Mother's grief, Berlin, Germany. This work, Pietá by Käthe Kollwitz, is the sole object occupying the stark space of the Neue Wache.

This building, housing the Royal Guard in Berlin from 1818 to 1918 has, since 1960, served as memorial to the victims of war and fascism -- and a warning for future generations.

The artist Kollwitz (1867-1945) lost both a son and a grandson to war. Prussian by birth, she first began to create sculpture in Berlin. When Hitler came to power, her work was declared 'degenerate' and much was destroyed.

The remains of an unknown soldier and concentration camp prisoner were interred in the Neue Wache in 1969. They are surrounded by earth from battlefields of the Second World War and concentration camps. A plaque on the building reads:

We remember all nations/peoples who suffered in war.
We remember their citizens, who were persecuted and lost their lives.
We remember all of the innocent people who lost their lives in war and because of the consequences of war at home, in captivity, and during the expulsion.
We remember the millions of murdered Jews.
We remember the murdered Sinti and Romany Gypsies.
We remember all of the people who were killed because of their ancestry, their homosexuality or because of sickness and disability.
We remember all of the murdered whose right to life was denied.
We remember all of the people who had to die because of their religious or political convictions.
We remember everyone who became a victim of tyranny and went innocently to death.
We remember the women and men who sacrificed their lives in the resistance against the tyranny.
We honor everyone who preferred to go to their death than compromise their conscience.
We remember the women and men who were persecuted and murdered because they resisted the totalitarian dictatorship after 1945.