“Part of our raison d'être is to be here for people to have a place to come together after the funeral, to eat, drink, and just to be warm and held by a space.” says Alexis Hyman Wolff, who founded the café and art space in Friedhof II der Sophiengemeinde, a Protestant cemetery in Mitte, in 2022. Crossing the threshold into this quiet oasis near the former Berlin Wall feels like stumbling across a secret.

“Berlin has this tradition of cemetery cafés because cemeteries here are extraordinary green spaces,” Wolff says. “The nature here in our cemetery is so gorgeous. There are people with baby carriages going for walks and others tending to the graves.”

If the idea of dining near the deceased feels macabre, rest assured this place feels very much alive. Guests include families playing board games in the afternoon and teenage girls with their tarot decks on a Friday night. Café Lisbeth is just one of several such spaces in Berlin that bridge the gap between the living and the dead. The oldest, Café Finovo, has been in operation for nearly 20 years in Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof, where the Brothers Grimm lie. Kaffeebar Jacobi resides just off of the Alter St.-Jacobi-Friedhof in Neukölln. All pay rent to the cemeteries, helping fund the upkeep of gravestones while serving as community gathering spaces. 

When the owner of Café Strauss, a Kreuzberg institution in the Friedrichswerderscher Friedhof for over a decade, retired earlier this year, she wanted to ensure it didn’t become a “mainstream café,” says Jack Vowinckel, who co-runs the space. She passed the baton to the owner of another neighborhood café and bakery. The newly rechristened Café Friedberg, which opened in April, is known for its lemon mousse cake.

Kaffee und Kuchen—still a daily ritual for much of the older generation—is a big part of 21gramm’s business as well. At the café in St. Thomas-Kirchhof in southern Neukölln, cakes come in generous rectangular slabs: an exceptionally moist carrot cake and seasonal offerings like zwetschgenkuchen, a yeasted plum cake. While 21gramm is trendier than some of its peers, the owners wanted to keep it a place where prices are fair, the atmosphere respectful, and the vibe welcoming to all.

“I’ve lived in Neukölln for 20 years and seen how much the neighborhood has changed,” says co-owner Jeremias Stüer. “For me, it was always important to be there for everybody. We can’t just be for the hip tourists. There are people who are coming from visiting someone’s grave.”

Before the café opened, the century-old building lay fallow and closed off for years. Someone had once painted the walls a garish ’90s red. As the team stripped away the paint and tore down internal walls, they uncovered murals and gothic-lettered inscriptions, restoring a sense of what the airy, Corinthian-columned chapel might once have looked like. Now, plants hang from the ceiling, and a well-tended garden shields the patio seats. “We always said we wanted to bring the soul back into this place and to make it alive again,” Stüer says—hence the name, which refers to the supposed weight of a human soul. 

Come on a Saturday and you might see a brunch crowd devouring hangover-friendly croque monsieurs outside, while a wedding party pops crémant at the long communal table inside. Or there may be a Leichenschmaus—literally, a “corpse feast”—a raucous affair, often with an overabundance of food and drink. In German tradition, this funerary banquet is typically held several weeks after the death, once the initial shock has settled. While some cafés, like Café Friedberg, host these gatherings in private rooms, 21gramm opts to keep them out in the open.

“Especially on Tuesdays, almost every week there’s a group of four to 20 people in the middle of the restaurant who just came from a funeral, while at the next table, others might be on a date,” Stüer says. “From the very beginning, it was clear to us that we don’t have to separate the two. It’s all a part of life.”

The café business also helps keep the price point reasonable for families of the bereaved. No one is ever turned away. “It feels like our duty, being located in a cemetery,” Stüer says. “It’s important to be able to gather afterwards, and the families who organize a funeral aren’t doing it by choice. Even for people who can’t afford our usual offerings, we always find a way to serve them as well.”

Café Lisbeth also hosts many funerary feasts. Chiara De Martin, originally from the Veneto region of Italy, is behind the ever-evolving menu of antipasti, including vitello tonnato and focaccia with mortadella, stracciatella, and pistachio cream. Topranin says she has had to get creative—sous-vide cooking octopus for 8 hours or finding other ways to elevate the dishes without a full kitchen. “There’s a lot of joy that comes through the food,” Wolff says.

While Topranin handles the culinary side, Wolff, who spent years at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, oversees the curatorial aspects of the space. Café Lisbeth hosts exhibitions on themes of transience and how humans have grappled with life’s passages throughout history. A recent collaboration with the Institute of Meteorology at Berlin’s Freie Universität focused on the sky as a place where generations have believed their loved ones go.

The exhibitions, abstract by design, are an invitation to contemplation. According to Wolff, not everyone who stops by for coffee notices them or chooses to engage, but many do. Grief counseling is also a central part of the café’s mission.

“This is not just any space. To reach our front door, you pass through the cemetery gate,” Wolff says. “We’re on sacred ground here.”