Old cemetery (Flensburg)

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Old Cemetery (2011)

The Old Cemetery ( Danish Den Gamle Kirkegaard ) is the oldest preserved cemetery in the city of Flensburg , which is also one of the oldest communal burial grounds in all of Northern Europe. The old cemetery is part of the municipal museum complex .

history

Since the hygienic conditions at many burial places in the cities, which were mostly in the densely built-up area around the churches, deteriorated at the beginning of the 19th century, the government of the Danish monarchy ordered the construction of new cemeteries outside the cities in 1810. Flensburg was the first city to comply with this law when it acquired an elongated plot of land close to the city on the Westliche Höhe on the Stadtfeld. At the northern end the cemetery chapel was built, a major classicist work in the region, designed by Axel Bundsen . The cemetery was inaugurated on June 25, 1813. In the 1920s or 1930s, the Sphinx was created that guards the tomb of the couple Görrissen, so that its design stands out from the other graves.

Burial mound with 51 stones and Idstedt lion (2011)

Until 1873, the old cemetery remained the only one in the now rapidly growing city. In that year, the so-called New Cemetery was opened a little further to the west , followed shortly before the turn of the century by the even more extensive cemetery on Friedenshügel , which in turn are significant landmarks today. In 1909 the city decided to abandon the historic burial ground. However, this was prevented solely by the owners of the numerous hereditary burials. Most of the other older funerary monuments, however, were destroyed at this time. Since then, burials have only taken place in exceptional cases in the Old Cemetery.

Today the monument ensemble consisting of the chapel, preserved tombs and the park is a listed building. In the southern part, which was almost cleared by graves in 1909, the Idstedt lion has been rising again since 2011 in memory of the Battle of Idstedt in Schleswig-Holstein's uprising on July 25, 1850 and the German-Danish contradictions of that time that have now been overcome.

Significant graves

literature

  • Klaus Ove Kahrmann, Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer: Flensburg around the turn of the century and today. Husum 1984.
  • Ludwig Rohling u. a .: Art monuments of the city of Flensburg. Munich 1955.
  • Lutz Wilde u. a .: Monument topography Schleswig-Holstein Volume 2: City of Flensburg. Neumünster 2001.

Web links

Commons : Alter Friedhof (Flensburg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Alter Friedhof on the website of the Flensburger Friedhöfe - an institution under public law

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Writings of the Society for Flensburg City History (ed.): Flensburg in history and present . Flensburg 1972, page 400
  2. ↑ Museums Nord, portrait of Gottfried Johann Nerong , accessed on: March 8, 2015
  3. ↑ Niels Nikolaus Falck : New citizenship magazine with special consideration for the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, Volume 2 , page 653, accessed on: March 8, 2015

Coordinates: 54 ° 47 ′ 9.1 ″  N , 9 ° 25 ′ 46 ″  E