Berlin Massacre

Rudolf Breitscheid, the Man Behind the Square

The Berlin square where 12 people were killed is named after German anti-Nazi underground leader Rudolf Breitscheid, who gave his life in the fight against terror.

Whoever drove that tractor-trailer rig into the Christmas market on Monday night in the heart of west Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48, probably had no clue of the irony behind his heinous act.

But the murderer couldn’t have chosen a better place for his craven massacre: Breitscheidplatz, or Breitscheid Square, an unspectacular but historically significant expanse of concrete between Budapesterstrasse and Kurfürstendamm in the shadow of the Kaiser Wilhelm Remembrance Church.

The square is named after Rudolf Breitscheid, the interior minister of Prussia and a leading Social Democrat in the Reichstag who was one of the few to publicly oppose Hitler. The church on the square is a ruin, preserved at the end of WWII to remind Germans of the insanity of war and ideological “krieg.”

While most photos of Monday’s terror attack have focused on church and its striking, jagged spire, it is no coincidence Berlin’s most-visible memorial to the dangers of mass hysteria is named after Mr. Breitscheid, a native of Cologne.