Kriegerdenkmal 1870/71, War memorial in Spremberg, Germany

The Kriegerdenkmal 1870/71 is a gray obelisk made of Silesian marble, standing on a base with a name cube and pyramid topped by an eagle. The stone bears engraved names of fallen soldiers and now stands in the town center.

A committee formed in Spremberg on 27 April 1871 to honour the fallen of the 3rd Battalion of the 6th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment No. 52, more than half of whose officers had died in France. Sculptor Thomas of Görlitz created a grey Silesian marble obelisk, inaugurated on 25 October 1872 on the Georgenberg. In 1946 it was demolished on the orders of the district administrator and the rubble was buried on the spot.

The monument displays names of fallen soldiers from the region and shows how communities mourned their losses during this period. Visitors can see the engraved names and understand what this memorial meant to local people.

The obelisk has stood since August 2021 on the remains of a former park in Spremberg's town centre, not at its original site on the Kugelplatz of the Georgenberg, which was built over with a viewing terrace in the 1970s. The 2021 reconstruction recreated the intermediate base; the original marble was crushed and buried on site in 1946.

The 1946 demolition order cited Allied Control Council Directive No. 30, which applied only to monuments erected after 1 August 1914, so the 1872 obelisk fell outside its scope. A letter from the Spremberg building office dated 4 December 1946 records that the firm Philipp Holzmann broke up the marble and buried the rubble on the spot because transport was too difficult.