Since 1931, an oak leaf wreath made of gold and silver leaves by the sculptor Ludwig Gies, which is now exhibited in the neighboring German Historical Museum, stood on a 1.67-meter-high memorial stone made of black granite inside, from which the architect Heinrich Tessenow had removed interior walls and intermediate ceilings. Above this, the roof of the hall opened in a circular shape. In 1934, two wreaths were placed on the outer corner towers and a cross on the inner rear wall.[32]
On May 8, 1960, the 15th anniversary of the liberation, the party and state leadership of the GDR inaugurated the memorial for the victims of fascism and militarism, created by Heinz Mehlan for the preservation of historical monuments. The cross was omitted from the design; the wreath had already been in West Berlin since 1948. For the 20th Day of the Republic in 1969, it was redesigned again based on a design by Lothar Kwasnitza. The light opening was closed, and the granite block was replaced by an eternal flame in a glass prism. In front of it, the mortal remains of an unknown resistance fighter, an unknown concentration camp prisoner, and of an unknown soldier were interred under two bronze plaques. Under the resistance fighter's plaque lay soil from nine concentration camps, and under that of the soldier's plaque lay soil from nine battlefields of the Second World War. On the rear wall was the state coat of arms of the GDR.
In the interior of the building, which was largely reconstructed according to Tessenow's plans from 1931, since 1993, at the suggestion of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Harald Haacke's copy of the bronze sculpture "Mother with Dead Son" by Käthe Kollwitz, also known as the Pietà, has been located. It depicts the artist and her son, Peter, who died in the First World War.[33] In front of the sculpture, the inscription "To the Victims of War and Tyranny" is embedded in the ground. The urns containing the remains of the unknown resistance fighter and the unknown soldier, as well as the earth-filled vessels, have since been placed beneath the black granite memorial plaque.