Großsteingrab Kroatenhügel

The Kroatenhügel is a low mound in Magdeburg’s Sudenburg district. Once it hid a Neolithic grave, but the site was only recognised in 1970 when building work began. By the time the archaeologist Gert Böttcher arrived to supervise removal, the burial chamber and covering earth had already been bulldozed away. Only the scattered stones remained, no longer in their original positions. Experts believe the grave belonged to the Walternienburger or Bernburger culture of the 34th to 27th centuries BC. They estimate the chamber measured five to seven metres long and two to three metres wide, with walls of four to six upright slabs standing 1.4 to 1.6 metres high. A short roofed passage may have led inside, its roof formed by three or four capstones. The stones now lie in a courtyard behind a modern block bordered by Astonstraße, Bundschuhstraße and Florian-Geyer-Straße. Local legend links the hill to the Thirty Years War. According to the tale, a Croatian gunner serving under Johann T’Serclaes von Tilly fired a cannon from here and struck the cross on Magdeburg Cathedral’s south tower. Today the mound itself is gone, yet the scattered stones keep the memory of a vanished tomb and a dramatic siege story.