 Two
intercontinental trips later, the ashes of former UCSD Philosophy
Professor Herbert Marcuse were finally laid to rest in Dorotheenstadtischer
Cemetry in Berlin in 2003.
As we reported in our January 2004 issue, Marcuse died of stroke
while he was lecturing in Germany in 1979 but his ashes were not
interred for another 24 years.
The serene garden-like cemetery
is a far cry from the heady days of ’60s revolutionary fervor.
Marcuse’s books One-Dimensional
Man and Essay on Liberation critiqued the United States as possessing
a “comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom,” and
inspired the student anti-war protests of the late ’60s. The
Dorotheenstadtischer Cemetry, located in the former Jewish section
of the city, is shaded by canopies of Linden trees and exudes a contemplative
stillness. His plot is close to the graves of Heinrich Mann and the
playwright Bertolt Brecht, and the simple headstone, just recently
erected, reads “Weitermachen!”, which is translated as “Carry
on!” It was the expression Marcuse used at the end of every
class and seminar. “It’s the perfect epitaph for him,” says
Professor Billy O’Brien (see "Provoking
Thinkers" or page 16 of @UCSD).
“All his students warmly remember his ‘weitermachen!’” 
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