by the Emperor (who had since abdicated). Opening and dedication Ī gathering of thousands came to the dedication of the newly finished memorial on 18 September 1927. The design influenced other projects undertaken by architects and builders during the era. The monument's location on a hilltop was accentuated by massive earthworks and landscaping designed to look as if nature alone had shaped the site. The memorial was built in a prominent place in a shape reminiscent of the castles of the Teutonic Knights. The architects imagined the memorial to be a new völkisch 'community of the dead' and incorporated the burial of 20 unknown German soldiers from the Eastern Front into the project concept. This ideology was debated in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. In doing so, the architects anticipated the concept of Totenburgen (Fortresses of the Dead) housing mass graves of soldiers. The memorial embraced the Anglo/French concept of the Unknown Soldier. In 1949, Polish authorities razed the site, leaving few traces.Īerial view 1944, from a Luftwaffe plane. As the Red Army approached in 1945, German troops removed Hindenburg's remains and partly demolished key structures. Adolf Hitler ordered the monument to be redesigned and renamed 'Reichsehrenmal Tannenberg'. When Reichspräsident Hindenburg died in 1934, his coffin and that of his wife, who had died in 1921, were placed there despite his wishes to be buried at his family plot in Hanover. The octagonal layout with eight towers, each 20 metres high, was influenced by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II's Castel del Monte and Stonehenge. The victorious German commander, Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg, became a national hero and was later interred at the site.ĭedicated by Hindenburg on the 10th anniversary of the Battle of Tannenberg in 1924 near Hohenstein (Ostpreußen) (now Olsztynek, Poland), the structure, which was financed by donations, was built by the architects Johannes and Walter Krüger of Berlin and completed in 1927. The Tannenberg Memorial ( German: Tannenberg-Nationaldenkmal, from 1935: Reichsehrenmal-Tannenberg) was a monument to the German soldiers of the Battle of Tannenberg, the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes and the medieval Battle of Tannenberg (1410).

Am tannenberg