Fluntern cemetery

The Fluntern cemetery is located on the Zürichberg high above the city of Zürich . He is best known for some of the world-famous writers buried here, such as James Joyce and Elias Canetti, and for several Nobel Prize winners.

Area and buildings

Cemetery chapel

The cemetery is adjacent to the zoo and the tram stop of the same name on Allmend Fluntern between Zürichbergstrasse and the forest on the Zürichberg. It occupies an area of 33,250 square meters. In addition to private graves and grave fields with row graves for urn and burial burials, there are also communal graves . Many family graves have individual grave decorations and elaborate sculptures. Green areas in the western part are intended to give the cemetery «significance as a recreational and green area». The large population of old, tall spruce and other trees allows the adjacent forest to merge into the cemetery, parts of which are now considered to be forest cemetery.

The cemetery has a small chapel that can seat 100 people and a funeral hall. The administration office and an apartment of the cemetery manager are also located in the same building.

history

The then still independent municipality of Fluntern had an older cemetery on the «Platte», which only covered 1,683 m². This was created in 1787. The cemetery on the Platte was closed in 1886 and cleared in 1907 when new roads were laid and houses built.

Today's Fluntern cemetery was laid out in 1887 by the municipality of Fluntern. The complex was very small at the time and was built strictly axially based on the baroque model. After Fluntern was incorporated into the city of Zurich in 1893, the cemetery should have been abandoned: the larger Enzenbühl cemetery was planned for District 7 . However, due to resistance from the local parish and population, it was preserved.

In 1907 the new Fluntern cemetery even had to be expanded as the population of Fluntern had risen sharply. In 1928 there was a second extension up to the edge of the forest, which again retained the original baroque style. The floor plan was reminiscent of a Romanesque church, the apse of which was formed by a raised terrace at the top of the complex. The cemetery was expanded for the last time in 1948 or 1949. In the section that was added to the west, the clear forms were given up. There are wide open spaces and sometimes winding paths.

On January 15, 1941, James Joyce was buried in a simple grave in the Fluntern Cemetery. In 1966 he was reburied on Bloomsday and, together with his wife Nora Barnacle, who died in 1951, was given an honorary grave by the city of Zurich in the Fluntern cemetery, which is decorated with a statue of the American artist Milton Hebald . Their son Giorgio and his wife Asta Jahnke-Osterwalder Joyce were also buried in this grave.

Graves of important personalities

Emil Abderhalden (1877–1950), doctor (burial place repealed)
Thomas Ammann (1950–1993), art dealer
Anita Augspurg (1857–1943), women's rights activist
Franklin Bircher (1896–1988), clinic director and researcher (burial place canceled)
Theodor Bovet (1900–1976), doctor, marriage counselor
Elias Canetti (1905–1994), Nobel Prize for Literature
Louis Conne (1905-2004), sculptor
Walter Robert Corti (1910–1990), philosopher
Kurt Früh (1915–1979), film director
Therese Giehse (1898–1975), actress
Ernst Ginsberg (1904–1964), actor and director
Friedrich Hegar (1841–1927), composer
Jakob Heusser (1895–1989), Government Councilor (burial site repealed)
Lida Gustava Heymann (1868–1943), suffragette
Warja Honegger-Lavater (1913–2007), graphic artist
Fritz Hug (1921–1989), painter
James Joyce (1882-1941), writer
Nora Joyce (1884–1951), James Joyce's wife
Paul Karrer (1889–1971), Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Anna Keel (1940–2010), painter
Daniel Keel (1930–2011), publisher, founder of Diogenes Verlag
Mary Lavater-Sloman (1891–1980), writer
Dagmar Liechti-von Brasch (1911–1993), doctor and nutrition reformer
Albert Meyer (1870–1953), Federal Councilor (burial place repealed)
Karl Moser (1860–1936), architect
Wilhelm Oechsli (1851–1919), historian (burial place repealed)
Emil Oprecht (1895–1952), publisher
Eduard Osenbrüggen (1809–1879), legal scholar
Ferdinand Rieser (1886–1947), director of the Schauspielhaus
Hans Roelli (1889–1962), song composer
Leopold Ružička (1887–1976), Nobel laureate in chemistry
Max Rychner (1897–1965), writer
Paul Scherrer (1890–1969), physicist
Philipp Schwartz (1894–1977), physician and escape helper
Åke Senning (1915-2000), cardiac surgeon
Walter Siegenthaler (1923–2010), internist and researcher
Ulrich Stranz (1946–2004), composer
Ernst Fahrtisen (1905–1978), New Apostolic clergyman
Leopold Szondi (1893–1986), psychoanalyst
Peter Szondi (1929–1971), literary scholar
Fridolin Tschudi (1912–1966), writer (burial place repealed)
Oskar Wältin (1895–1961), director
Sigmund Widmer (1919–2003), mayor